With the concept of servant leadership gathering momentum, Bob Selden reviews a new book designed to dissect the philosophy and explain its benefits.
Title: Servant-Leadership Across Cultures: Harnessing the strength of the world’s most powerful leadership philosophy
Authors: Fons Trompenaars and Ed Voerman
Publisher: Infinite Ideas Limited, Oxford, 2009
Price: £20
Reviewer: Bob Selden
'Good managers' seek to help people win through teaching and coaching them to do their best. They listen to their people, praise them, support them, and redirect them when they deviate from their goals. They find out what their people need to be successful. Rather than focusing on self-interest, on what will please them. 'Good managers' are interested in making a difference in the lives of their people and, in the process, impacting the organisation for the better.
Replace 'good managers' with 'servant-leaders' and you have a direct quote from Ken Blanchard on servant-leadership. So, what is servant-leadership and how might it differ from 'good management'? I’ve read about servant-leadership for many years (the concept was first introduced by Bob Greanleaf in the 1960s) and have always found it hard to get a real handle on just what 'servant-leadership' as a concept or model is. So, the chance to review 'Servant-Leadership Across Cultures: Harnessing the strength of the world’s most powerful leadership philosophy' by Fons Trompenaars and Ed Voerman, was quite appealing.
Although the book focuses on managing cultural differences, the first part of the book does give background to and an explanation of, servant-leadership. The underpinning idea behind servant-leadership is that the leading and serving are two sides of the same coin.
A servant-leader is someone who has a strong wish to serve as well as a strong ability to lead and as the authors suggest “most importantly, is able to combine both in such a way that they strengthen each other positively.” As a behaviourist myself and despite the authors' best intentions, I still found it quite difficult to describe 'servant-leadership' – perhaps the description of servant-leadership as a 'movement' or 'philosophy' rather than a leadership model, is quite appropriate.
The second part of the book takes us through the seven dilemmas the authors have found that face many managers and shows how servant-leaders handle each. The use of these dilemmas, such as 'control versus passion' and 'short-term versus long-term' are very useful ways of showing what servant-leaders might do when faced with such challenges. Each chapter is preceded by a case study to put the dilemma into context and the chapter finishes with how the manager as servant-leader handled the situation. This provides the reader with his/her own thoughts about handling the situation, before reading the chapter.
All the dilemmas focus on differences within the workplace and within the one company, so this is an excellent way of looking at how to manage differences across cultures. Many of the chapters refer to the authors’ extensive research in the area of cultural differences. I was particularly impressed with their ability to tease out key organisational issues and how they might differ across cultures.
For example, in discussing the dilemma 'serving' versus 'leading' they asked respondents to choose between the following alternatives:
- The most important reason to have an organisational structure is so that everyone knows who is in charge of whom or,
- The most important reason to have an organisational structure is so that everyone knows how tasks are divided and coordinated
The percentage of people (by nationality) who selected '2' ranged from Venezuela at 44% to Denmark at 100%. Where does your country rank? You’ll have to buy the book to find out! This and similar research results, to my mind are worth the price of the book alone.
The third part of the book then explains how one might get started with servant-leadership. Titled 'Getting started with servant-leadership: a systematic approach' as the name suggests, is the time for implementation. Covering a mere 11 pages, I found this to be the least influential aspect of the book. I was expecting more 'how to' although this probably goes back to my original perplexity about the notion of "What is servant-leadership?"
The book is well written and translates well from the original Dutch. Native English speakers will notice the odd word, but will be impressed by both the straight forward language of the authors and their occasional use of humour and many metaphors to explain or enliven key points. Their understanding of cultural differences is very clear. From a trainer’s perspective, the seven dilemmas outlined by the authors could be ideally used in cross-cultural training for managers. Equally, managers and particularly those who have to manage cross-cultural, internationally mixed or dispersed teams, will find both the dilemmas and the case studies very useful learning.
Bob Selden is the author of 'What To Do When You Become The Boss' and can be contacted via http://www.whenyoubecometheboss.com
