Servant Leadership

Servant Leadership Kissing Up and Kicking Down Are Not Allowed The following is excerpted from the recently published book,

The Communicators: Leadership in the Age of Crisis by Richard S. Levick and Charles Slack.

Spring 2011

B

ment of all vital stakeholders.

“Servant leadership,” espoused by executives such

y the time a crisis occurs, it’s too late to ask

as James H. Blanchard, former chairman and CEO

in your mission. They either do or they don’t

Georgia, is a holistic strategy for doing just that. Some

your employees and customers to start believing

— and whether they do or don’t may well determine your chances for survival. Companies are thus well-advised to use

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their peacetimes wisely to fortify the confidence and commit-

of Synovus, a major bank holding company based in

15 years before the current financial crisis erupted, Blanchard sent a clear warning to every supervisor in the

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are gone.

Regardless of whether a manager was generating the

best numbers in the company or barely scraping by, Synovus would no longer tolerate their saying all the right things to

superiors only to return to their own departments and berate or abuse the staff.

“We call that saluting the flag and kicking the dog,”

Blanchard says. “We decided that people who were inclined to supervise like that just didn’t have a place in our company.”

Blanchard put his own credibility and reputation on

the line by making this announcement, not behind closed

doors at an executive retreat, but before the entire company.

“I remember standing up and saying, ‘if we don’t fulfill that

commitment to you as team members, you have no reason to believe anything I ever tell you.’”

Thus began the company’s formal experiment with ser-

vant leadership, a concept developed more than 40 years ago by philosopher Robert K. Greenleaf, who stressed that positions of authority carry obligations rather than entitlements.

Servant leadership defines the supervisory mission in

terms of helping subordinates succeed and achieve through appreciation and reinforcement, not intimidation. Instead

of focusing exclusively on correcting weaknesses (a losing proposition, in Blanchard’s view), leadership training courses

encourage supervisors to recognize and build on the strengths of their people.

At the CEO level, servant leadership is defined by the

in the top 20 of ABA

Journal’s

Banking “Top

Performers” and earned a spot on Fortune’s

annual

“Best Companies to

Work

for

Blanchard,

who

in

America.”

retired in 2006 as

Photo courtesy of Richard S. Levick, Esq.

company: treat your workers with respect and dignity or you

chairman

but remains on the

board,

has

received a number of prominent

leadership awards.

“If

doing

you’re

servant

leadership as just

Richard S. Levick, Esq.

another management style to get

more out of folks, it won’t wash,” he says. “But if you’re doing

it because you think it’s the right thing to do, it’s a win-win.

People give more of themselves for the good of the organization. Your productivity increases, and your customer satisfaction increases.”

Nobody, least of all James Blanchard, believes that servant

“attitude that ‘I am here at the pleasure of the board, I am

leadership or any other management philosophy by itself

ers, customers, and employees,’” Blanchard says. “‘I’m a

companies focused on short-term returns versus long-term

here to respond to my constituents and benefit shareholdcustodian.’”

In the months following Blanchard’s announcement,

many supervisors, including some highly intelligent and

could have prevented the current economic crisis. But it’s the principles and goals that pay the highest penalty when the economy goes bad.

In

an

age

successful performers, balked at the new regime. Some left

where public opin-

of employees and supervisors who remained is committed to

broken by a single

Synovus voluntarily; others were shown the door. The core principles that have become a guiding force at Synovus.

Synovus is not a self-realization workshop. It is a mul-

tibillion dollar business. It has serious fiscal responsibilities and it meets those responsibilities. “We demand a lot, and we

expect a lot from our employees, and we require excellence,” Blanchard says. “What we’re really saying is the old command and control type of supervision is not wanted here.”

ion can be made or event or statement

Servant leadership defines the supervisory mission in terms of helping subordinates succeed and achieve through appreciation and reinforcement, not intimidation.

going viral in the

social media, arrogant, self-entitled managers put the very principles of capitalism and freedom on trial. Blanchard, for one, believes the tenets of servant leadership may be our best hope to right that course.

