Servant Leader Within: My Appreciation for Past Service and My
Resultant Legacy
There are
two people whom I can say went out of their way to be mentors to me
and left a lasting impression on me in terms of the way I conduct
myself in the professional sense.
The first
of them was a contractor I worked with in the United Kingdom. He was
a total mercenary. One of his favourite quotes was “The only
difference between me and the permanent guy is that I’m always
1 chapter ahead of them in the documentation”. Some people
remarked that this guy must have had some kind of photographic memory
because he could quote “best practice” literature in
meeting s and blow other peoples arguments out of the water. He also
grew in legend around the place as the guy who can write computer
code from memory and became the go to guy for software developers all
over the organisation. There is a warning in this however, in that
he also rubbed people up the wrong way and eventually left the
organisation because his contract was not renewed. He was also a bit
dysfunctional in his personal life, few friends and few meaningful
relationships outside of family. In the words of my manager “there
is no room for someone like him in this organisation again”.
With the benefit of hindsight I now understand that some types of
leader only work in some kinds of situations and I would have to say
that this guy was one of those! Why was he a servant leader to me?
Well I was a willing student I suppose. Initially I moved from one
department to another just so I could be in the proximity of this guy
while I learned the specialisation that he was doing. The idea was
that I would train up in this new technology so that I could bust a
move out of the organisation and go contracting again as soon as I
could. He just liked teaching people who were willing students I
guess. I think he also liked the fact that I was looking at the
contract market so he took pity on me a bit in order to show me the
ropes. The lessons learned from this guy were twofold; there is
never any risk of being out of work in the contract market if you
keep your skills up to date and an eye on the market. The second
lesson was that certification counts as an important way to
differentiate your CV from others. These are two things that I
soaked up straight away and started spending a lot of personal time
doing the exams and gaining the certifications. To be honest they
don’t make that much difference in terms of actual competence
in a particular role but they give you something interesting to talk
about in interviews. To a certain extent sitting the MBA program was
really about the same strategy, differentiation from the other CV’s
in the pile. It’s only recently that I have really begun to
understand how the process has changed me through self reflection and
broadening of the frames that I use when analysing a situation.
The second
guru who shaped my career was a chap who was another dysfunctional
and misunderstood genius, but he had one key difference: he was a
master relationship builder and player of politics. I have never met
anyone else who can play the social games of a large corporation and
who has a background in computer science. I suspect that his middle
class, educated English background might have something to do with
it. He could mix it up with computer geeks, was a sports fanatic and
could work the room at a cocktail party with total ease. I learned a
lot from him in terms of negotiation skills and meeting room
political strategies, in particular how to make some else in the room
feel uncomfortable. I think he might have had an interest in
psychology because he certainly knew how to take control of a
conversation. Some people have the voice of authority and the words
of reason that just bring a chaotic meeting back on track with one
short sentence. This leader taught me the generic strategies of
problem solving, taking the lead when a crisis hits and avoiding
being sent on wild goose chases or running around like a blue arsed
fly when others are falling apart. His structured troubleshooting
approach and its emphasis on problem definition is a benchmark
against which I now judge any problem manager or colleague. When
negotiating with a colleague of manager I use his approach of
presenting a single choice as an option that the person I’m
negotiating with feels was their idea. I also avoid being positional
about anything as that’s totally the wrong foot to start any
negotiation on. I’ll never be as good as this guy was but I’m
definitely keen to get better at this soft skills stuff. He was the
kind of chap that could meet someone for the first time and they
would give him their business card and say “if you are ever
looking for as job, call me” and mean it.
I don’t
like being a leader and as I said in the assignment last week I would
rather not. That being said I enjoy teaching people, much like the
first colleague whom I described. That’s about the only
service I provide anyone. I guess if I stretch it into the personal
as well as professional life, I am a partner, son in law, grandson
and cousin so I have other roles where I provide service without
expectation of reward but to be honest it’s not much of a
commitment as I barely see the rest of the family. It’s a bit
at odds with myself really because I have a lot of bizarre interests
in technical things so I’m always surfing around the internet
looking for tutorials on programming microcontroller system for
example, but I rarely put much back into the open source community by
teaching others. I have taught others who have shown an interest
when in the working environment but that’s more out of a sense
of obligation related to the role than as a person who really gives
of their own time to help others. I guess I’m very good at
putting excuses in front of myself as to why I don’t help out
others more or it could just be that a very self centred and
introspective person. That’s probably just another excuse!
The guts of it seems to be that I haven’t found something that
set’s afire the passion to be a leader to others, either as a
servant or a teacher or anything else. The amount of effort required
to go out of ones way and be a leader seems huge and daunting and I
never feel like I have any time to do it. I guess if I keep looking
then the passion will ignite and I will burn every waking moment
fuelling it with all the energy I have but until now I haven’t
come across anything that I really want to share with anyone else.
It’s not that my interests are peculiar to me; there are plenty
of other people out there who program microcontrollers in their spare
time (true but hard to believe). It’s just I’ve never
really felt the need to get to heavily involved in the community,
partly because I feel I sometimes need the illusion of a commitment
to get me to actually turn up to an event or participate in some way.
In terms
of how I intend to focus my commitment to service over the immediate
and long term future, I guess I won’t be. I’ve been in a
career that I’ve been unhappy with for a long time now, despite
the high points which were when I worked with the two people I
mentioned above. That was in 2004. The next step is all about me.
After the MBA is completed I intend to go back to University and
finish an undergraduate degree in Law. Maybe I will be able to find
time to teach others or volunteer while I do this but I really doubt
it. Even that is still up in the air a bit because I still have an
interest in electronics and technology but the lure of power is
rapidly overcoming that. It’s a shame I didn’t have the
maturity to stomach 4 years of undergraduate living when I was 18 as
it would have saved a rather large amount of time now. I guess
that’s one of the benefits of being younger is that it really
is all about you and your future. Now I have to make changes to
myself and to the others who depend on me to make this happen. A lot
more negotiation has to be done to get things in a state where I can
change. I guess the point of this is that I don’t feel that
there is going to be a lot of room for servant leadership for at
least the next 4 years. Even when I graduate and start work for a
law firm there will be a period of learning and I probably won’t
have a lot of spare capacity then either. I know I like giving back
to the community and my colleagues, I just don’t know how
that’s going to be possible so I’m making no plans to
deliver it at this stage.
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