Do you aspire to be a more effective leader who guides your team or organization to higher levels of lasting success? Would you like to look forward to each day and know that you are having a positive impact on the world around you?
This is possible for everyone, regardless of your title or position. In fact, Serve to Be Great: Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom will train you to make this a reality. Although it’s not an easy process, it is a worthwhile one.
By making a shift in your approach to leadership, you can become a highly effective leader who enjoys your work and makes the world a better place. The shift is simply a matter of gradually becoming more focused on how you can serve others and increase your capacity to do so. Being an extraordinary leader does not require a MBA or PhD. The reality is that anyone can be a great leader.
Author Matt Tenney has survived – and thrived – in situations where most people would have been quickly broken. In Serve to Be Great, he offers his life experiences and unique insights to help leaders apply the powerful principles of servant leadership. Servant leaders are not weak or timid. Motivated by the aspiration to serve, they achieve true power by empowering others to achieve excellence.
This is a practical guide to becoming a leader people want to follow. By shifting focus from short-term gain to serving others, leaders can create great workplace cultures that deliver superior, long-term results. Serve to Be Great is the perfect playbook for realizing the ultimate in personal and business success.
In keeping with the spirit in which Serve to Be Great was written, all author proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to charity.
Table of Contents:
Foreword Jon Gordon xv
Introduction xix
Part 1 My Journey from prisoner to Monk to Social Entrepreneur 1
1 My Greatest Failure 3
Finding Opportunity in Disaster 8
2 From Selfish to Servant 13
The Practice That Changed My Life 20
What If Businesses Operated in This Way? 21
The Power of Servant Leadership 22
The Essence of Leadership 25
Serving by Helping Organizations Develop
Extraordinary Leaders 26
Part 2 Serve to Be Great: The Business Case 29
3 Winning the War for Talent 31
Attracting Top Talent 36
Fully Engaged People 37
Improving Retention 39
4 Creating a Highly Innovative Culture 41
Linking Innovation Directly to Profit 41
What Does Being Innovative Actually Mean? 47
Building a Highly Innovative Culture 49
Why Serving and Caring for People Results in a
Highly Innovative Culture 52
5 Delivering World-Class Customer Service 57
Quantifying the ROI in Customer Service 61
How Great Leaders Inspire World-Class Customer Service 63
Developing Employees Who Wow Your Customers 66
6 Why Serving Others is a Highly Effective Marketing Tactic 71
Smarter, More Enjoyable Marketing 78
Marketing with the Spirit of Service 81
Part 3 Making The Shift: Becoming The Ultimate Leader 89
7 Making Serving a Habit 91
An Easy Way to Jump in to the Top 1 Percent 93
Action is Most Important 95
The Habit of Serving Others 96
The Little Things Matter 99
What a Teenager Dying of Cancer Taught Me about Leadership 101
8 Grow by Empowering Others 105
Empowered People Equal Better Results 107
Empowering Others Helps Us Become the Ultimate Leaders 109
9 Inspire Greatness 121
Start with Why 123
The Gift of Inspiration 125
Values That Inspire and Guide the Way 129
Character That Inspires 131
True Greatness 132
Self-Sacrifice: The Ultimate Test of Character 136
10 Measuring the Right Things 139
Measuring the Intangibles in Business 140
Be Goals versus Do Goals 142
11 Becoming the Ultimate Leader 149
Becoming the Ultimate Leader is Enjoyable 154
Staying Cool under Pressure 156
The Ultimate Tool for Becoming the Ultimate Leader 157
Making a Profit While Making a Difference 160
Afterword 163
Author’s Note 165
Serve Your Team 167
Connect with Matt 169
About the Author 171
Acknowledgments 173
Appendix: A Quick Start Guide To Mindfulness Training 177
Notes 181
Index 187
About the Author :
MATT TENNEY is an international keynote speaker, a trainer, and a consultant with the prestigious Perth Leadership Institute, whose clients include numerous Fortune 500 companies. He works with companies, associations, universities, and nonprofits to develop highly effective leaders who achieve lasting success by focusing on serving and inspiring greatness in the people around them. Matt envisions a world where the vast majority of people realize that effectively serving others is the key to true greatness. When he’s not traveling for speaking engagements, he can often be found in Nashville, TN.
