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Gonzaga University

GONZAGA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PROFESSIONAL STUDIES HONORS WORLD’S FOREMOST SERVANT-LEADERSHIP SCHOLAR LARRY C. SPEARS

SPOKANE, Wash. – Larry C. Spears, the world’s foremost scholar in the field of servant leadership, was appointed as the Gonzaga University School of Professional Studies’ inaugural Servant Leadership Scholar, effective Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010. Read the Full Press Release.

Gonzaga University Servant-Leadership Programs

International Journal of Servant Leadership
http://www.gonzaga.edu/academics/colleges-and-schools/School-of-Professional-Studies/Degrees-Programs/PhD-Studies/Doctoral-Community-Partners/International-Journal-of-Servant-Leadership/About.asp

The journal reflects the ideals of educating the whole person, living a life of personal courage and moral discernment, and striving to be a person for others in order to help heal the heart of humanity. The journal is founded on Greenleaf's notion that the true test of a servant-leader is that those around the servant-leader become more healthy, more wise, more free, more autonomous, and better able themselves to become servants; and the least privileged of society are benefited or at least not further deprived.

Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership
https://online.gonzaga.edu/masters-in-organizational-leadership

The Master’s in Organizational Leadership is an interdisciplinary, online leadership degree that incorporates knowledge from the social sciences, communication field, arts, humanities, and business, into a transformational leadership curriculum. Designed for aspiring leaders in corporate, government, not-for-profit, or community organizations, Gonzaga’s innovative online masters in leadership will equip you with the tools necessary to lead in any organization. Program typically takes two years to complete, and requires a 3-day residency on campus.

Read these essays online:

Forward

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Essays (As Series Editor)

Series 2, The Servant Leadership Series
The Spears Center (2008-present)

 

What can Hunter-Gatherers Teach Us About Servant-Leadership?/21 (2013)

Download Hunter Gatherers Now


A Servant Leader Meditation/20 (2012)

Download Meditations Now

 

The Promised Land/19 (2012)

Download The Promised Land Now

Heart of Giving/18 (2011)

Download the Heart of Giving Now

Myers Briggs and Servant Leadership
Myers-Briggs & Servant-Leadership/17 (2010)
READ NOW		 Seekers Anonymous
Seekers Anonymous/16 (2010)
READ NOW

Why Scanlon Matters
Why Scanlon
Matters/15
(2009)
READ NOW

 

 

Savoring Life
Savoring/14
(2009)
READ NOW

Holistic 13
Holistic/13
(2008)
READ NOW

Dateline NBC 

Can humility, faith be good for business?
Business management model catching on with companies
Stone Phillips- Dateline NBC  By Stone Phillips NBC News
Updated: 6:23 p.m. ET Feb. 27, 2004

Every time you open the newspaper these days, it seems somewhere, some corporate executive is under fire for unethical or even criminal wrongdoing. But now there is a movement in America that insists arrogance, greed and selfishness don't have to be the hallmarks of business. It's a model of business management that's catching on with corporations today, called servant-leadership. Can humility and faith be good for business? Was Jesus the ultimate CEO?

Larry Spears: I think the classic image for me that embodies servant leadership would be that of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. For me that is the best visual showing servant leadership in practice.

It’s an image nearly 2,000 years old and a message that true leaders are servants first. It's an idea that's finding new disciples in corporate America.

Stone Phillips: How many corporate bosses in America today are washing the feet of their employees?

Spears: Well, I don't know of any who are literally washing the feet of employees. On the other hand, I do know of a number of corporate bosses who are increasingly trying to support their employees through other means.

Larry Spears is president and CEO of the Greenleaf Center, a worldwide non-profit organization headquartered in Indianapolis. It is named after Robert Greenleaf, a former AT&T executive, and Quaker, who challenged the pyramid model of business management with one based on sacrifice and service by those at the top. Though Greenleaf's inspiration came mostly from his experience in the business world, Spears says the idea of servant-leadership can be found in many religions.

Spears: We have at the Greenleaf Center members and customers who are Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, you name the faith background, and there is somebody who is, in fact, a sincere practicing servant leader. I think what servant leadership has done in some ways is to bring a language that's helping to unite what can sometimes be different and difficult relations between people of different faith or secular backgrounds.

Greenleaf's original essay, "The Servant as Leader, written in 1970, has now been translated into nine languages, most recently Arabic.

Spears: Robert Greenleaf's key message is that one should be, as much as possible, a servant to others, that that is the fundamental way in which we can improve the quality of caring within society, within organizations and in relationships between people.

Phillips: What kind of qualities are you talking about?

Spears: They're things like an emphasis on listening to others, getting the ideas of others with whom they work. The use of persuasion within organizations.

Phillips: As opposed to bossing people around?

Spears: Correct.

Phillips: And if you can't persuade everybody?

