فصل پانزدهم بخش اول

Chapter 15

USING OUR VOICES WISELY TO SERVE OTHERS

I like to start with three marvelous quote, the first one is from a leader Gordon B.Hinckley , at the age of ninety-two: I am no longer a young man filled with energy and vitality. I’m given to meditation and prayer. I would enjoy sitting in a rocker, swallowing prescriptions, listening to soft music, and contemplating the things of the universe. But such activity offers no challenge and makes no contribution. I wish to be up and doing. I wish to face each day with resolution and purpose. I wish to use every waking hour to give encouragement, to bless those whose burdens are heavy, to build faith and strength of testimony. It is the presence of wonderful people which stimulates the adrenaline. It is the look of love in their eyes which gives me energy.

The second quote comes from a poet Tagore:

I slept and dreamed that life was joy.

I awoke and saw that life was service.

I acted, and behold, service was joy.

The third quote comes from John D. Rockefeller junior:

I believe that the rendering of useful service is the common duty of mankind and that only in the purifying fire of sacrifice is the dross of selfishness consumed and the greatness of the human soul set free.

THE INNER DRIVE TO 1) Find Your Own Voice, and 2) Inspire Others to Find Theirs is fueled by one great overarching purpose: serving human needs. It is also the best means of achieving both: Without reaching out and meeting human needs, we really don’t expand and develop our freedom to choose as we otherwise could. We grow more personally when we are giving ourselves to others. Our relationships improve and deepen when together we attempt to serve our family, another family, an organization, a community, or some other human need.

At first, as a student, I wanted freedom only for myself, the transitory freedoms of being able to stay out at night, read what I pleased, and go where I chose. Later as a young man in Johannesburg, I yearned for the basic and honorable freedoms of achieving my potential, of earning my keep, of marrying and having a family—the freedom not to be obstructed in a lawful life. But I then slowly saw that not only was I not free, but my brothers and sisters were not free . . . that is when the hunger for my own freedom became the greater hunger for the freedom of my people.

It was this desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and self-respect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one, that drove a law-abiding attorney to become a criminal, that turned a family-loving husband into a man without a home. . . . I am no more virtuous or self-sacrificing than the next man, but I found that I could not even enjoy the poor and limited freedoms I was allowed when I knew my people were not free.3 NELSON MANDELA

Organizations are established to serve human needs. There is no other reason for their existence. Robert Greenleaf wrote a beautiful essay, “The Institution As Servant,” which applied the whole concept of stewardship to an organization.

Service is the rent we pay for living in this world of ours.

NATHAN ELDON TANNER

Willis Harmon, the cofounder of the World Business Academy, expressed his conviction about the institution of business itself in these words:

Business has become the most powerful institution on the planet. The dominant institution in any society needs to take responsibility for the whole. But business has not had such a tradition. This is a new role, not well understood or accepted. Built on the concept of capitalism and free enterprise from the beginning was the assumption that the actions of many units of individual enterprise, responding to market forces and guided by the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith, would somehow add up to desirable outcomes. But in the last decade of the 20th century, it has become clear that the “invisible hand” is faltering. It depended on overarching meanings and values that are no longer present. So business has to adopt a tradition it has never had throughout the entire history of capitalism: to share the responsibility of the whole. Every decision that is made, every action that is taken, must be viewed in light of that responsibility.

THE AGE OF WISDOM

I believe that this millennium will become the Age of Wisdom. It will come about either through the force of circumstance that humbles people, or through the force of conscience, or perhaps both.

Remember the Five Ages of Civilization’s Voice. The technology for the Hunter-Gatherer Age was symbolized by the bow and arrow; the Agricultural Age, by farm equipment; the Industrial Age, by the factory, the Information/Knowledge Worker Age, by a human being; the Age of Wisdom, by a compass, which signifies the power to choose our direction and purpose and obey the natural laws or principles (magnetic north) that never change and that are universal, timeless, and self-evident.

Remember that with each infrastructure shift, over 90 percent of the people were eventually downsized. I believe this is now happening as we move from the Industrial to the Information/Knowledge Worker Age. People are either losing their jobs or gradually being transformed by the new demands of their new jobs. I personally believe that over 20 percent of the present workforce is becoming obsolete, and that unless they rededicate and reinvent themselves, within a few years, another 20 percent will become obsolete.

This Information Age is transforming so rapidly into the Knowledge Worker Age that it is going to take continual investment in our own education and training to stay abreast. Much of this will be done by the school of hard knocks, but people who see what is happening and who are disciplined will systematically continue their education until they acquire the new mind-set and the new skill-set required to anticipate and accommodate the realities of the new age. Hopefully, this will gradually morph into an Age of Wisdom, when information and knowledge are impregnated with purpose and principles.

WHERE IS WISDOM?

