The question I have is why does a servant leadership organization need to bring someone from outside the organization in to lead it? My vision of servant leadership, which may not be the correct one, is that servant leadership is done best by those within the organization because those are the folks that should understand best what the needs of the organization are. The idea of bringing in a CEO from a Fortune 500 company seems to imply (maybe I am wrong) that the most important need is to maximize profits and efficiency (at least that is what I assume is required to make the Fortune 500 list). Maximizing profits is what most organizations strive for, but it is not what servant leadership is really about. Fiscal responsibility is necessary for an organization to exist, but not profit maximization. It may be possible to bring in someone from the outside to help bring in new visions for the organization, but before that option is choosen, there should be a consensous amoung the members that that is what is needed to keep the organization healthy. I also believe that rather investing training on outside leaders, training should be invested on the existing membership to help them fill the needs of leadership at the organization. One of the best ways to be trained is to rotate the leadership responsibilities to the membership. Them's my thoughts for what they are worth.
Agree completely Tom! The reason this came up is this: On Friday I blogged about an article in the Chonicle of Higher Education which stated that universities were better off having a leader coming in from the outside rather than having someone with an academic background taking the presidency. See Friday's post for more info.
Today's post was meant to take it a step further and ask the question of how well those within the organization would handle bringing someone in from the outside. It was not meant to argue that this is a preferred method of hiring the leadership of an organization.
Your comments are right on target about the advantage of hiring from within. But I wanted to raise some questions as they related to Friday's article and post because the reality is many organizations are bringing in people from outside the organization to lead.
Would you be so kind as to send me an e-mail when you get a chance? servantleadership@viterbo.edu
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