Servant Leadership: Serve to Be Great

Films are so powerful in telling stories via visuals and narratives. They create change by telling stories that reach the heart and inspire action from within.

Recently, my friends and I attended a documentary film screening of CHASING CORAL at New York City because of Victoria Orlowski, a friend from work. Her son Jeff Orlowski is the young director of CHASING CORAL and CHASING ICE (2014 Emmy Award Winner). We are super proud of him!

Today, I would like to share with you (to state the obvious) some of his awesome project/servant leadership!

• First of all, Jeff listened to Richard Vevers regarding the “Third Global Coral Bleaching” event and had the foresight to make the critical decision to start the project.
• I love Richard’s favorite quote: “With a small motivated team, there is almost nothing that cannot be achieved.” Agile mindset!
• Jeff had brought together scientists, filmmakers and engineers who work expertly together with TRUST for the same goals.
• There was no mention of passion in the film, but we witnessed it throughout. They inspired a shared vision.
• The team was cool under pressure when the first set of filming camera failed.
• The empathy and competence (technical expertise) were evident by the extreme images and narratives: coral stunning beauty beyond words and coral “death” beyond imagination.
• There are a lot of creativity and innovation in the film under Jeff's directorship! Do you know that Jeff did not major in film making? They have "invented" the deep sea camera to capture the images as warranted. They were able to connect with best of the best and be fast learners in challenging scenarios, but shine through out the ordeal in simplifying the most complex phenomena and become the perfect translator of the complex science to the world.
• Project leadership in problem solving and decision-making is crucial. Hats off to Jeff for his strong leadership when he made the tough call to move on to the coral-bleaching site when they could not rely on technology due to many constraints.
• Kudos to Jeff and his friend Zack for their stewardship and commitment to work hard despite harsh conditions!
• Jeff and his team crowd-sourced from the globe and built the community that contributed to the film and its success.
• I am absolutely impressed and inspired by the Corals transformation and stress response (in order not to spoil the fun, need to keep it in suspense for you to experience it yourself :-)
• Nature and human resiliency are truly amazing!
• New projects that started at the end of the film shared the power of healing and gave us hope and optimism to move on and work towards a better tomorrow.

Mentors are very powerful in our lives and in our leadership journey. I learned from Victoria that Dr. Jane Goodall had a great influence on Jeff. It started when Jeff attended one of Dr. Goodall speaking event while he was in high school and he chose Anthropology major in college because of her. She is one of many mentors in Jeff's creative journey.

Dr. Jane Goodall devotes her life to the chimps and she is one of the instructors for MASTERCLASS. Dr. Goodall demonstrated and taught us Love and Compassion always. Empathy is critical to observe behaviors and to help us know the right questions to ask. Her unwavering teaching is all about Hope, how human brains solve problems, the resilience of the nature and our indelible human spirit. It is very touching to see the chimps embrace Jane. It is Love! She pointed out that the difference between humans and chimps is our sophisticated language and we are encouraged to use it well!

I now understand that Jeff drew his strength from his mentors as well as his Mom and family and the community. Jeff also shared during his Q&A that he simply does not use disposable plastics. We all can make a simple change every single day in our lives that would have immense impact to our environments.

Suzan, Nelson, Lucy, Victoria and Jeff Orlowski (who took the selfie)

CHASING CORAL is a film directed by Jeff Orlowski. It was a 3 1/2 year project, filmed with 500+ hours underwater, included footage from over 30 countries and was made with the support of over 500 people around the world.

Coral and Chimpanzees: Their project leaders told us amazing life stories and taught us incredible lessons! Now, it is up to us to make simple changes every day that will have long lasting impact. The decision is ours!

FYI – Film Review (CHASING CORAL will be available via Netflix on 7/14/17)

http://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/chasing-coral-review-sundance-1201979770/

Have you come across a Chinese idiom ”野人獻曝 “ Yěrén xiàn pù from Song during the Warring Period of China (around 400 BC)? The literal translation was “A peasant farmer wishes to present to the emperor the greatest benefit of the sun (the offer: when the sun shines on our backs keeps us warm and comfortable during the winter season)” It was obviously from the farmer’s perspective, not knowing that the emperor had a fur coat and was well provided for in the grand palace :-). This farmer’s naive realization from real life experiences then transcends the idiom into an expression of “providing a humble commonly-known small contribution to the elite”. With deep sincerity, this is what encouraged me to share with you today. I do treasure every moment when life is integrated and in harmony. All the best wishes for carrying out your goals with great results, and much success throughout the New Year and many more!

My first share is Daniel Goleman’s The Focused Leader for staying fit:

Daniel Goleman developed the five components of “emotional intelligence” and his 1995 book of the same title popularized the term and brought EQ to the bestseller’s list. We all can use a little more emotional intelligence to increase our wellbeing and our success. I highlight the Relationship Management as it touches upon the Inspirational Leadership, Developing Others, and Influence, being a Change Catalyst, Conflict Management, Building Bonds, and Teamwork & Collaboration while Social Awareness encompasses Empathy, Organizational Awareness and Service Orientation.

