In the City of London, the story is told of a young fund manager who decided to leave the large bank where he had been trained and set up on his own. He was determined to make a big splash: brass plate outside the door with his name on it; thick carpets everywhere; expensive antiques in the Outer Office; a big mahogany desk for him in the Inner one; and an expensive, hi-tech phone purchased for the desk.

On the morning of his first day, he settled in. Then he spotted a man come into the Outer Office. ‘Don’t know who he is’, he thought, ‘but I need to show I’m a real player, that I can handle the big stuff’.

So he picked up the handset on his phone and started to speak as if he were talking to a rich client: ‘£20 million deal, yeah, we can do that. Sure, no problem. New York, Hong Kong, Paris, next week, sure, you got it….’

Then he slammed the phone down and called out to the visitor, ‘Good morning, can I help you?’.

The man said, ‘Yeah, I’m from BT, I’ve come to activate your phone line’.

A better, certainly a less embarrassing, leadership story is that of Robert Greenleaf, an American born in Indiana, who was recruited in 1926 by AT&T after gaining a degree in Maths from Carleton College.  

Greenleaf was a Quaker by background. He was quickly recognised as both highly intelligent and compassionate. He had a particularly broad and humane understanding of people and business.

He rose rapidly in AT&T, becoming first a regional manager, then its first Director of Management Development, and making the first appointments of Black Americans and of women into management positions during the 1950s.

In 1964 Greenleaf retired from AT&T, but his real contribution was just beginning. He developed the ideas he had pursued into a new concept. He published a slim pamphlet which would become a world-famous document, called: ‘The servant as leader’.

The highest form of leadership, he argued, lay in a commitment to serve others, modelled by Jesus in his washing of his disciples’ feet before his passion. This symbolised the need to sacrifice one’s own ego as a leader, and sometimes much more than that.

Greenleaf’s ideas, and the Christian principles he drew on, have transformed the way that leaders are trained in major institutions around the world. He titled his eventual book: ‘Servant Leadership: a journey into the nature of legitimate power & greatness’.

As we pray for our newly elected political leaders, and as we reflect on our own call to service, whether in a workplace, or a household, or in our community, let us pray for inspiration by that same vision of service to others.

May we, and all who lead, reflect the way of Christ, who taught his disciples that whoever wished to be first among them must be their servant: just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Philip Krinks