We know that information is not wisdom. We also know that knowledge is not wisdom.

Many years ago, when I was teaching at a university and working on my doctorate, I went to see a friend, who was also my senior professor. I told him, “I’d like to do a dissertation on the subject of motivation and leadership, a philosophical document rather than an empirical study.” He basically said to me, “Stephen, you don’t know enough to even ask the right questions.” In other words, my knowledge was at one level, but my knowledge would have to be way beyond its current level if I was to deal with the kinds of questions I would need to deal with. This was very emotionally traumatic for me because my heart and mind were really set on taking a philosophical approach rather than the scientific approach that I eventually ended up taking. I believed that the combination of informal philosophical training I’d received during my undergraduate and graduate studies in business would be sufficient. I didn’t realize until years later how right he was. It was a humbling experience.

That lesson in humility was the mother of many precious learnings and insights that would come in the years that followed. Eventually we learn that the more you know, the more you know you don’t know. Look at it this way . Here is a circle, which represents your knowledge. Your ignorance is on the outside edge of that circle.

As your knowledge increases, what happens to your ignorance? It obviously becomes larger, or at least your awareness of your ignorance becomes larger . So the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. What if you were trying to serve purposes greater than your knowledge—greater than your comfort zone? This would create genuine humility and a desire to draw upon help from others, from a partnership or team. Successfully working with others makes one’s knowledge and abilities productive and necessitates the creation of a complementary team of people who possess knowledge and abilities that can compensate for and make irrelevant one’s individual ignorance and weaknesses. That is as it should be.

This awareness should increase our commitment to continual mentored learning, particularly in subjects as critical as personal growth, relationships and leadership. I believe that when information and knowledge are impregnated with worthy purposes and principles, you have wisdom.

In a sense, knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows, for details are swallowed up in principles. The details for knowledge, which are important, will be picked up ad hoc in each avocation of life, but the habit of the active utilization of well-understood principles is the final possession of wisdom.5 ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD

Another way of putting this would be that wisdom is the child of integrity, being integrated around principles. And integrity is the child of humility and courage. In fact you could say that humility is the mother of all the virtues because humility acknowledges that there are natural laws or principles that govern the universe. They are in charge. We are not. Pride teaches us that we are in charge. Humility teaches us to understand and live by principles, because they ultimately govern the consequences of our actions. If humility is the mother, courage is the father of wisdom. Because to truly live by these principles when they are contrary to social mores, norms and values takes enormous courage.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

AMBROSE REDMOON

The following chart visually describes these three generations, notice also their opposites in all three generations.

You notice that integrity has two children, wisdom and the abundance mentality. Wisdom comes to people who educate and obey their conscience. The abundance mentality is cultivated because integrity breeds inner security. When a person is not dependent upon external judgments and comparisons for his sense of personal worth, he can be genuinely happy for the successes of others. But those with a comparison-based identity simply cannot be happy when others succeed because they operate out of an emotional deficiency. Wisdom and an abundance mentality produce the kinds of paradigms spoken of in this book, paradigms that lead one to believe in people, affirm their worth and potential, and think in terms of release rather than control. Such a combination of wisdom and abundance mentality respects the power and capacity people have to choose. That combination also respects the fact that motivation is internal, and therefore people who have that combination make no attempt to manage, control or motivate others. Such leaders inspire rather than require. They control things, but they lead (empower) people. They don’t think zero-sum; they think Third Alternatives, higher middle ways. They are filled with gratitude, reverence and respect for all people. They see life as a cornucopia of resources, particularly human resources of opportunity and continuing growth.

MORAL AUTHORITY AND SERVANT LEADERSHIP

You have not done enough, you have never done enough so long as it is still possible that you have something of value to contribute.6

DAG HAMMARSKJÖLD

Wisdom is the beneficial use of knowledge; wisdom is information and knowledge impregnated with higher purposes and principles. Wisdom teaches us to respect all people, to celebrate their differences, to be guided by a single ethic, service above self. Moral authority is primary greatness (character strengths); formal authority is secondary greatness (position, wealth, talent, reputation, popularity).

When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises; being known and being praised; ostensible pleasures, like acquiring money or seducing women, or traveling, going to and fro in the world and up and down in it like Satan, explaining and experiencing whatever Vanity Fair has to offer. In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem like pure fantasy, what Pascal called, “licking the earth.” MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE

The interesting thing about moral authority is what a paradox it is. The dictionary discusses authority in terms of command, control, power, sway, rule, supremacy, domination, dominion, strength, might. But the antonym is civility, servitude, weakness, follower. Moral authority is the gaining of influence through following principles. Moral dominion is achieved through servanthood, service, and contribution. Power and moral supremacy emerge from humility, where the greatest becomes the servant of all. Moral authority or primary greatness is achieved through sacrifice. Robert K. Greenleaf, the modern founder of the servant leadership movement, put it this way: A new moral principle is emerging which holds that the only authority deserving one’s allegiance is that which is freely and knowingly granted by the led to the leader in response to, and in proportion to, the clearly evident servant stature of the leader. Those who choose to follow this principle will not casually accept the authority of existing institutions. Rather, they will freely respond only to individuals who are chosen as leaders because they are proven and trusted as servants. To the extent that this principle prevails in the future, the only truly viable institutions will be those that are predominantly servant-led.