In this 2013 article at Harvard Business Review, Goleman discussed the three modes of attention as focusing on self, focusing on others and focusing on the wider world (similar to the Chinese classics “The Great Learning”: the progression to create harmony in the world. “禮記大學”：格物、致知、誠意、正心、修身、齊家、治國、平天下). Goleman stated “Every leader needs to cultivate this triad of awareness, in abundance and in the proper balance, because a failure to focus inwards leaves you rudderless, a failure to focus on others renders you clueless, and a failure to focus outward may leave you blindsided.”   

Goleman further elaborated "the Empathy Triad" in focusing on others as it is more than just a single attribute. They are: Cognitive empathy - the ability to understand another person's perspective; Emotional empathy - the ability to feel what someone else feels; Empathic concern - the ability to sense what another person needs from you.

Goleman concludes, "A focused leader is not the person concentrating on the three most important priorities of the year, or the most brilliant systems thinker, or the one most in tune with the corporate culture. Focused leaders can command the full range of their own attention: They are in touch with their inner feelings, they can control their impulses, they are aware of how others see them, they understand what others need from them, they can week out distractions and also allow their minds to roam widely, free of preconceptions."

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to focus when and where we need our skills and competence the most for leadership effectiveness? The world needs more focused leaders. It all takes practice and diligence. Let’s continue the journey and keep going!

My second share is the 38 ways yoga keeps fit:

We need to be willing to exercise our brain with the attention and intent and staying fit emotionally as well as physically for the whole body. This leads to my sharing of the 38 ways yoga improves health: a personal experience and research from Timothy McCall, MD. This is the most comprehensive list I have come across. Besides healing and building strength, yoga helps us better serve others.

Maybe it will inspire us to spring into action. Take the 30-day challenge. No matter what kind of sports or exercises you enjoy, simply keep it up and do it regularly with friends or with smiles. Life is better when we stay fit and in harmony. I am very thankful. It will be a beautiful and fantastic year! Namaste!

Culturally, women have been educated to serve. At least in my generation this has been that way.

From little kids, our games have to do with the care of others. When they give us dolls that we pretend are our children, we play to feed them, dress them, take care of them.

When we play to be a teacher, we develop our protection and care for our fictional or even, sometimes real students.

In my case, I was fortunate to have many siblings, and the students of my games were flesh and blood. My younger siblings were the victims of my first practices in teaching. And, maybe I was a good teacher, or maybe they were very clever, but the truth is that they learned very well and very fast.

And not only in games were women influenced to service to others. Girls also had to help Mom in the housework, help Mom to serve the table, and be on the lookout for everything Dad and brothers needed.

That is to say that we have very much incorporated service to others as part of our "being woman".

I do not want to judge whether this is good or bad.

I do not have enough knowledge to know if we do good or bad in continuing to give dolls to our own daughters and let them play as a teacher.

What I do want to rescue, is that women who grew up in that environment, are naturally prepared to serve.

And, as a result, female leadership has a much to do with servant leadership.

Women leaders often look out for other people, care about their well-being, what they need, and how they can help themselves grow.

Many authors assign to women the characteristics of being more sociable, with a greater tendency for cooperation, inclusion and care of people, forming teams that look like families.

We know that it was Robert K. Greenleaf, who in the 1970s coined the term "servant leader" - helpful leadership or service leadership, inspired by the book "Journey to the East" by Herman Hesse, where a group of travelers Travel and take a servant to perform the less important tasks. The interesting thing is that when the servant leaves them, they cannot continue. Greenleaf finds in this novel that the leadership of the journey was exercised by the servant, in silence, and from his tasks of service to others, he was the true leader of the group.

As stated on the Center for Servant Leadership- Robert K. Greenleaf website, "The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead... ".

From the above, I think we can say that in general women leaders naturally develop a style of servant leadership as a result of our training of women by women.

To conclude, I would like to recall a phrase from a great woman leader, a servant leader par excellence, Mother Teresa of Calcutta:

"He who does not live to serve, does not serve to live”.

In a complex and ever changing environment, would you trust someone who's answer is a definite "I know" or someone who said "I don't know" with a degree of certainty? Be a thinker. Ask "Why?"!

In an ideal world when everything is known, traditional Project Management (waterfall in the field of software development) and Command & Control authoritative style organizations may work (in the low trust and low ownership environment) for a while. Now, let's qualify that: everything is relative and it truly depends deeply on the experiences of the team, the objectives and the results one wishes to obtain.

Above the mundane, I advocate building The Agile Culture, Leading through Trust and Ownership (a book I highly recommended), practice principle based learning and distributed leadership (as in servant leadership, lead without a title and with self-organizing teams of professionals). The choice to serve and to lead is not something we do; it is an expression of our being.

