SERVANT LEADER

 Here is the latest excerpt from a section of TCB called Servant Leader. The concept is ancient yet its modern application is powerful. See what you think.I hope it makes sense. It governs the way I lead and coach. 

In Buddhist thought, there is the notion of the Samurai leader warrior. The word Samurai in Japanese means service with heart, honor and integrity. In this sense the ideal coach or leader is akin to the Samurai, one who serves and leads with heart. Service is not about servitude or catering to all the wishes of those you lead. It is about valuing those you lead and adding worth to their lives. As a servant coach, you are in charge and oversee the big picture, but you offer your service by providing an honorable and humble environment for all to reach their potential.

As a member of the Onondaga nation, Native American Faith-keeper Chief Oren Lyons, in an interview called “Leadership Imperative” says that the purpose of leadership is to serve others. It appears that the most effective leaders examine their hearts and ask the question: am I here to serve or to be served? Obviously, it’s to serve. Therefore, the most important question that a servant-directed leader and coach needs to ask is “how can I best serve you?” When you follow the answer to this simple query, those you lead will experience a heightened sense of self and you, as a result, gain more power, not over people, but the power to influence and dance with them, and help facilitate change and growth for all involved. This is why we say, “to serve is to lead.”

Buddhist thought expounds the idea of selfless servant leaders who embody profound compassion and wisdom in their unrelenting effort to promote the growth of other mindful leaders with an open heart. The Buddha servant leadership mission is to transform the relationship between leader and follower through conscious choice for genuine care and common interest in a shared vision. That vision of leadership emphasized the code of the Samurai (servant) which included the following behavior:

• Willingness to admit mistakes and use them to better oneself

• Adhering to a set of personal values and be the change you

  want to see

• Mediating conflict in a cooperative way

• Picking up the slack when needed

• Acknowledging all opinions

• Listening

• Performing random acts of kindness

• Holding self to a higher standard

• Supporting those you lead during the hard times

• Committing to the growth of others

• Being patient and understanding

• Being demanding out of love for the benefit of others’ growth

• Catching those you lead doing something right

  While executing these Buddha servant leader behaviors, make sure that your followers’ highest priorities and needs are being served. Help them to grow as people to become leaders in their own right. In this model of servant leader, you share power and put the needs of the team first. Your behavior and servant actions inspire and empower others to dream, learn and expand. Servant leaders invite others in to work with heart side by side rather than from above.

  That good leaders must become good servants is best exemplified by head coaches Phil Jackson, Pete Carroll, Tara Vanderveer, Gregg Popovich, Cindy Timchall and Quin Snyder. Then there is Steve Kerr, whom I mentioned in the previous section. Steve believes in this concept and felt honored by the title I used for this section.

  As the title to this section intimates, Steve is the SERVANT LEADER OF WARRIORS. Like a true servant, Steve leads his athletes by walking behind them, inspiring and empowering them to develop their full human potential, regardless of their tole on the team. In a recent podcast we did together, Steve told us how you never want to let the last athlete on the bench to not feel important, valued and respected. He talks about how he uses several of the Buddha servant behaviors above to motivate all his athletes to find their personal greatness as athletes and as human beings.

  The question many have about coaching at this level is how do you get a cohort of wealthy athletes to selflessly give to the collective good of such a star- studded team? According to Kerr, you make everyone feel relevant and important as part of something greater than any one individual. This is an essential aspect of servant leadership. By being a humble, servant coach...while still being demanding...he is able to manage egos, keep them engaged and build a strong team culture embodying the servant leader approach.

While Steve seems to come about this coaching style naturally, he humbly gives credit to many of his coaching mentors who taught him the servant way, coaches like Lute Olson, and I’ve already mentioned, Phil Jackson, Gregg Popovich and Pete Carroll among others. For all of us who desire to adopt a more servant approach, the most important lesson that Steve learned from these masters was simple: be true to your values, principles and ideas...be yourself. He believes, as do all great leaders, that these values must be shared and followed every day. Steve’s values are deeply rooted in the competitive Buddha approach such as joy, selflessness, competitiveness and mindfulness.

