Clarity First: How Smart Leaders and Organizations Achieve Outstanding Performance
McGraw-Hill Education
Since the dawn of time, animals and humans have sorted each other into two groups: leaders and followers. This is true in every situation where two or more people gather; there will always be a leader and a follower. Throughout human history, many different styles of leadership exist-form transactional to transformational styles. Transactional leaders require a transaction; an employee (follower) performs a task while the employer (leader) gives them a paycheck. While transactional types are useful, however, this style is rarely sustainable. transactional leadership does very little to make people want leadership style themselves. This in turn has a limiting effect on the positive growth of the community. This book explores the topic of transformational leadership style. More specifically, this book is about servant leadership, or leading from behind. This style of leadership can positively change people and communities for the better as the leader urges their followers and supports them in a quest to do better for themselves; this then make the communities people live in better as well. Because servant leadership aims to better others, this model is much more sustainable for the long term and perpetuates it own growth as servant leaders continually mentor the next generation of leaders to build communities of listening, empathy, healing, and internal/external awareness. The servant-leader works to persuade others to want to be better, not coerce them. A servant-leader knows more input is better than none and allows others to conceptualize and plan the processes of a project. the servant-leader uses their prior knowledge and the lessons heard from others to predict how their decisions will positively or negatively affect their followers and their communities. A servant-leader takes responsibility for their actions and that of their followers to ensure the care and survival, the stewardship of their followers, the organizations, and their communities., Servant-leadership demands a commitment to the growth of people and communities. The servant-leader is never satisfied with the status quo and is always working to make people, communities, and themselves better.
