Servant Leadership

I will start by religious reference and quote a verse from the Bible, how Jesus described a leader. I do not know what other religious books say about leadership and would be interested to know.

Mark 10:41-45
“Now when the other ten heard this, they became angry with James and John. Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions use their authority over them. But it is not this way among you. Instead whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”

After reading this verse, our leaders come to my mind and I realise most of them are not servant leaders. I will talk about Kenyan leaders because I know them better and will give examples of Church leaders and political leaders, some even profess to be Christians and attend Church every Sunday, but do not portray this servant leadership that Jesus talked about. Many Church leaders are some of the worst examples of leaders, they preach water and drink wine, instead of being servant leaders they are so filled by their self-importance and forget their duty as advised by Christ. Church leadership, which used to be a calling, has now changed to an employment opportunity. Some Church leaders look at themselves as CEO and even brag about it.

Our political leaders are not any better, they look at themselves as the most importance members of the society, that they forget they should be servants of people who elected them. In other words they are like our employees, they forget that if we decided not to vote for them, they would not be leaders. Most of them are very humble when begging for votes like now, but change after they get the positions they want.

They go to an extent of insulting their employers like Chris talked about on his Kumekucha blog;

“Anybody who has been employed for any length of time knows the golden rule; you never, ever, ever lose your temper with your employer. The minute you do, it is just a matter of time before the sack comes. But you can be sure that it will come. Your employer will of course look for some other excuse to get rid of you, but it will all have started with your tantrum or fit of temper.

The same rule applies to any politician.” Read more

I also came across this interesting Servant Leadership blog by Robert Greenleaf that talks about this subject, the blog description says. "Servant-leadership begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve.......Read more here