Backwards thinking
(looking through the wrong end of the telescope): “Employees” serving “The Boss”. Right understanding The formal leader of a group serves the other members to help them achieve their full potential both in terms of performance and development. As a leader, how good can you be? We find out based on how well you can help people reach their potential. Serving Customers Ultimately, our organization exists to serve. If we don’t serve our customers’ needs there is no point for the company to exist. We all are servants. We are here to serve our customers. Serving FellowWorkers Some of us in the organization serve customers directly. The rest of us serve those who serve our customers. Supervisors and managers serve those who serve our customers. It’s funny that we think of those who serve the servants as having higher status than the servants. If those who serve the servants truly are humble in their service we rightly should honor them – however, that is not usually the way people in our society honor themselves from positions of power and authority. Part of a leader’s role is to teach others how to serve our customers. The best way is to lead by example. If our managers and supervisors truly serve those in the organization who serve the customers, they will provide living examples from which we all can learn how to serve our customers. Serving The Organization The organization is not a separate, individual entity of its own. “The Company” is nothing more than how we act when we are together to do this work. There are times when it is appropriate for us willingly to submit our own individual self-interest to that of the group. In so doing we serve “the group,” the organization, the company. We need to make sure that we do so in the interest of serving other individuals – whether our co-workers or our customers or the larger community. We need to be careful not to let the convenient fiction of the group identity become more important than real, actual, living persons.
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