IN SERVICE TO ONE ANOTHER

Servant Leadership throughout an organization is a culture that provides the glue that holds the organizations together. While the culture of service in leadership exists the organization holds together, and when it is gone, the organization begins to dissipate and unravels. A critical element is servant leadership throughout the organization that exemplifies giving one's best for the sake of the team and organization, and when it is replaced by administrative bureaucratic management the danger of dissolution becomes very real. The laws governing the universe extend far beyond just the realm of science and physics; there are some universal laws that affect the dynamics of living creatures as well.

SERVANT LEADERSHIP by Robert K. Greenleaf (in The Leader's Companion: Insights on Leadership Through the Ages, 1995)

 "The idea of The Servant as Leader came out of reading Hermann Hesse's Journey to the East. In this story we see a band of men on a mythical journey… The central figure of the story is Leo who accompanies the party as a servant who does their menial chores, but who also sustains them with his spirit and his song. He is a person of extraordinary presence. All goes well until Leo disappears. Then the group falls into disarray and the journey is abandoned. They cannot make it without the servant Leo. The narrator, one of the party, after some years of wandering finds Leo and is taken into the Order that had sponsored the journey. There he discovers that Leo, whom he had known first as servant, was in fact the titular head of the Order, its guiding spirit, a great and noble leader." (p. 18-19)

"A fresh critical look is being taken at the issues of power and authority, and people are beginning to learn, however haltingly, to relate to one another in less coercive and more creatively supporting ways. 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 chose 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-let." (p. 20)

" 'One may long, as I do, for a gentler flame, a respite, a pause for musing. But perhaps there is no other peace for the artist than what he finds in the heat of combat. 'Every wall is a door.' Emerson correctly said. Let us not look for the door, and the way out, anywhere but in the wall against which we are living. Instead, let us seek the respite where it is - in the thick of battle. … Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope.' " (Albert Camus, p. 21-22).