Author: Ken Blanchard

What, Exactly, Is Servant Leadership?

/ Ken Blanchard / 4 Comments

At The Ken Blanchard Companies, most of our work in the past focused on leader behavior and how to improve leadership style and methods. We attempted to change leaders from the outside. But through the years we have become convinced that effective leadership starts with self perception—it’s an inside job. It is a question of the heart. It’s all about leadership character and intention. Why are you leading? Is it to serve or be served? Answering this question in a truthful way is so important, because you can’t fake being a servant leader. We believe that if leaders don’t get the heart part right, they simply won’t ever become servant leaders.

The most persistent barrier to being a servant leader is a heart motivated by self interest that looks at the world as a “give a little, take a lot” proposition. Leaders with hearts motivated by self interest put their own agenda, safety, status, and gratification ahead of others who are affected by their thoughts and actions.

In a sense, developing a “servant’s heart” is a lifelong journey. It is my belief that you finally become an adult when you realize that life is about what you give rather than what you get. The shift from self-serving leadership to leadership that serves others is motivated by a change in heart. Servant leadership is not just another management technique. It is a way of life for those with servant’s hearts.

When some people hear the phrase servant leadership, they associate it with “soft management”—they think you can’t lead and serve at the same time. Yet you can, if you understand that there are two kinds of leadership involved in servant leadership: strategic leadership and operational leadership.

Strategic leadership has to do with vision and direction. This is the leadership aspect of servant leadership. The responsibility for this visionary role falls to the hierarchical leadership. Kids look to their parents, players look to their coaches, and people look to their organizational leaders for direction.

Once people are clear on where they are going, the leader’s role shifts to a service mindset for the operational leadership task, which is all about implementation—the servant aspect of servant leadership. How do you make your vision happen?  In a traditional organization, all the energy in the organization moves up the hierarchical pyramid as people try to be responsive to their bosses instead of focusing their energy on meeting the needs of their customers. Bureaucracy rules, and policies and procedures carry the day. This creates unprepared and uncommitted customer contact people who are trying to protect themselves and it leaves customers uncared for at the bottom of the hierarchy. This scenario doesn’t do much to move the organization in the desired direction toward accomplishing a clear vision. Servant leaders, on the other hand, feel their role is to help people achieve their goals. To do that, the traditional hierarchical pyramid is theoretically turned upside down so that the frontline people, who are closest to the customers, are at the top. Now the frontline people are responsible—able to respond—to the needs of the customers. In this scenario, leaders serve and are responsive to their people’s needs, training and developing them to accomplish established goals and live according to the vision.

Servant leadership is not soft management; it is management that not only gets great results but also generates great human satisfaction.

If you are interested in learning more about Servant Leadership, I will be speaking at the Servant Leadership Institute Winter Conference on February 1st-3rd in San Diego. For more information, or to buy tickets, please visit their website at http://sli2011winterconference.eventbrite.com/. See you there!

What’s Your New Year’s Resolution?

/ Ken Blanchard / 2 Comments

It’s getting to be about that time when people talk about New Year’s resolutions. What do you want to do differently in 2011? What would you like to be different in your life a year from now?

Just a couple of suggestions on New Year’s Resolutions: Don’t make too many of them. I’ve known some people who say, “This year I’m going to lose weight, exercise more, stop drinking, cut down on the amount of meat I eat,” and so forth, and they don’t even want to get up in the morning—it’s too overwhelming! So pick one, maybe two things that you’re going to focus on.

Several years ago, Bob Lorber and I wrote a book called Putting the One Minute Manager to Work. We talked about having a PRICE project. I like using that model for my New Year’s resolutions.

P is for pinpoint. What is the thing you’d like to do? Is it lose weight, is it exercise more? Identify what you want to work on and be specific.

R is for record. What is your present level of performance in that area? Get on the scale if you want to lose weight, or write down your present level of exercise so you have baseline data. Then with that, you can compare it with where you want to go, which involves the next step:

I is for involve. Gather all the key people in your life who can really help you and see if you can set a realistic goal. That’s the difference between what you’ve recorded, where you are now, and where you’d like to go. See what kind of help you can get from this group because it’s hard to stick to resolutions and you’re probably going to need a little help. What are they going to do to cheer you on? What are they going to do to hold you accountable? Plan it out and get agreement on your goal or goals.