It has generally been my experience that the very top people of truly great organizations are servant-leaders. They are the most humble, the most reverent, the most open, the most teachable, the most respectful, the most caring. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, Jim Collins, one of the authors of the highly influential book Built to Last and author of the more recent Good to Great, conducted a five-year research project around the question What catapults an organization from merely good to truly great? His profound conclusion ought to change the way we think about leadership. Here is how he describes “Level 5 Leadership”: The most powerfully transformative executives possess a paradoxical mixture of personal humility and professional will. They are timid and ferocious. Shy and fearless. They are rare, and unstoppable . . . good to great transformations don’t happen without level five leaders at the helm, they just don’t.

When people with the formal authority or position power (secondary greatness) refuse to use that authority and power except as a last resort, their moral authority increases because it is obvious that they have subordinated their ego and position power and use reasoning, persuasion, kindness, empathy, and, in short, trustworthiness instead. In the book Leading Beyond the Walls, Jim Collins puts this principle in the context of the broader organizational environment: First, the executives must define the inside and the outside of the organization by reference to core values and purpose, not by traditional boundaries. Second, executives must build mechanisms of connection and commitment rooted in freedom of choice, rather than relying on systems of coercion and control. Third, executives must accept the fact that the exercise of true leadership is inversely proportional to the exercise of power. Fourth, executives must embrace the reality that traditional walls are dissolving and that this trend will accelerate.11 There are times of great chaos, confusion and survival when the strong hand of formal authority needs to be used to get things back on track, to a new level of order and stability or to a new vision. However, in most cases when people use their formal authority early on, their moral authority will be lessened. Again, remember that when you borrow strength from position, you build weakness in three places: in self, because you are not developing moral authority; in the other, because they become codependent with your use of formal authority; and in the quality of the relationship, because authentic openness and trust never develops.

The surest way to reveal one’s character is not through adversity but by giving them power.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Generally you’ll find those with high moral authority are eventually given formal authority, like Mandela, the father of the new South Africa. But not always—like Gandhi, the father of the new India.

You’ll also find, almost always, that those who have formal authority and use it in principle-centered ways will find their influence increasing exponentially—like George Washington, the father of the United States of America.

Why does moral authority exponentially increase the effectiveness of formal authority and power? Dependent people are super-sensitive to even the slightest nuance of either “throwing one’s weight around” or the use of patience, kindness, gentleness, empathy and gentle persuasion. Such character strength activates others’ consciences and creates emotional identification with the leader and the cause or principles he or she stands for. Then when formal authority or positional power is also used, people follow for the right reasons, out of genuine commitment rather than out of fear. This is another form of the Third Alternative.

This is the real key to parenting, probably our highest “voice” responsibility in mortality, combining high standards and strong values and consistent discipline with unconditional love, deep empathy and a lot of fun. This is why the greatest test of parenthood, and the key to building a healthy, nurturing family culture, is how we treat the ones who test us the most.

Also, in difficult and troubling economic times, the natural tendency is to revert back to the Industrial Age command-and-control model, because people are fearful for their economic security. It feels safer. People also have the tendency to become more dependent and to respond to the command-and-control style. But it is in this very time that the knowledge worker model has its greatest effect and power, for it is in difficult times that we must produce more for less.

The capacity to produce more for less is based on unleashing the human potential throughout an entire organization, rather than again falling into the traditional trap of having people at the top make all the important decisions and having the rest wield the screwdrivers. This approach simply does not work in modern, tough times.

In short, in a bad economy, we may go back to the carrot-and-stick, great jackass theory of human motivation because it works. But though it may enable survival, it will not optimize results.

Notice the contrast between Leadership as a Position (Formal Authority) and Leadership as a Choice (Moral Authority):

Let’s explore practical illustrations of how communities and individuals—some without formal authority, some with only moral authority, and some with both moral and formal authority, including a great military leader and other world leaders and heads of state—exercise their wise “voices” in serving human needs.

COMMUNITY POLICING

All around the United States and in other places throughout the world, many communities have reduced crime up to 60 percent through civil society—the Third Alternative. The first alternative is for police to enforce the law. The second alternative is to lower behavior standards and just live with the “weakening of the moral fiber of society.” The Third Alternative is to use moral authority to embolden and empower citizens (civil society) to take an active part in the prevention of crime and in finding and prosecuting criminals. Who provides this kind of leadership? The police officer on the beat.

