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
www.customercarenews.com
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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