Everybody Matters: Leadership is Stewardship

Continuing my learnings from the book “Everybody Matters”. We’re on chapter 4. The series began here.

Everyone working in a company has been entrusted into the care of the company to ultimately help them live lives of meaning and purpose — each and every one of them is somebody’s precious child. Do we see them like that though? The use of the word “resources” leaves a bad taste in the mouth, doesn’t it?

Lives of Quiet Desperation:

A study estimated that about 88% of the workforce in the US go home everyday feeling that they work for an organization that doesn’t care for them. Imagine that! So many people feeling this way day in, day out! What kind of personal lives do they lead? We’re destroying people and killing our culture because we send people home after treating them like objects and functions instead of caring about them as human beings. We want them more engaged because we want them more productive. Isn’t that the truth? Do we even care or is caring just a means to an end?

The Good News:

The healing can begin when we have an approach to leadership that validates the worth of every individual. This approach requires leadership to be viewed as a responsibility for the lives entrusted, it goes beyond self interest to accountability to something bigger than oneself. Leaders look deep for talent and goodness present in people. It definitely is not about the exercise of power over another, rather it is an opportunity for service and that too for the greater good. There is no compulsion here either, it works only through genuine inspiration and guidance.

This is how we lead people anything else is just using resources.