The Law of Serving Others

Gravity is an ever-present force in our lives that defines our human boundaries. We rarely think about this powerful and constant tether. It quietly governs almost every aspect of daily living. We feel the pull of gravity, but we rarely acknowledge it and yet, without gravity’s presence we would cease to exist. The law of gravity is a great metaphor for a law in business that is rarely discussed-- the law of serving others. Service is as important to business as gravity is to our lives. The service we perform for others affects every aspect of our lives. Without performing service to others, great businesses would cease to exist. The very foundation of business is to provide needed services to people. Serving people and finding ways to make lives and communities better is at the heart of business.

Why is it so important to understand this law? Why is service so necessary? How is this meaningful to each business? Often, business is characterized as self-promoting and is routinely portrayed as merely a vehicle to enrich the stakeholders. Sometimes, self-centered greed is depicted as the very heart of business. This is because many in business don’t understand the law of serving others and because these same leaders only think inward. They damage not only the business they work for but eventually their future as well. Most businesses begin with their customers in mind. They focus on servicing customers as their number one priority as they start to build. In the early stages of development businesses create something novel that enriches the lives of their customers, people, peers, and leaders. Predictably, businesses will find success because of the time spent living the law of serving others, but as the organization grows many leaders become disconnected with the service their company provides.

The challenges associated with growth can change leaders. Leaders become less focused on their original intent of serving others and because of this, significant distractions surface. Often these distractions are statistics and numbers. When numbers or statistics become the primary goal and become the priority and focus, the law of serving others fades, businesses become self-serving and the descent begins. Just as we can escape gravity momentarily by the boost of a rocket, or the lift of an engine; eventually self-centered greed will pull us back into ruin if we do not adhere to the law of serving others.

The law of serving others is not only the law of serving the customer.  When we think of serving others in business, we often think the customer is the only priority, but this is not the case. Businesses are built upon many people with diverse roles; each of these are deserving of service. Communities, peers, leaders, as well as the customer are crucial and important. All are essential and all need to be served. Let’s break down each of these groups and discuss how we can use the law of serving others to help propel our businesses, our communities, and the world forward.

Serve Your Customer

           The customer is the reason business exists. Sam Walton famously said “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” Without a customer there is no reason to show up to work. They should be the focus for your entire organization. The mission of your organization should be primarily to find ways to make the lives of your customers better than before your encounter.

The best way to see how a company views its own customers is by the level of appreciation they have for their customers. A good test to gauge an organization’s appreciation of their customers is to ask two simple questions. The first is, “Should we appreciate EVERY SINGLE customer that we encounter?” Generally, when asking this question most people inherently know that they should answer this question with a resounding, “Yes!” They understand the simple fact that without customers nothing else matters. The second question is “DO we appreciate EVERY SINGLE customer that we encounter?” This question is generally met with the same yes, until there is greater reflection. Often you will hear people in an organization refer to tough customers as people they didn’t appreciate, or people that didn’t treat them well.  They will refer to them as “bad” customers. Some will even go out of their way to avoid serving them. If we should appreciate every single customer, why don’t we? It is because we put our comfort above the service of others. Bill gates said it best, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”  Each customer should be appreciated, even the most difficult ones, and even those that might not be treating your people right. These individuals give businesses opportunities to learn how to better serve customers in the future.     

Serve your Peers

           A business is filled with many individuals that come together to meet a common objective and to unitedly serve customers. In order to do this effectively we all have to serve the team first. The famous football coach Vince Lombardi said, “Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” This means being individually committed to the group effort in the overall mission of the business. This is demonstrated by placing our own goals and aspirations secondary to those of the organization.

To be committed to the group effort means that we place the needs of our peers and the needs of the organization ahead of our own. This type of commitment may seem counter intuitive. We go to work to provide for ourselves and our family. Why should we subjugate our needs before the needs of our peers and organization? Because when everyone on the team does this, we are collectively concerned about individual needs as well. This means that when you are concerned about team member’s needs, they will also be concerned about yours. When a team builds enough trust to have this type of commitment--this is when we see relationship and team synergy. Team synergy is when people working together produce something larger than if team members worked on the same task individually. When we work together 1+1 does not equal 2 but equals 5. When people come together, they share each other’s talents and they create something far greater than if they worked alone. As Helen Keller put it “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”

We were meant to work in communities and groups. Humans evolved in tribes to work together and provide for each other. When we fully commit to working together and putting the team before our own needs, that is when the group’s best works are performed, and we eat the same piece of a now larger pie. An African Proverb describes this well, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”   

Serve your People

           Your people are your greatest asset. Regardless of what product you offer, your employees’ ability to offer that product to your customers in a way that benefits their lives is your business. A leader is only a leader when she has followers. Leadership is only happening when people are willing to follow the leader and execute the vision she sets out. The moment leaders think of themselves before their people is the moment a leader stops being a leader. To effectively lead people, you must serve them. As John Maxwell said, “True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not to enrich the leader.” Leadership is about helping all followers achieve what they want to achieve. This means the burden of the law of serving others is heavier on leadership than on any other individual because her role is to serve all employees. Gravity pulls on all objects equally, however as mass increases there is increased gravity. Just like the law of gravity increases pressure as mass increases, the law of serving others increases with the increase in leadership responsibility. The more leadership responsibility you have the more you should focus on serving others and not yourself. As the writer Patrick Lencioni challenged “I invite everyone to choose forgiveness rather than division, teamwork over personal ambition.”

