Category: Servant Leadership Communication (My book excerpts)

I receive humbling notes from former mentees thanking me for something I said to them. Sometimes I don’t recall saying exactly such things. They sound like something I might have said, but not precisely what I think I would have shared.

When we listen we often emphasize particular points in our own minds. We tend to note and elaborate on those thoughts that seem to best address our own situations. In this sense, human communication is somewhat idiosyncratic. Thirty people who attend the same meeting will pick up on points that are most important to each of them.

While this can lead to misunderstanding, it can also enhance our communication. Others can use our words to expand and improve upon what we have to say.

Note: This essay is excerpted from my book Communicate Like a True Leader: 30 Days of Life-Changing Wisdom, available from Amazon.

Recognizing this dynamic, I assume that others might be ready to receive more than what I strictly intend to say. In fact, what I have to say might stimulate in listeners significantly more understanding than what I think I have to offer.

In short, human communication is dialogue, not merely monologue. Even if the listener doesn’t say anything, I can assume that he is probably in dialogue with himself—thinking, reflecting, questioning and the like. He might even be getting more out of his own inner dialogue than I thought I was capable of sharing.

Robert Greenleaf, the founder of Servant Leadership, refers to the role of “spirit” in relationships. I believe that when we aim humbly to serve others through communication, we discover an expansive, creative reality that can enhance our communication. In this sense, to lead from within us is also to be led from outside of or beyond us. Where this communication-enhancing creativity comes from is a mystery. So “spirit” seems to be an appropriate term.

With such creativity comes a great irony: sometimes the more stringently we try to control our communication, the less communication we will experience. This is counterintuitive. We need to reserve space for the unexpected—both in our speaking and our listening.

Of course such unpredictable communication isn’t an excuse for sloppiness. As I suggested earlier, we are called to use the gift of communication to serve others excellently as well as compassionately. Yet if we work too hard at it we might miss out on the unexpected benefits, even beyond our apparent abilities. We have to give up some control to be open to greater creative possibilities. Controlling people are not the most effective—let alone the most joyful—communicators. They tend to squelch the creative spirit.

Reflection
Can you recall a time when communication transcended your expectations—when people received more from your intended message than what you imagined was possible? If not, are you truly open to communication beyond your own means of control?

—Dr. Q

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As a new professor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I was sitting in my campus office when the administrative assistant asked if I could take a call from a radio station in Zeeland.

Seconds later a program producer with an interesting accent invited me to a radio interview the following day. I accepted.

The next day the host came on the line to introduce me to his audience. I couldn’t fully understand him. His accent plus the static reduced intelligibility. He frustratingly asked me, “Do you know anything about . . . Zealand?”

“Of course,” I responded, “it’s just down the road. I’ve spoken in Zeeland a couple of times.” “Huh?” he wondered aloud. “Aren’t you in Michigan, in the USA?” “Right,” I confirmed. “Grand Rapids. About 20 miles from Zeeland.”

I had assumed that the program was broadcast on a nearby station in Zeeland, Michigan, when in fact it was a national broadcast on Radio New Zealand. What I interpreted as a Dutch accent from my own geographic area was a Kiwi dialect.

Note: This essay is excerpted from my book Communicate Like a True Leader: 30 Days of Life-Changing Wisdom, available from Amazon.

Miscommunication knows few bounds. The basic problem is that we assume that there will be shared understanding even when we bring different assumptions and life experiences to our interactions.

The most essential part of any definition of communication is shared understanding. Human communication is first of all the art of establishing shared understanding. To understand someone is to “stand under” that unique person, to humble one’s self to his or her understanding of reality.

Communication is not merely the “effect” that we have on each other. How you interpret me—how you are “affected” by my words—is not necessarily communication. If you don’t understand what I am actually intending to say, we failed to communicate. Such lack of shared understanding is miscommunication, not communication.

This is critically important because we humans are not called merely to affect one another. We are creatures of meaning, trust, and, at our best, shared understanding. Which is to say we are designed for community.

We don’t have to agree with one another in order to understand one another. Mature persons can agree to disagree even when they deeply understand each other.

Shared understanding can begin when we honestly accept one another’s invitations to engagement. We are on the way when we accept such invitations gratefully, listen openly, and converse respectfully. We thereby foster shared understanding—understanding of each other’s intended meanings.

When I began the radio interview I didn’t know who my audience really was. New Zealand was beyond my frame of reference. As I wrapped up the interview, I was sweating profusely. I had no idea how well the audience understood me. I could barely remember the conversation. I had been swimming anxiously in a sea of miscommunication. Ironically, the interview was about communication.

Reflection
Do you see communication as shared understanding or mere impact? Do you routinely aim for shared understanding in your everyday interactions?

—Dr. Q

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I got my first regular job at 16 years of age, assisting a 45-ish man who ran a family-owned pharmacy in Chicago. Jerry was the pharmacist and manager. He was also a friend to locals who came in to buy newspapers, talk politics, and share jokes.

