The Blueprint of Exemplary Leadership: Introducing Our Servant Leader Series
We'll uncover the elements of what makes a leader inspirational—bravery, vision, and the power to build future leaders
So many of the odes we sing here at Good Government Files are the result of outstanding leadership. Good government happens through leaders with vision, courage, and skill. But we really haven’t done much of deep dive into what makes great leadership. That changes with Part 1 of our Servant Leader series.
We’ll cover several topics, including why bravery matters; what leaders need to understand about the future workforce; creating a winning work culture; building bridges to and investing in our future leaders; how to lead under intense scrutiny; how to lead so others will, too; and how to build trust.
First, let’s credit the source material. The inspiration comes from the Servant Leadership Conference I attended earlier this year. I’ll be pulling from many of the thought-provoking and inspiring presentations I heard from seasoned, successful local government leaders and other experts. Disclosure: The conference is put on by SGR, a company I do some occasional consulting with1.
Let’s start with one of the biggest problems facing government leaders today: It’s harder than ever to get stakeholders to agree on the same set of facts. Journalist and historian Anne Applebuam put it this way in her book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism.2
In many advanced democracies there is now no common debate, let alone a common narrative. People have always had different opinions. Now they have different facts. At the same time, in an information sphere without authorities--political, cultural, moral--and no trusted sources, there is no easy way to distinguish between conspiracy theories and true stories. False, partisan, and often deliberately misleading narratives now spread in digital wildfires, cascades of falsehood that move too fast for fact checkers to keep up. And even if they could, it no longer matters: a part of the public will never read or see fact-checking websites, and if they do they won't believe them.
Ron Holifield, a former city manager and CEO of SGR, hit on this point in the opening keynote for the conference, which focuses on local government. Ron put it a bit more bluntly.
“I am convinced that in the future, historians are going to look back and they won’t call this the dark ages. They will call this the stupid-and-proud-of-it ages,” he said. “... There are people in your community whose life is given meaning by sitting in their mother’s basement at 50 years old and being a keyboard warrior, cooking up insane stuff that he gets gullible people to believe. And a whole bunch of that is false and abusive stuff in your community.”
He also noted the abuse used to be directed solely at elected officials and top administrators. No more. I spoke with a county clerk at the conference who said so-called “sovereign citizens” will “sign” documents with drops of blood and hand them to her front-line staff. And the verbal abuse directed at her team — who take pride in delivering excellent customer service — can be just as disgusting.
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