Chapter One: Greenleaf

1. Chapter One: Greenleaf Some important points.

2. Greenleaf, p. 23 • But if one is servant, either leader or follower, one is always searching, listening, expecting that a better wheel for these times is in the making. Thus the servant is a visionary and sees beyond the obvious. A servant is NOT a manager – but is one who creates …

3. Greenleaf, p. 27 • The servant-Leader is servant first …It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. • Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or acquire material possessions. • …Other people’s highest priority needs are being serve.

4. Continued • Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? • And what is the effect on the least privileged in [that] society? • Will they benefit or at least not be deprived?

5. Greenleaf, p. 29 • I will go, come with me. • A leader initiates, provides the ideas and the structure, and takes the risk of failure along with the chance of success. • A leader says, “I will go; follow me!” while knowing that the path is uncertain… • What are you trying to do? • A leader always knows and can articulate it • What is the overarching purpose? • It is out of reach, something to strive for, to become. Andrea Del Sarto - Browning

6. Greenleaf, p. 30 • Listening and Understanding • Listen first. • Learn to listen. • Active listening • Do we really want to understand? Or do we just want to get the facts to give our perspective, our answer? • Saint Francis: • Lord, grant that I may not seek so much to be understood as to understand.

7. Greenleaf, p. 32 • Language • As a leader…one must hae facility in tempting the hearer into that leap of imagination that connects the verbal concept to the hearer’s own experience. • One of the arts of communicating is to say just enough to facilitate that leap. • Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saving too much.

8. Greenleaf, p. 33 • Acceptance and Empathy • Acceptance is receiving what is offered, with approbation, safisfaction or acquiescence. • Empathy is the imaginative projection of one’s own consciousness into another being. • The opposite of both is rejecting or refusing to hear…to throw out. • The servant always accepts and empathizes, never rejects. • …to be able to weld a team of such people by lifting them up to grow taller than they would otherwise be.

9. Greenleaf, p. 48 • Healing and Serving • Community – the importance of a lived experience within the community and the relations of that community