Spears: Well, as you get larger as an organization, it probably becomes less and less likely that you can get everybody on board.

Phillips: And what does the servant-leader do in that case?

Spears: What we've seen is that time and time again, if you have made the effort to get as many people as possible on board, even those who may not have been persuaded of a particular decision, find it easier, and have greater trust in the leadership qualities of those who are running the company.

Phillips: So, the medicine goes down a little easier if you've made that attempt?

Spears: That's right.

Phillips: So, good listening, trying to persuade, as opposed to coerce, when it comes to decision making. What else?

Spears: Well, another characteristic is an emphasis on the growth of people.

Phillips: To advance not just within the company, but as people?

Spears: That's right.

They aren't exactly the qualities we associate with the corporate leaders who've been making headlines lately, accused of blatant self-interest and greed. But Spears says a growing number of businesses are drawing from the servant-leader model, including Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, the Men's Warehouse, TDIndustries, and Vanguard Investment Group.

John Bogle (Vanguard): I call servant-leadership as much as anything else, the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have others do onto you. I look at CEOs out there, probably I was this way a little myself, thinking they are the big cheese, they are what's important. But in the course of my business career I think arrogance took a back seat to humility. And my appreciation of the people that do the hard work of the company, those that we would call the servants perhaps, the people who get out of bed in the morning and do the world's work are the most valuable asset a company can have. So it's not only an idealistic strategy, it's a great business strategy. It really works, what can I say?

Phillips: You can be competitive with this kind of a leadership model?

Spears: Absolutely. There's a growing body of studies that are being published now, and those studies have shown that in fact those companies do as well as or better than their closest competitors.

In fact, on Fortune magazine's list of the top 100 companies to work for, more than 20 have sought guidance from the Greenleaf Center.

Spears: What we're trying to encourage through servant leadership is showing your caring side in the work place. Someone who is truly loving and caring at home with their family, with friends, neighbors, they have that capacity to bring that to the work place. And servant-leadership sort of challenges people to be brave and courageous, and to bring ideas like friendship and perhaps even love to the work place.

Phillips: The courage not just to be caring, but to be loving.

Spears: That's right. The word 'love' is something you rarely hear in the daily workings of most organizations, but in servant-led organizations you, in fact, can hear that.

Phillips: Some leaders might be concerned that if they adopt this model, this servant as leader, that they may be perceived as weak.

Spears: In my belief, servant-leadership is anything than weak. In fact, it takes a toughness and a strength of character because you are, in fact, making commitment not just to the bottom line financially but to the bottom line when it comes to people.

How's the philosophy put into practice? At TD Industries in Dallas, a company that installs heating and air conditioning systems, employees are called "partners, with special perks for none and equal benefits for all -- including the opportunity to train for different jobs. Sheet metal workers learn to be plumbers, plumbers train to be electricians. Executives say workers gain more job security and the company gains flexibility.

Phillips: So how would a servant leader handle what Donald Trump has to do every week on The Apprentice? Tell somebody, "You're fired." In your model of servant leadership?

Spears: I'm not even sure how to answer that question. [laughter]

Phillips: I'm not sure Donald would want you to. [laughter] I mean, he's pretty blunt about it. He hears. He listens. And then he fires them.

Spears: Well, it's hard to know, based upon the viewing of a TV show, how much time and energy has gone in, on his part, to working with an employee or an intern before firing them. I would say that if truthfulness or bluntness is not handed out in equal measure with love for that employee, that it isn't really servant-leadership. They go hand-in-hand.

Of course, Donald Trump's performance on "The Apprentice" is just that, a performance. Spears says the reality of firing someone is a test for servant-leaders.

Spears: There's a lot of pain involved in that sort of decision for a servant-leader.

Empathy, humility, self-sacrifice. Those are the marks of a true servant-leader. According to Spears, recent examples include Jimmy Carter and South African religious leader Desmond Tutu. Spears also points to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Phillips: I take it Vince Lombardi would not be an example of a servant-leader. And yet a lot of people would say, I would have loved being on his team, those Green Bay Packers. As tough as he was, now that's a leader.

Spears: Actually, what I've read of Lombardi suggests to me that, in fact, he was a very complicated man. And at some level was, in fact, a servant-leader.

Phillips: Tough, demanding Vince Lombardi? A servant-leader?

Spears: The way that I think Vince Lombardi exhibited servant-leadership was a real emphasis on his teams and the people who made up his teams.

Phillips: I mean this is a guy who was pretty much a dictator on his team.

Spears: Perhaps, but where servant-leadership I think did come into play was through his encouragement of each individual player to be the very best they could be.

Phillips: Personal growth.

Spears: Personal growth.

Phillips: And he cared about them. Tough, but he cared.

Spears: I believe he did.

Phillips: To become a servant-leader, to bring this to your company, to your school, whatever it might be, is a leap of faith required?

