Servant-leader Best Test (Or How to Analysis the Walk of
the Talker)
Previously in this series, we reviewed Todd Teske's tales of his ascent to the servant leader throne while serving as CEO of Briggs and Stratton Corporation. To really figure out where leaders like Teske fall on the leadership
ladder, Robert Greenleaf in his wisdom proposed a test, which is often referred
to as “the best test“ of the servant-leader.
The test could be used to determine whether a leader was leader-first or
servant-first. Here is a repeat of the test
that comes from Greenleaf’s THE SERVANT AS LEADER essay:
The difference manifests itself in
the care taken by the servant first to make sure that other people’s highest
priority needs are being served. The
best test, and most difficult to administer, is this: Do those served grow as persons? 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 society; will they benefit, or, at least, not be further
deprived?
In all the talks I have heard or books I have read, from
self-proclaimed servant leader CEO-types, I do not recall the talkers sharing
any “best test” results backing up their claims. One explanation for a lack of test results
might be as Greenleaf pointed – the difficulty in administering the test. There may also be some confusion on the part of the CEO’s on
whether they should only apply the test to their private lives by focusing on
the warm and tender love they have for their families, and ignoring the test
when it comes to understanding the impacts of the tough love tactics they need
to apply when running a profit driven corporation whose primary test is limited
to shareholder value.
Despite the legal protections offered the corporations in granting the institution virtual “personhood” status and at the
same time shielding the real people who actually run the corporation (or profit
from it) from responsibility for the “corporate” actions, Greenleaf did not
recommend a separate easier to pass test for such folks when it came to the
servant-leader status. He did however recommend
a restructuring of the corporate hierarchy in which the CEO be replaced by a
first-among-equals type of board of peers.
This idea was highlighted in the second of Greenleaf’s “servant-essays”
titled THE INSTITUTION AS SERVANT.
In the section headed “Organization: Some Flaws in the Concept of the Single
Chief” he clarified that “To be a lone chief atop a pyramid is abnormal and corrupting.” He goes on to point out many reasons why the
lone wolf corporate CEO does not make a good leader, which I summarize as the pyramid
structure isolates the chief from the reality of what is going on at the bottom
of the pyramid. This unbalanced power
structure results in a top-down one-way dominated communication, no matter how
hard the CEO tries to listen to the soft distorted echoes from below that might
somehow reach the high tower that holds the ears of the CEO.
In the end, the biggest difficulty I see in administering
the best-test to the CEO-led corporation is in accepting the reality of the
answers and what those answers would lead the administrator to conclude about
the outcomes of the practices of the CEO-led institution as a whole. For I believe that it is the structure of the
institution (which meets the specifications of those who benefit the most from
such a design), which determines the outcomes, and not who the leader is or what
leadership style he or she professes to follow.
For as someone once said power corrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely, at least a long as power is doled out to a few foolish leaders, who
are unable or unwilling to hear or see what is happening below them.
When your world is defined by the blinders of shareholder
value, despite what your mission may say, awareness on other impacts of the
corporate-leadership style are not possible.
And I would argue that CEO’s and the Corporations they lead would fail
the best-test with flying colors every time they took it. In other words, the CEO’s have mastered the
fine art of talking the talk of servant leadership, but they are unable to walk
the walk when it comes to passing the best test.
Since Corporations like to hide behind their personhood
status when it comes to responsibility, I believe it is more meaningful to
apply Greenleaf’s “best test” to the Corporate-Leadership “person” than the
leadership style of the figurehead CEO and his family oriented life guided by
love-leadership, who seem to come and go with the changing tide or the ups and
downs of the market. That leads me to PartIV of this topic where I will attempt to apply the best-test as best as I can
to the walk of the corporate-person of Briggs and Stratton Corporation, as led by
its Chief Executive Officer Todd Teske, which is easier said than done.
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