The Servant as Leader

The Servant as Leader may be one of the most influential business books ever published! But how does it apply to outsourcing? Creating a servant/leader mindset is essential to prevent what I call the outsourcing paradox—where you outsource the expert and then tell them how to do the work. It also prevents another common outsourcing ailment I call the Junkyard Dog Factor where a company outsourcing keeps a shadow organization that creates redundancies and limits the cost saving a company can get through outsourcing. Greenleaf’s basic message is simple: manage the business with the supplier as opposed to managing the… show more.

If you’re anything like me, you think you know what Servant Leadership means. It’s intuitive, people gravitate towards the term. But until last year, I hadn’t actually read the book where the term “Servant Leadership” came from. It’s a short book, more of a pamphlet really, coming in at only 64 pages.  I guarantee there are angles you hadn’t considered. For example, what responsibility do followers have in servant leadership? According to Greenleaf, when you follow a bad leader, you are responsible for the proliferation of bad leadership because a) you are sending a signal that to others that they… show more.