C stands for coach. That means getting underway with your resolution—getting the coaching you need and the cheerleading, the supporting, the redirection. Let other people help to keep you in line. As I say, if you could do it by yourself, you would.

E stands for evaluate. That’s the end of the time period when you have achieved your goal, or moved toward your goal, and you look back and evaluate how you did. What could you have done differently? What went well? Any forward progression toward your resolution is worth celebrating. Track your progress and plan your future strategies. What will you pinpoint next?

So think about what’s going to be different next year. What are you going to be smiling about next December? Take care and have a terrific 2011!

Keep Your To-Do List in Perspective

/ Ken Blanchard / 1 Comment

This is the time of year when a lot of people get stressed. You know—running around, making sure they have every present bought and everything done for holiday and new years parties and all that. The holidays can turn into a burden rather than a blessing. This is supposed to be the season of joy and love, not of trouble and hassle. Stress is a major problem this time of year because people have so many “to do” lists. They forget why they’re doing it and get too much into the doing. Too often this time of year we’re human doings rather than human beings. I just want you to check yourself, as I need to check myself as I run around and try to get things done at the end of the year, that I’m a human being, not a human doing.  It doesn’t mean that you can’t get things done and crossed off your list—just don’t make “list accomplishment” the goal of this holiday season.

Make LOVE the goal of the season. Reach out to everyone you talk to and wish them the greatest holiday—the greatest Christmas—the greatest New Year. Just tell them you care about them. Maybe you couldn’t find right present for someone. Perhaps you should sit down and write that person a note about how much you care about them and let them know you’ll send them something after the holidays. Sometimes during this time of year, I like to go through my phone directory and call people I haven’t talked to in a while, and just tell them I care about them. That, to me, is a joyful thing to do this time of year. So what can you do to make this a joyous time, rather than a hassled time?

Have a wonderful Christmas day. Life is a very special occasion if you keep your “to do” list in perspective.

Managing Through the Holidays

/ Ken Blanchard / 2 Comments

The holiday season presents some different challenges for leaders.  Here is some advice I’ve found can help you to get the most out of this special time.

Get in the holiday spirit.  It’s important for leaders to get into the holiday spirit.  It’s a wonderful time of the year when people want to feel good and connected to each other.  It is a time to capitalize on team building and allow workers to get to know each other better. Yet often managers end up acting like Scrooge by being too busy or demanding of themselves and of their people.  Bosses can really ruin the holidays by being grumpy, under stress and too demanding.  Try to be a little more lenient, supportive and willing to “go with the flow” in appreciating the time you have and the people you have to work with.

Focus on what has to be done. It’s important during the holidays to be clear with everybody on their key goals.  What are the significant things that really have to get done during the holiday season to keep business running as usual?  It’s good to write down these goals so that people are better able to work harder earlier in the season if they are going to be less focused later on.  This is especially true if, for your business, the holiday season is one of the busiest time of the year.

Be flexible with employees. Be more flexible in terms of the hours your people work, depending on their needs.  Is there a way they can have a couple of hours off so they can get some of their shopping done and make the time up later?  A lot of people have family and friends fly in and would love to have flexible work hours to accommodate them.  How could the company help employees save time?  For example, at our company, we have people fill out a form that allows them to mail their packages from our company.

Avoid negative news. Don’t use the holiday season to give employees negative news.  It is not a time of the year to catch people doing things wrong, nor it is a time to accent the negative.  Instead, do your best to redirect employees without being punitive.  Save more substantive performance issues for after the new year.  And don’t turn what should be good news into bad news by poor timing.  For example, if you are planning to give employees extra days off between Christmas and New Year’s Day, tell them far enough in advance so that they can make plans for that time.  Otherwise, they might end up at home watching television and griping about you.

Be sensitive to different religions. Be sensitive to those who don’t celebrate Christmas.  You might set aside some time when people could share information about their religious or cultural celebrations.  For example, one of our Jewish employees had people who wanted to find out more about the meaning of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights celebration, meet him for lunch.