Spears: I believe it is taking on this dual commitment to people and to the financial bottom line and doing it extraordinarily well. So, I do disagree with the idea that servant-leadership is a soft concept. In fact, I think it takes a real toughness of spirit and commitment for people to take it on.

Phillips: And some faith?

Spears: And some faith in people.

Spears says anyone can be a servant-leader. All you need is the desire to serve others and the courage to seize opportunities to lead. They've been among us through all of history, in all cultures and all religions.

Spears: Jesus is often pointed to as sort of the classic servant-leader. He served others and sought to do so through countless encounters with people during the course of his life.

Phillips: Being willing to give his life on the cross, in service of others, kind of the ultimate example of this.

Spears: I think it is the ultimate example.

Phillips: It sends a powerful, uplifting message to the troops, if you will. What happens when that kind of a message gets sent and received?

Spears: While leaders aren't literally being put upon crosses these days, there are difficult times, with difficult problems that almost every organization goes through. And in that sense, certainly there are great challenges and sacrifices that get made in the modern work place. The message and feeling that comes to recipients of that sort of sacrifice is most often one of gratitude, and of love.

Transcript and images © 2004 MSNBC Interactive

Spokane, WA and Indianapolis, IN--Larry C. Spears, the world’s foremost scholar in the field of servant leadership, was appointed as the Gonzaga University School of Professional Studies’ inaugural Servant Leadership Scholar, effective Tuesday, Aug. 24.

Spears has been affiliated in multiple ways with Gonzaga University and its many leadership programs for the past three years, teaching undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students. He has illumined the life and work of Robert K. Greenleaf, the founder of servant-leadership, by publishing hundreds of articles, essays, newsletters, books and other publications on servant-leadership worldwide. Spears is president and CEO of the Indianapolis-based Larry C. Spears Center for Servant-Leadership, Inc., founded in 2008. He served for 17 years (1990-2007) as president and CEO of the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership. Greenleaf coined the phrase “servant leadership” in “The Servant as Leader,” a 1970 essay he published.

Many of the top 20 organizations in Fortune Magazine’s annual list of the 100 Best Companies to Work for are purposefully servant-led companies, including Starbucks, Southwest Air, and TDIndustries, said Professor Shann Ferch, chair of Gonzaga’s Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies. “Perhaps most importantly, Larry’s understanding of the interior of the leader, listening, and foresight, has become foundational to personal and organizational discernment in servant-leadership,” Ferch said.

The Servant Leadership Scholar designation is intended to honor Spears’ international academic contributions, recognize Gonzaga’s connection to him, and ensure Gonzaga students will have access to the preeminent thought leader in servant leadership for years to come. Larry will continue to reside in Indianapolis, while making more frequent visits to Spokane. Much of his new work will continue to be done as a joint collaboration between The Spears Center for Servant-Leadership and Gonzaga University.

“We are so honored to have Larry Spears teaching in our leadership programs at Gonzaga, and newly appointed as the Servant Leadership Scholar for Gonzaga University in the School of Professional Studies. His years of collaboration with the Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies have culminated in this appointment and we could not be more pleased,” Ferch said. “Larry has also given readers, writers, and practitioners a profound depth of wisdom, practical application, and soulful understanding on a leadership way of life that has begun to unseat the traditional command and control leadership methodologies and in turn evoke in society the capacity for self-transcendence and individual and collective responsibility across all spectrums of human endeavor.”

During the past 20 years, Spears has helped shape global understanding and awareness of servant-leadership. His conception of the 10 characteristics of servant-leadership, gleaned from his in-depth study of Greenleaf's works, has become a significant and enduring contribution to the field worldwide.

“His past years leading the Greenleaf Center and his current role as president of The Spears Center for Servant-Leadership have propelled a healthy and robust groundswell of servant-leadership in the United States and abroad,” Ferch said. “A direct reflection of this can be seen in significant quantitative and qualitative research on servant-leadership, under way in Europe, Australia, North and South America, and Asia.”

Spears’ more than 10 books on servant-leadership, including the best-seller Insights on Leadership, continue to reach a wide international audience. His most recent essays include “Myers-Briggs and Servant-Leadership,” and “Seekers Anonymous.”

“Over the past decade I have enjoyed an expanding relationship with Gonzaga University, and with its outstanding faculty, students, staff, and alumni,” Spears said. “My experiences with Gonzaga have been both fruitful and fun. In my view, Gonzaga University is a remarkable living laboratory of servant-leadership. It has developed a global and growing reputation as a distinctive leader in servant-leadership through its sponsoring of The International Journal of Servant-Leadership, throughits offering of graduate and undergraduate courses in servant-leadership, and in other ways. The spirit of servant-leadership is easy to see in its mission, and in its people. I am deeply grateful and honored by this appointment; and, I look forward to deepening my engagement with the Gonzaga community in the coming years, through my new role as Servant-Leadership Scholar.”