I will share with you the valuable Trust-Ownership Model from The Agile Culture book mentioned above by Pollyanna Pixton, Paul Gibson and Niel Kickolaisen. Amazing things happen when you lead as an enabler, not manage as a controller.

Allow me to end with a quote from Lao-Tzu.

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”

― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Let's see the world as a mirror reflection of ourselves and start with self-compassion, value diverse opinions, and as Skip Prichard had it: "Leading with Others In Mind".

May our world be full of magical moments when all involved treasure the experiences and become better servant leaders because of us!

Namaste.

This is my first blog post in this forum and I am very excited to be part of this community with my fellow classmates from Project Management Institute Leadership Institute Master Class (LIMC) 2015 class. 

I would like to share with everyone in PM community some of my perspectives, thoughts, and experiences in my ongoing leadership journey. 

I believe becoming a better leader begins with you and thus you need to Know Thyself.  What are you doing to develop your leadership skills?  There’s a famous quote from Vince Lombardi that says:

“Leaders aren’t born, they are made.  And they are made just like anything else, through hard work.  And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.” - Vince Lombardi

You need to work on yourself to become a better leader.  Learn from past leaders and from their experiences.  What kind of leader do you want to be?  An admired leader, perhaps?  Well, it doesn’t happen overnight.

Know Thyself:

I believe that if you want to become a better leader, you need to, at some point, conduct an assessment of yourself on who you are, how you are viewed by others around you, and where and how you want to walk your leadership journey.  Whether this is done personally or through programs your work/community organization offers, you need to conduct a reality check on yourself to understand your baseline and where you are in leadership journey so that you can continue to lead with strengths while working on areas for improvements to become a better leader.

Have you spent time assessing yourself to find out what you are doing well and what areas you can improve on to become a more effective leader?

Leadership Philosophy:

With that said, I believe building your leadership skills and style with the Servant Leadership philosophy as the base foundation to your leadership style(s) will provide a more meaningful and rewarding experience not only to you as a leader but also to those you lead in your organization. 

Learn:

I really like the quote from Harold Geneen that says “Leadership cannot really be taught.  It can only be learned.”  What I got out of this quote is that you have to practice it, experience it, and learn from it.  Simply hearing about it from someone or reading about it isn’t enough. 

If you want to know more about being a good leader and developing your leadership skills, there’s a lot of information on the internet as well as books, articles, and seminars for you to read and hear about and gain knowledge on them.  But just because you read and know about them does not make you a better leader.  You have to practice it, learn from your own experiences, fine tune what works best for you, embed it into the fabric of who you are as a person and become that better person/leader.  You can’t pretend to be a good leader.  You have to be genuine about what you say & what you do; otherwise, people will see right through you.

Make Mistakes and Learn from It:

There are many quotes and comments from famous people about making mistakes.  One of my favorite on making mistakes is by Albert Einstein and it says “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”  Fear of making mistakes should NOT prevent us from trying something that we want to do.  Making mistakes, actually, isn’t a bad thing because you learn a lot from them.

Everyone makes mistakes.  The difference between those who benefit from making a mistake and those who do not are:

• Those who are able to learn from their mistakes and not make them again learn a valuable lesson.

• Those who cannot see the positive side of “life lesson” will be either discouraged or make the same mistakes over and over again.

As a leader, when we make a mistake, we must first own it, have a positive view of it and learn from it.  This will help us become wiser and build our wisdom.  So we should not be discouraged by the mistakes we make.  Hopefully, you are not making mistakes all the time in every turn you take.  If so, you will need to reassess yourself and consider looking into “Know Thyself” and make necessary adjustments. 

Practice:

Practice your leadership skills.  To improve on it, you must practice it.  One of the best places that you can hone your leadership skills and also serve the project management community, at the same time, is by joining your local PMI Chapter and serving as a volunteer.  You will have an opportunity not only to meet new people and network, you will also have exposure to opportunities that allow you to lead and practice your leadership skills, in addition to all the fun and rewarding experiences volunteering will bring to you.

The last thing I would like to mention is that a few weeks ago, I went to see a movie “The Martian” starring Matt Damon.  There were many funny and great quotes from the movie; however, the one that was most memorable to me was the message toward the end of the movie when Matt Damon talked about solving problems one after another and not giving up and if you solve enough problems, you get to go home and not die in Mars.

Do your homework to succeed and solve problems.  Don't be discouraged.  Don’t give up even if you fail.  Keep trying.  At least you are not on Mars so you won’t die. :)   Since you are on Earth, you will build wisdom from mistakes you make.  Experiences will empower you and make you a better leader/person.

On my next blog, I am going to talk about building trust and being trustworthy and why I think it is so very important in everything I do as I walk my leadership journey.