Servant Leadership Roadmap: The 12 Core Competencies of Success

Consider the paradoxes of being a servant-leader in Brewer’s poem below:

Strong enough to be weak

Successful enough to fail

Busy enough to make time

Wise enough to say “I don’t know”

Serious enough to laugh

Rich enough to be poor

Right enough to say “I’m wrong”

Compassionate enough to discipline

Mature enough to be childlike

Important enough to be last

Planned enough to be spontaneous

Controlled enough to be flexible

Free enough to endure captivity

Knowledgeable enough to ask questions

Loving enough to be angry

Great enough to be anonymous

Responsible enough to play

Assured enough to be rejected

Victorious enough to lose

Industrious enough to relax

Leading enough to serve

Hansel, in Holy Sweat, Dallas Texas, 1987, p. 29

In 2017, Cara Bramlett penned a book, encouraging readers to master the 12 core competencies of management success with leadership qualities and interpersonal skills.

Click here for a summary of Bramlett’s Servant Leadership Roadmap

The Go-Giver Leader

Giving is not a strategy. It's a way of life. - Bob Burg

This month’s Proverbs focus is on Giving.  This past February, as I browsed the Barnes & Noble bookshelves, I ran across The Go-Giver Leader.  With endorsements from John Maxwell, Captain David Marquet, and Colleen Barrett, I was intrigued.

Co-Authors Bob Burg and John David Mann wrote the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Go-Giver, whose mysterious mentor character Pindar introduces the Five Laws of Stratospheric Success, which all revolve around the idea that a giving mindset is the key to a rich and fulfilling life. One of those Five Laws is the Law of Influence, which says that your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.

Burg and Mann again turn to Pindar to expand on the idea in this book with something to say about leadership.  They explain that they wrote this story and published it in 2011 under the title, It’s Not About You—a title that seemed to nicely echo the core idea of The Go-Giver: that shifting one’s emphasis from getting to giving, from a “me” focus to an “other” focus, leads to greater and often unexpected returns.

Click here to The Go-Giver Leader’s Five Keys to Legendary Leadership