Many other leaders who have never heard the term

“servant leadership” have already incorporated its philosophy

magazine’s “Top 100 Banks.” A year earlier, Synovus ranked

sible crises along the way. To be sure, the implications of

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Spring 2011

As it turns out, what’s good for people is good for busi-

ness. In 2008, Synovus was ranked number 15 on U.S. Banker

in dealing with employees and customers, and averted pos-

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servant leadership extend well beyond internal management

and speak to the ethics with which companies treat their markets.

For example, when Toro a few years back learned that

some older model ride-on lawnmowers might be subject to rolling over, then-CEO Ken Melrose directed the company to install expensive rollover protection systems free to any-

one who owned one of those models, regardless of how long they’d owned it or from whom they bought it.

“Wall Street was unhappy,” Melrose told MBA students

Photo courtesy of Richard S. Levick, Esq.

in a 2006 speech at Bethel University. But “we were doing

the right thing.” While the motive was humanitarian, it’s not

hard to understand that the cost of those systems is minimal in comparison with the potential damage that could be caused

when a consumer is tragically injured and a company appears not to care.

Melrose also began using servant leadership as Blanchard

did: internally, to remake the corporate culture. He began to act, and act dynamically, from the moment he took over Toro

as an ailing (many said dying) company in the early 1980s.

His first cost-cutting acts were to eliminate management perks such as company jets and big bonuses. Such actions sent

enterprise system, it takes a chink out of the armor. And that’s

Melrose was also better able to make the necessary job and

“I think very few executives, as a percentage of the total,

a clear message: I am here to serve the company. So armed,

have abused the privileges of the offices that they’ve held,”

It’s debatable

tions] have smudged everyone. The truth is that CEOs have

To be sure, the implications of servant leadership extend well beyond internal management and speak to the ethics with which companies treat their markets.

to

the

what

extent

majority

of

adds Blanchard. “The very few but very prominent [excepbeen so demonized that it will take years to recover.”

Whether you call it servant leadership or just good busi-

current corporate

ness practice, a population of CEOs with more servants and

reflects the views

“That kind of sensibility can restore reputations that have

leaders in the U.S. and strategies of a

James Blanchard and a Ken Melrose, or how many of them are just less flamboyant versions of Bernie Ebbers — less

flamboyant, but comparably appetitive, self-interested, and

fewer commanders may be our best hope, Blanchard believes. been damaged so badly in the last few years. I think that’s

good for the country. I know it’s good for the free enterprise system.” CCN

dangerous. The fraud Ebbers perpetrated led to a spectacular

Richard S. Levick, Esq., is the president and CEO of Levick

and its shareholders billions, and resulted in what was then

munications firm. He is the co-author of The Communicators:

corporate collapse in 2002 that ultimately cost WorldCom the largest bankruptcy in American history (along with a 25-year jail sentence for Ebbers).

“Every time we go through a crisis that involves fraud

or malfeasance, it not only damages the people and the

companies involved, but the entire system that has made us

the greatest, most affluent nation on the face of the earth,”

Spring 2011

where we are today.”

budget cuts to return Toro to profitability, without alienating rank and file employees.

Blanchard says. “Everything is fragile. When fire touches

wood, it burns. When corruption and deceit touch the free

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Richard S. Levick, Esq.,

Strategic Communications, a crisis and public affairs com-

Leadership in the Age of Crisis and Stop the Presses: The Crisis & Litigation PR Desk Reference, and writes for www.

bulletproofblog.com. Levick was honored in two consecutive

years (2009-2010) on the prestigious list of “The 100 Most Influential People in the Boardroom” by the NACD and Directorship magazine. Levick Strategic Communications is based in Washington, D.C. and can be reached at 202-9731300 or at www.levick.com.

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