The Serving Leader: A Practical Guide
The 6 module solution equips leaders with step-by-step tools and guidance to implement the powerful actions described in the best selling book The Serving Leader. Each module presents a different action and includes video case studies that take participants inside a real organization where the leadership team has successfully implemented that action. Participants assess the human and business impact of these key behaviors through real world case examples as they collaborate throughout the session to progressively build practical, detailed action plans for implementing Serving Leader actions in their own organizations.
Module 1 – Assessment and Orientation
The knowledge gained in this module prepares each leader to personalize the leadership development experience. We start by asking participants to read the Serving Leader book and becoming familiar with the Five Serving Leader Actions. Each leader completes either a full Serving Leader Self Assessment or the 360’ Assessment online prior to attending the workshop. In the first workshop, each person receives their assessment report and uses the results to set specific leadership development goals.
Module 2 – Run to Great Purpose
Run to Great Purpose addresses the first priority of leadership: purpose. The Serving Leader ensures that everyone understands the greater purpose served by their work: Why does this work matter?” “Why is it imperative that we do our best?” In this module, leaders will work with their existing vision statement, or craft a new one. Participants then make plans to focus their people’s attention on the great purpose, to create and sustain urgency for it, and to directly connect everyone’s daily work to the Great Purpose.
Module 3 – Upend the Pyramid
Upend the Pyramid looks at the foundation of Serving Leadership: service. Serving Leaders upend conventional leadership thinking as they set aside ego and put themselves at the bottom of the pyramid. Leaders work in this module to establish plans that put “serving” at the center of the business, serving customers, employees, and suppliers. They learn how to empower their people, by delegating both authority and responsibility. And they gain tools to foster a climate of innovation, where mistakes fuel learning, growth and excellence.
Module 4 – Raise the Bar
Raise the Bar focuses on the most challenging aspect of organizational leadership: accountability. In this module, participants sort out the values that matter most to their organizations, translate those values into daily operational discipline, and learn how to build a thriving culture based on the values. Serving Leaders hold high expectations, and measure key values-aligned performance measures that stimulate people’s creative ingenuity and call them to ever-higher levels of accountability for their work and results.
Module 5 – Blaze the Trail
Blaze the Trail highlights the day to day discipline of great leadership: focus. “What does our organization do uniquely well that differentiates us from our competitors and enables us to work with the greatest effectiveness?” Serving Leaders are responsible to train and educate the team on what it takes to be successful, and then to teach their team how to provide that unique differentiator, and how to remain focused upon it. In this module, leaders also learn how to identify and remove their barriers to success, and to eliminate wasted activities that do not contribute to their unique value proposition.
Module 6 – Build On Strengths
Build on Strengths brings to light a neglected source of workforce performance: strengths. In this module, leaders utilize tools to identify and align people’s strengths with the team’s responsibilities, building a strategy for continued growth and full engagement in their work. Serving Leaders recognize that engagement and teamwork arise from diversely talented colleagues who passionately contribute their individual gifts and talents to the larger good of the team and the enterprise.