In addition to cleaning and restocking shelves, I washed pharmaceutical pill bottles and removed the manufacturers’ labels so Jerry could reuse them to fill prescriptions. I spent Saturday mornings soaking bottles and scraping off labels.

After months of Saturdays I asked Jerry why he didn’t just buy new bottles. He suggested that my work served him, the business, customers, and society. Why load up landfills with more glass (there was no recycling)? He added that all human work impacts others.

The importance of what we did, Jerry explained, included the greater meaning of the work, not merely the skill involved, however seemingly menial. He said that much of his pharmacy work was pretty routine. In the bigger picture, though, he was actually keeping people healthy, and I was helping him help them.

I believe that we humans are called to be stewards or, as Robert K. Greenleaf put it, trustees. We are all called to be caretakers of the world we’ve inherited. We don’t ultimately “own” the world even though we do acquire parts of it to use and enjoy. To put it differently, we’re all entrepreneurs who serve others by creating additional worth out of the value that was here long before we were even born.

Moreover, we conduct our caretaking in and through communication. Jerry’s store depended on in-person, written, and telephone communication to serve customers, staff, and the broader community.

Caretaking has two aspects. The first is caring for others. This caring is excellence in action. We become skilled at whatever specifically we’re called to do, including communication. We listen well, speak carefully, write clearly, and persuade effectively as needed to serve others.

The second aspect of caretaking is caring about others—engaging our heart in our work, with compassion. A true professional needs to care about those she is serving.

Jerry was not just called to be a pharmacist. He cared for and about his customers and employees.

Note: This essay is excerpted from my book Communicate Like a True Leader: 30 Days of Life-Changing Wisdom, available from Amazon.

Every leader as caretaker-trustee must be a skilled and caring communicator. These two aspects of caretaking—excellence and compassion—are twin anchors for servant leadership. We learn through communication what they are and how to practice them.

At the time I was too new to the world of work to recognize how fortunate I was to learn caretaking from a true leader like Jerry. Twenty years after he closed the Chicago store and moved to California, I visited him there to thank him personally for caring for and about me. Thanks to Jerry, I became wiser, freer, healthier, and a more autonomous communicator.

Reflection
Do you have a deep sense of your calling as a caretaker? Do you need more skill (excellence) or heart (compassion)—or both? [See my related servant leadership communication video, below.]

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Some years ago I met with former Herman Miller CEO Max DePree to discuss communication. I humbly wanted to confer about his splendid definition of leadership in The Art of Leadership:

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor.”

I had concluded personally that DePree’s definition should begin with the right attitude: gratitude. Real leaders are grateful ones. They are a joy to follow. And they are more effective. So I asked DePree if he thought that maybe the attitude of gratitude should come before “defining reality” in his definition of leadership. I suggested that the amended definition of leadership begin something like this: “The first responsibility of a leader is to accept gratefully the call to serve others.” He quickly agreed. I was relieved. And grateful.

Note: This essay is excerpted from my book Communicate Like a True Leader: 30 Days of Life-Changing Wisdom, available from Amazon.

Why is such preliminary thankfulness important? Why not include gratitude just in the last part of DePree’s definition? Because gratitude gets to the basic demeanor of a servant-minded communicator. Being grateful is a heartfelt way of living and growing. It’s the soil from which the best communication grows. What should a leader give thanks for? Certainly for the opportunity to serve others. For a place and time and people to lead.

A leader should also be thankful for the gift of communication itself. We couldn’t lead or follow without it. We can give thanks for the many people who contributed to our own abilities to communicate. Consider the roles of grandparents and parents, siblings, teachers, colleagues, neighbors, book authors, and so on. To borrow from DePree, our debts are deep.

Finally, consider what the gift of communication has meant for our relationships. Because we can communicate (same root word as “commune”) with one another, we are not relegated to loneliness. We can play and work with others. We can share jokes and joys, trials and tragedies, hopes and dreams. We can encourage and forgive, plan and practice everything from weddings to strategy meetings. We can define leadership with others and then seek together to live out our definition in service of others. And we can revise the definition as we go along.

Communication is a spectacular gift that we inherit from generation to generation and from organization to organization—even from conversation to conversation. To be the kind of leader whose heart is bathed in gratitude is to accept the most fitting beginning for a daily life of service—giving thanks. We know this deep in our hearts. This is why we all seek, even unconsciously, to be around thankful persons. We sense they are grateful for good things, including us. We want to be like them.

So a servant leader communicates with a sense of what Robert K. Greenleaf, the founder of Servant Leadership, calls “awe and wonder.” The leader’s communication begins and ends with heart-opening gratitude. In fact, I believe that gratitude is the missing first chapter in books about leadership and communication [see my related video on servant leadership communication and gratitude, below].

Reflection
Does your communication reflect a grateful heart? Write down the names of two persons who passed along to you the gift of communication. Keep adding to the list as you review your notes in this book. Let your gratitude grow.

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current and forthcoming books. Thanks.

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