The Gonzaga University School of Professional Studies’ Servant-Leadership Scholar, among other criteria, reflects an enduring legacy of encouraging others to become servant leaders; benefits (or at least does not further deprive) the least privileged of society; is a luminous example of cura personalis , a Latin phrase that means “care for the whole person”; and has established an enduring legacy of thoughtful engagement of the mind, heart, and spirit to help heal the mind, heart, and spirit of the world. The Scholar also will conduct engagements to enhance and expand the sharing of servant-leadership knowledge and research. Examples of forums that might be developed include, but are not limited to the following: The Robert K. Greenleaf Lectureship Series, the Servant Leadership Writing and Development Series, the Servant Leadership Cura Personalis Colloquium; and senior advisory editorship of The International Journal of Servant Leadership , a role Larry Spears has held since the inception of the prestigious journal seven years ago.

Spears has been interviewed by dozens of major daily newspapers, magazines and other publications nationwide. A 2004 TV interview of Spears by Stone Philips on NBC’s “Dateline” helped introduce servant-leadership and Greenleaf to 10 million viewers. He created and edited various books on servant-leadership and has contributed to many others. He also served as the series editor of the Servant-Leadership Essay Series, and is senior advisory editor for The International Journal of Servant Leadership (2005-Present). Since 1990, Spears has given more than 200 keynote speeches on servant-leadership on four continents, a dozen countries, and 40 states. He knew Robert Greenleaf and first encountered Greenleaf’s writings on servant-leadership in the early 1980s while working with the Quaker magazine, Friends Journal. After Greenleaf died in 1990, Spears examined Greenleaf’s personal papers and discovered dozens of previously unpublished essays written by Greenleaf over a 50-year period. Many of these essays were later collected and published in 1996 in two volumes: On Becoming a Servant-Leader and Seeker and Servant.

Dear Servant-Leader,

Over the past two decades, I have devoted myself to the joyful task of encouraging a better world through expanding our understanding and practices of servant-leadership. Much of my work has focused on communicating these ideas through a series of books, journals, articles, newsletters, essays, interviews, the internet, radio and television appearances, and hundreds of public presentations around the world. Slowly-but-surely, public awareness and practice of servant-leadership has grown.

It has been one year since The Spears Center for Servant-Leadership, Inc. was approved as a 501(c) (3) not-for-profit organization by the Internal Revenue Service. As a recognized public charity, we are eligible to receive contributions, grants, bequests, and other kinds of financial support. Financial donations to the Spears Center are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the tax laws.

The Spears Center board and I are working hard to put into place the basic building blocks for growing The Spears Center as a long-term resource for servant-leadership information and inspiration. We cordially invite you to show your support of our past, present, and future work through the kindness of your financial contribution to The Spears Center. Gifts to The Spears Center are deductible in computing Federal income tax. Donations of any size will be gratefully received, used well, and much appreciated.

To Donate Online - Please click HERE.

Or, if you prefer, your check may be sent to:

The Spears Center
329 Garden Grace Drive
Indianapolis, IN 46239

It is my sincere hope that in this season of giving you may be willing to show your support for our work in servant-leadership, today. Thank you.

Warm regards, Larry Larry C. Spears, President & CEO The Spears Center for Servant-Leadership

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Larry's Blog

Follow Larry on his Route 66 Servant-Leadership Journey.

Larry Spears Blog

Dateline Video

Watch the Larry Spears Dateline segment seen by over ten million viewers!

Power of Faith-Dateline

Ten characteristics of a servant leader

Within Your Reach

Scanlon EPIC Leadership: Where the Best Ideas Come Together

The Human Treatment of Human Beings

Publications

forgiveness.jpg insights.gif Righthistory.gif fortuitouscover.jpg scalonmatters.jpg encountersfront.gif Hero.gif humantreatment.jpg scanlon.jpg SeekersAnonymous.jpg recovery.gif savoringlife.jpg Foresight.gif commonstrength.jpg Lovework.gif withinyourreach.jpg servantwithin.gif teaching.gif conversationssm.jpg Theology.gif spiritofservantleadership.jpg seeker.gif focus.gif holistic.jpg refections2.gif Boardchair.gif Phill.gif power.gif practicing.gif servantleadership.gif myersbriggs.jpg becoming.gif Collaboration.gif rightside.jpg Socialjustice.gif purpose.gif reflections.gif Orglife.gif theology.jpg

Publications

Essays

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Read Essays Online!

Essays

Donate

The Spears Center is a charitable, non-profit organization, and your contribution is tax-deductible to the extent allowable. Our federal tax ID number is 26-1555344. We invite your donation by check to The Spears Center, 329 Garden Grace Drive, Indianapolis, IN 46239.  Thank you!

 

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