Servant Leadership saved me. Servant leadership means a lot to me. It is leadership in the first principles. I personally follow it. It saved “The army of God Gospel Outreach’’. It saved Daruwana Development Foundation.
The story of my life is rooted in the principles of servant leadership. It has changed me, it changed the way I lead my organizations, all of my relationships. I’ve had to rethink what being and acting as a servant leader looks like in a digital space. I leaned it the hard way.
Leaders Must Change First.
First, let’s bring forth the definition of servant leadership that I use the most.
Servant leadership is a philosophy and set of practices that enrich the lives of individuals, build better organizations, and ultimately create a more just and caring world. – Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership
Though my foundations have not been that of control and oppression of others, I certainly did so many things wrong. This philosophy is based on the belief that by serving others, not only will you strengthen businesses, but you can change the world. I believed in this but didn’t know how to have gone about it.
In my few years of this practice, I’ve come to recognize that this is not a popular style of leadership. I know this because when I began my own leadership transformation in 2014 I did it out of necessity. I embraced it more as a challenge for myself because I was in anxiety and frustrated due to my leadership responsibilities. After all, I had nothing to lose at that point—but everything to gain.
Yes, the resulting change was a mind shift imbibing and living this philosophy and this absolutely does inform the way I lead today. This leadership style has opened my eyes and forced me to look at my people—as leaders should.
My journey.
Admittedly, I was leading in my own way. I was planting churches, community development centers, and cooperative societies for rural people in North Central Nigeria. Then I suddenly noticed I was under pressure. The Churches and Community development centers were not self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing. So the pressure was too heavy on me. It was telling in my health and in my family. And worse more was, I didn’t know where the problem lay. Through my mind, several thoughts ran through. Was I working with the wrong people? We sometimes conclude this way. Was I working in closed communities? Was it the high level of illiteracy? Was it the geographical location? Was it the high level of poverty among the indigenous people? So many questions. I didn’t know where to begin, but I knew something had to change in order to preserve both me and the organization.
Then I undertook research from books and stumbled into the information that my leadership style was the error. Leadership style? Yes, it was. As I went further to study, I landed on the understanding that people, people, and people are the shoulders of self–sustaining communities, churches, organizations, or businesses enterprises.
I was not running people-inclusive organizations. I was more goal-oriented and not through the people. I almost killed myself. I was the sole leader. This understanding, as I would discover is the central theme of servant leadership.
Having discovered this, the next challenge was to let go of control and power. Should I share power and yet have it? Or should hold on to power and yet lose it? It was a dilemma. Take our course; “The Soul of leadership” https://courses.ddfoundations.org.
At this point, I became face to face with the ego as an enemy. But I studied more and more. Knowledge –Education is an instrument to changing any life. I didn’t change and let go. I decided to start acting selflessly. Now I lead with peace of mind. Though we had grown up traditionally that “greed or ego is good’ and up till now lead with such mindset, now we know better. In this digital age, we must lead differently. People-inclusion is a gateway to any entrepreneurial endeavor