Unless these officers are “convincingly good people” (as L.A. County Sheriff Baca describes their higher recruiting selection criteria), why would neighbors, fathers, mothers, teachers and other ordinary citizens partner with the police in the prevention of crime and in the identification of criminals? How are you going to get the social norms and mores in the ghettos and projects to surround zero tolerance of law breaking (even jaywalking) if people in their hearts do not emotionally connect with the trusted flatfoot cops? Remember the brilliant insight of the great sociologist Emile Durkheim: “When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary. When mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable.” A colleague of mine who trains in the law enforcement area full-time frequently asks his audiences, who are made up primarily of the formal leadership (sheriffs, captains, lieutenants), “Who are the real leaders in community policing?” It becomes obvious that the real leaders are the police officers on the beat. They are the ones who have to involve and build relationships of trust with families to prevent crimes and “blow the whistle”—often at great risk to themselves—in neighborhoods full of gangs, drug pushers and users, and frequent violent outbursts. In such situations, formal authority won’t work—in fact, it would be counterproductive and further polarize the cultures. Only moral authority produces prevention and crime-identification norms. Like the parable of the shepherd, they must know the sheep and be likewise known (authentic communication). The shepherds care so much they are willing to lay down their lives for the sheep. That’s why they walk in front and the sheep follow. Hired sheepherders claim to care but are only there for “what’s in it for them” (their wage) and desert the sheep when the “wolf” comes around. That’s why the hirelings have to drive from behind using the carrot and stick.

The formal leaders are really managers or, better put, servant leaders. They can help use COMSTAT or other computer technology to identify potential problems so the real leaders, police officers on the beat, can nip things in the bud.

What a concept this is! What a comeuppance for those thinking position confers leadership! This new model sees the police officers, with moral authority, as the real leaders and the rest of the “higher-ups” as managers of aligned systems, servant leaders to those at the bottom. Is this a paradigm shift or not, particularly in a traditional, highly authoritarian, hierarchical, command-and-control field?

When you think about it, this community policing illustration is exactly that—it is an illustration of what is true and valid in every field of human behavior: People who are at the cutting edge of the chisel, where the tire meets the pavement, have to exercise influence with their customers, their clients, or whomever. They are the ones who really have to exercise leadership by building relationships of trust and becoming creative problem solvers.

The basic mission of Police is to PREVENT crime and disorder. The public are the police and the police are the public, and both share the same responsibility for community safety.

SIR ROBERT PEEL, FOUNDER OF MODERN POLICING

JOSHUA LAWRENCE CHAMBERLAIN

The annals of military history have no more inspiring story of a man with moral authority than that of Civil War hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, commander of the Union’s 20th Maine Company of volunteers. Chamberlain, a college professor at Bowdoin College, was granted a sabbatical leave from his teaching to answer Abraham Lincoln’s call for much-needed additional volunteers to the Union forces. A man of deep character and moral conviction, his letter to the governor of Maine was accepted, and Chamberlain was enlisted. Though he knew little of soldiering, he was quickly promoted up through the ranks.

Chamberlain is probably best known for his bravery and leadership on Little Round Top in the Battle of Gettysburg. His orders were to anchor the extreme left of the Union line and to refuse to allow the attacking Confederate forces to flank him. He and his troops held the line until, at last, his troops ran out of ammunition. Refusing to give way, he ordered the regiment to “fix bayonets.” In Chamberlain’s own words: At that crisis, I ordered the bayonet. The word was enough. It ran like fire along the line, from man to man, and rose into a shout, with which they sprang forward on the enemy, now not 30 yards away. The effect was surprising; many of the enemy’s first line threw down their arms and surrendered. An officer fired his pistol at my head with one hand, while he handed me his sword with the other. Holding fast by our right, and swinging forward our left, we made an extended “right wheel,” before which the enemy’s second line broke and fell back, fighting from tree to tree, many being captured, until we had swept the valley and cleared the front of nearly our entire brigade.

Many claim that it was this victory of raw courage on Little Round Top that turned the Battle of Gettysburg and the Civil War. Chamberlain was given the honor of receiving the arms of the first Confederate unit to surrender at Appomattox. By the end of the war he had been promoted to major general and was later presented with the Congressional Medal of Honor for his performance on Little Round Top.

Years later, in appreciation for all he had done, friends and former comrades-in-arms presented him with a gift—a magnificent stone gray stallion, dappled white. In characteristic humility and self-deprecation he graciously accepted the gift, but then added, “No sacrifice or service of mine requires any other reward than that which conscience gives to every man who does his duty.”