Servant Leadership is clearly emerging as a modern trend in leadership and I've received several questions about how this applies to the corporate world.  Here are a few thoughts - by no means complete.

For a long time, the mantra in the corporate world, at least in corporate America, has been:  Take care of the shareholders first, take care of the products or services next, and finally, if anything is left over, take care of the people (employees, team members, etc).

Supposed that order were to be completely reversed:  Take care of the people (employees & team members), take care of the products & services, and finally, take care of the shareholders.  What would happen?

I think that if we really followed the servant leadership principals for our team members and employees, they would be much more motivated to voluntarily take care of our products and services.  If the quality of products and services improved tremendously, it would seem that the customer response would improve - they would buy more - and, in turn, the shareholders and investors would be very satisfied.

Because of all the outsourcing, many employees feel like they are not really part of an organization.  They have no feelings of loyalty toward their company, because there is no loyalty shown toward them.  This may be an extreme view, but it is expressed by many of the people I talk with at most of the corporations I have the opportunity to visit.

Yes, there are medical programs, 401K's, training and other benefits, but the bottom line is that in many companies today, the predominant feeling is that no one really cares about the employees as individuals.

As leaders of a company, organization or team, one of the best things we can do today is create the feeling of reciprocity between the organization and the individuals.  We all know that there is no more guarantee of life long employment with a company, but at least we can fulfill part of our responsibility as leaders by making the individual contributors understand how they are part of the team any how their contributions are valuable.

If that happens, I think, in the end, the shareholders would experience the gain, as well.

Click here to e-mail Stan Levanduski