Byron's Babbles

You all know how I love books that are split up into 52 distinct chapters/lessons. Well, here in the first week of 2022 I have been blessed with starting a new one, by an author who I greatly respect, have read all his books, and heard him speak several times. That author is Dr. Ken Blanchard. I’m sure you recognize that name. I am on the launch team for Dr. Blanchard’s new book that he wrote with Randy Conley, Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways To Be A Servant Leader and Build Trust, Making Common Sense Common Practice. I was so excited to get an advance copy of the book and to make this the book that I commit to doing one of the lessons each week and writing a blog post about in 2022. The book releases on February 1st. You need to go ahead and get your pre-order done.

I had to chuckle when I first started reading this book and came across, “When it comes to servant leadership and trust, we both wonder why the principles we see as common sense are so seldom used in common practice” in the introduction of the book. Ken went on to say, “If today’s leaders had a more commonsense approach to leadership, we’d venture to say that 65 to 70 percent of the workforce would not be considered disengaged.” This is such a timely book because a common theme keeps coming up in my leadership development work – we are forgetting the simple things. In fact, I blogged about Simple Things in one of my last posts of 2021 before I’d even started this book. I am super excited to dig in and unpack the learning of this great book. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is on servant leadership and written by Ken Blanchard. Randy Conley wrote the second part on building trust. So, let’s dive right in with lesson #1.

Simple Truth #1 – Servant Leadership is the best way to achieve both great results and great relationships.

We are reminded that we all need to feel connected and have a shared sense of what is valued. “Results” and “people” are not mutually exclusive. Vision and direction are leadership responsibilities, but cannot be a top-down function. As I always say, if you have included everyone on the front end, you don’t have to worry about buy in on the back end, because it will already be there. And, if we are truly servant leaders we will be shoulder to shoulder with those we serve providing personal and professional growth opportunities, actionable feedback, listening, and communication. We can have our cake and eat it too when it comes to results and relationships.