These are troubling times for all of us. Several of us are perturbed by the pain and suffering that is going on. Where can we go for comfort? Where can we find solace? How can we comfort others?
You must have heard the saying “ You can’t live on love and fresh air alone”. The underlying assumption behind this saying is that they are the only two things that are available free. Let us look at it in the context of today. Newspapers and social media are full of heart wrenching stories of people gasping for oxygen, something that is supposed to be available freely in fresh air. The air pollution in Delhi, India, for quite a number of years have taught us that we cannot take fresh air for granted. COVID has just reaffirmed that. We cannot take fresh air for granted.
How about love? Is it free anymore? Is it available when we need it the most?
Whatever your answer is for this question, the good news is that each one of us can make an effort to make the answer positive for others. Yes, if we turn around the question to “Do we love freely anymore? Is love our first priority in life? “ The picture will change for sure.
I define Servant Leader as
“A Servant Leader is someone who invests in the life of another person to the extent that the other person becomes better, bigger, wiser, richer, healthier, wealthier, happier, more famous than the leader themselves.”
This should not be limited to formal leaders. This can be applied to each and everyone of us, immaterial of whether we hold a formal leadership position or not. Let me suggest a few practical things we can do to take our love to this level
- Stop chasing success and start pursuing Significance. I have written about this in an earlier blog .
Significance is when we use our success to add value to others. When we use our wisdom to lift up the foolish, when we spread our knowledge to educate the unlearned. When we use our wealth to help the poor, when we use our health to care for the sick, when we use our network to be able to help someone in need get the precious gift of an oxygenated bed when they most need it. If we just chase success alone, we will forget the people around us, and will be very busy achieving things one after another . but will not have time and inclination to use anyone that for someone else’s benefit. - Look for opportunity to lift someone else above you. In an earlier blog, I spoke about the little child who could not see the festivities around her till the time the father decided to lift her up above him.
There are a lot of souls around us today who need that uplifting. Smile at someone. Ask another person, how you can be helpful. Just lend a listening year to someone who needs to pour out their troubles. Mourn with someone who lost a loved one. Pray for them. Provide for them as much as you can. Don’t let distance and lockdowns hold you back. - Understand and practice the deeper meaning of forgiveness and grace. In my blog on Emotional Healing, I spoke about the true meaning of Grace.
Don’t get caught up in the prison of unforgiveness and entitlement. Let us learn to let go and be willing to give others a second chance (and a third chance and an umpteenth chance). We are all messed up. Let us cut some slack for others to make their mistakes and learn from them.
And if you are working professional, start by rewriting your job description. If your job description is all about results, and goals and projects, it is time to rewrite the same to include love for your employees/ team members in your Job description. In the podcast Key Mental Shifts for Servant Leadership, by Pete Mockaitis, available in LinkedIn Learning and lynda.com, the presenter describes a case study in Walt Disney Parks. As all of us are ware, Disney prides themselves in providing a magical experience to all their guests. They started getting complaints that the housekeeping staff was being rude or not responsive to several Guests. The analysis revealed an interesting fact. The housekeeping staff’s job description was to keep the park clean. They were focused on their job description to such an extent that when they saw a client throw trash all around it made them antagonistic to the guests. And if a guest who was throwing trash on the road, comes and asks the housekeeping staff for directions, the natural response is going to be, “I don’t know, I am just a janitor.” They are thinking inside, “why I should I help this person, he just made my job harder by throwing trash on the road”. Once the leadership realised this, they changed the job description of the house keeping staff as “To create happy guests, to contribute to the happiness of our guests. How do you do that? Well, you provide them with directions when they need it. You give a kind smiling face when they ask you questions” and by the way, as an additional duty you also keep the park clean. This simple but definite switch to the Job description made a world of difference to the way the housekeeping staff treated the guests.
The message is this. Change your job description to something that you can look forward to. Add love to your job description. Make the first sentence “ My job is to take care of the people I am entrusted with, to care for their wellbeing, to motivate them, to develop them, to help them grow and succeed ”. Don’t worry about the HR drafted job description that might remain in the HR systems. Go ahead and change the Job Description that you will live every working day of your life. I guarantee you, your approach to your work and job will change significantly and you will find a lot more fulfilment in your job. And it will lift up several others on a daily basis.
Make love your first priority. Other results will follow.
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Dr. Madana Kumar, PhD is the Servant Leadership Evangelist at Leadyne. You can connect with him here or contact him here
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