Be creative about celebrating the season. Your celebration doesn’t have to be lavish for it to be effective.  You might want to do an activity rather than hosting a party where everyone just sits around and drinks.  It might even allow for more bonding to do something like caroling that allows for a shared experience away from the office.  Another fun group activity that we’ve done is to take the time for our work group to read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol together, giving each employee a role to read.  Activities such as these can help you avoid getting into the position where you have to worry about serving alcohol to people and having them drive home.

Whenever possible, include families in holiday activities.  We had an artist come to our company one year during the holidays to teach everybody how to paint landscapes.  There were four sessions and everyone could bring their spouses, kids, and parents.  The artist dressed everybody up in French berets and artist aprons.  At the end of the activity she touched up the pictures and then we had them framed.  It was really a lot of fun.

Have fun with celebrations. Think of fun ways to celebrate the season.  I love those parties where everyone buys a three-to-five dollar gift, numbers the gift, and then people pick numbers and open the gifts one at a time.  The person opening the gift has the option of keeping what they open or trading it for one of the already opened gifts. That can turn into a pretty lively time! You can also have people exchange funny cards that they have either bought or made.  You could even set somebody up to be a “Secret Santa,” leaving anonymous gifts for random employees.

Make the spirit last all year long. A few years ago, after the holiday season had ended, several of our employees at The Ken Blanchard Companies asked, “Why does the spirit have to end at the end of the year?”  From that question sprang an employee-run program called “Blanchard for Others” which sponsors local charities and hosts all kinds of fundraising events through the year. Each year they raise tens of thousands of dollars for charity.  We now have the holiday spirit year round.

So get in the holiday spirit this year!  Go with the flow, lighten up, and enjoy this special time with your employees and with your families.

The Power of Gratitude

/ Ken Blanchard / 2 Comments

I have a long-time friend named Walter Green who just wrote a book called This Is the Moment! Walter, in his 70th year, decided he would make a list of the people who really impacted his life at different stages. He had to locate some he had lost contact with, but over the year he traveled the country and met with 44 people to thank them and tell them how important they were to his life. I think the book’s real message is the enormous power of gratitude. Walter wrote this book to motivate all of us.

Are there people in your life who have really made a difference? Have you reached out to thank them? Have you thanked your parents, friends, mentors—perhaps a teacher, professor, or colleague who had an impact on your life? Don’t wait to reach out. This is the moment.

Yesterday, just one day after being inspired by Walter’s book, I had the perfect opportunity to put his idea into action. Every morning, our newspaper delivery person drives through our oval driveway and drops off the paper right at our front door so we don’t have to go to the end of the driveway to retrieve it. I’ve always wanted to thank her for this courtesy, and yesterday morning I saw her through the window just as she was getting out of the car to deliver the paper. I met her at the front door and said, “I just want to tell you how fabulous and caring you are, and what a difference you make, and how much we appreciate what you do,” and I gave her a little money. Her face just lit up and she almost had tears in her eyes as she gave me a hug. She said, “You’re really special,” and I said, “I’m not special. You are.”

This morning, tucked into the newspaper, I found a note from her. On the outside of the envelope was written: “To a great and loyal customer.”  This is so consistent with what Blanchard research has found:  If you hire passionate people, they want to go out and take care of your customers. Then the customers become loyal and get excited about the company and tell others, and it keeps going back and forth—and that’s what makes a great organization.

On the card inside it said: “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You made my day yesterday. I was flying high on a cloud of appreciation. Your recognition of my service to you has revived me. Thank you for taking the time to think about me.”  Then she signed her name and phone number and wrote: “Please call if you ever have a bad or poor quality paper delivered.” Isn’t that amazing?  It made me feel good to read her note.

I hope this motivates you to reach out and thank people who have done special things for you—people who have made a difference in your life, whether big or small.  If we all took the time to do this, think of the difference we could make in the lives of others. So reach out and say “thank you.” It’s such an easy way to make another person feel special, and it is guaranteed to boost your spirits, too.  Have a great week.