           Leaders serve their team by giving them consistency, vision, challenge, and accountability. These four areas are key to being an effective leader. You serve your followers by effectively sharing and imbedding these 4 attributes within the team.

Consistency builds trust in teams. When you are consistent as a leader people will be able to know what is expected of them and be able to build consistent results from consistent leadership. Often leaders try to chase every new idea and strategy out there. That can mean that we try to change things up too frequently in pursuit of newer and greater. Although change is not bad and can be important, constant change is hard to deal with for an employee. Building consistency helps people understand how to be effective and how to improve their skills. Change should happen but it should be intentional. Change is done to benefit the team and should be done with purpose after consistent habits have been perfected.   

Vision is the second key that every leader must demonstrate. Giving your employees a vision of the future, opportunity, growth, and purpose of the organization helps your people connect with you as a leader and helps them connect intimately with the business. People desire purpose in their work. By giving them vision as a leader you are connecting them to the larger purpose of the organization and making their work more meaningful and more impactful. Once a vision is shared, it needs to be reinforced and addressed regularly.

Challenging your people initially feels like it is not serving them but serving you as a leader. This could not be further from the truth. Challenges give people growth and confidence. When one is a given a challenge that is just beyond their comfort zone, it urges an individual toward something they might never have done. When the challenge is accomplished, it brings with it a new sense of pride for having reached and stretched, as well as a greater sense of confidence in doing what was commonly achieved before the challenge. Individuals are now able to do what they have always done as well as something much harder, something that was previously just out of their reach. This confidence is how people grow and how leaders help them to achieve new levels of productivity and success. 

Accountability is the last key to leadership. Many leaders don’t know how to effectively hold people accountable. The first step to effectively holding someone accountable is to have the mindset that you are holding them accountable for their benefit, for their growth, and for their success. This is the law of serving others mindset. Some leaders hold people accountable to make their own worth increase for self-serving reasons. To effectively hold someone accountable it needs to be done with the intention of serving that person and helping them achieve. When you approach it from this mindset, not only will the employee feel it, but you will be able to help them reach greater success. As Patrick Lencioni said, “Failing to hold someone accountable is ultimately an act of selfishness.” 

Serve your Leadership

In any organization or group of people there are leaders and there are followers. One is not greater than the other because to thrive, they require each other. Good followers make the best leaders because they understand what it means to follow and have empathy for their people. Most of us are not leaders in every aspect of our lives. We are leaders in some areas of our life and in other roles we are followers. Understanding how to be an effective follower is understanding how to effectively serve leadership. Serving the leader is really serving the greater organization. The leader represents the organization. When you are serving the leader, you are serving the organization. To effectively serve your leadership it requires commitment, vulnerability, loyalty, and the ability to execute.

Commitment is the first attribute of a good follower because in order to serve the greater organization you need to be committed to its’ purpose. Commitment is buy-in. When you buy into the vision of the leader, and the organization, you begin to understand and embrace the role you play. When all team members collectively buy-in and focus on the same goal, synergy is generated and will make the goals more obtainable. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Commitment is what transforms a promise into a reality.”

Vulnerability is the ability to open yourself up to your leader and expose your weaknesses, doubts, misunderstanding, confusion, or feelings to allow you to receive the help you need to progress. The researcher Brene Brown said “Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our most accurate measure of courage.” When we are vulnerable with leadership, we are serving them by allowing them to get to the root of an issue and thus help a follower to move forward. This does not mean that every issue needs to be adjusted, but it does mean that you should seek for true understanding and be open to criticism or feedback. By being vulnerable you are opening yourself to growth and opportunity to serve the organization and leadership better. 

Loyalty to leadership is probably the greatest way to serve leadership. Loyalty is having your leader’s back even though at times you might not understand the full picture. People often profess loyalty but when a test approaches their loyalty quickly wanes. An example of this is when a leader makes a decision that you might not fully agree with. Often this person will then do the work but in the back of their head will think “when this fails, I will say I told you so.” This means the person is more committed to being right than to the success of the organization and loyalty to the leader. Loyalty is the ability to say, “I had the opportunity to disagree with this decision but now that the decision has been made, I will execute as if it were my own decision.” When we are loyal to leadership, we are fulfilling the commitment we have to the organization. 

The ability of a follower to execute for their leader is the last key attribute of a good follower. To fully live the law of serving others you must be able to execute your position with limited guidance. Extra help and mentoring are needed and important as an employee learns their position. However, this should only be for a limited period of time. Eventually, every follower needs to be able to execute with high effectiveness at their position with diminishing guidance. The greater the ability of the follower to do this, the greater service they are providing the leader and the organization as a whole. 

“Only a life lived in the service to others is worth living.” - Albert Einstein. The Law of Serving Others is the underlying force behind all businesses and organizations. Everything we do should be to help those around us have a happier and fuller life. The moment we forget the law of serving others is the moment we will lose momentum and eventually the organization will fall. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Let service lift your business, your team, your community, your leaders and yourself to greater and more meaningful and sustainable success.