As a true servant leader, Kerr is consciously aware of individual needs, concerns and personalities and remains flexible to adjust his coaching to these players, helping them to maintain their uniqueness while working together for the greater good of the team. The servant leader needs to give the athletes the bandwidth to be themselves while still holding on to the overall mission of the organization.

And, as a true servant leader, Steve is able to control his own ego and remain humble as he listens to his athletes. He understands that he doesn’t know all and encourages athletes and staff to contribute to his process. Ultimately, the decision is his but he seriously considers everyone’s input.

As a servant leader, Steve has a high level of emotional intelligence. He is humble, empathetic, genuine, authentic and vulnerable. Vulnerability in a leader is a high level of functioning. While some view it as weakness, servant leader coaches understand it’s a strength. All extraordinary leaders, by definition, realize the power of demonstrating vulnerability. Steve is not afraid to admit he made amistake. He’ll apologize to a player he has wronged and will not take anything personally.

Perhaps one of the most vital signs of a servant leader is the ability and eagerness to listen to others. Coach Kerr will often ask for an athlete’s input regardless of their role on the team, listen to their words and implement them if relevant to the team’s mission. This open dialogue gains the trust and respect of the team. He connects with the guys to understand and be empathetic to their personal lives as wonderful human beings. Steve knows that there is more to life than basketball; he understands what matters in the lives of those he leads. He is the extraordinary SERVANT LEADER OF WARRIORS, whose coaching philosophy has deep rooted connections to the competitive Buddha way.

If your wish is to have others follow your coaching, perhaps the most crucial quality of leadership you could possess is to think beyond self-interest. This is the Buddha servant style of guiding others to be self-reliant and expand in the long run. As servant leaders, our mission is simply to guide others to pathways for a greater, more meaningful experience in life. An athlete recently told me, “Jerry, it is widely known that Jesus was the quintessential servant leader. He was the lamb- like servant of the church.”

The well-known Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy once said: “The sole purpose of life is to serve humanity. It is the honorable and right thing to do.” And, in the process, you become more respected, loved, and worthy as you enhance the lives of all as their servant leader.

STRENGTH OF TEN TIGERS

 Here is an excerpt from THE COMPETITIVE BUDDHA, on Mindfulness practice. The book is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble for preorder...July arrival.

If you know the art of breathing you have the strength, wisdom and courage of ten tigers. The quiet, focused mind can pierce through stone.

Ancient Asian Saying

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.

Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Buddhist Monk

The practice of meditation, often referred to as “the still point,” is a learned skill that, when developed, can impact not just your leadership and coaching, but your entire life. It is important to know that the Buddha believes that effective mindful leadership is developed with an open heart through the practice of meditation.

Over the years, meditation has become a universal household word that when applied to sports can help you to experience a feeling of mastery and perform at your very best. Motivation, competition, training, injury recovery and focus are a few of the ways I apply meditation working with athletics. It is how we tame what the Buddha refers to as the “monkey mind.”

Phil Jackson was the master of using mindful meditation with his Bulls and Lakers teams, on his way to winning a collective 11 championship rings. In Phil’s book by the same name, ELEVEN RINGS: THE SOULD OF SUCCESS, he devotes several detailed pages on his thoughts about, and use of the meditation approach he used for his team, detailed in Shunryu Suzuki’s renowned book, ZEN MIND,BEGINNER’S MIND.

To help his players on both teams to quiet the chatter of their minds and focus on the competitive nature of the game, he introduced them to the concept of mindfulness meditation, based on a practice he learned years ago. He would get the players to sit in a room for ten or so minutes together. As I previously mentioned, he called it ‘the warrior room.” He wasn’t trying to make them Buddhist monks; it was to bring them close and bonded at the heart.

All of the athletes who took part in this voluntary exercise loved it. It was a special, unified group, who were, in the words of Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, “dwelling happily in the present moment,” with quiet, simple, and clear minds. Jackson found through such practice that when athletes marinate themselves fully in the moment, they develop a deeper, stronger awareness(mindfulness) of what’s happening right now, in the present moment. And, in Jackson’s words, this “leads to a greater sense of oneness, the essence of teamwork.”

With reference to helping his athletes foster team connection, cohesion and gain a sense of unity, Phil Jackson applauds the value of mindfulness meditation in facilitating the team’s ability to break out of their me-oriented attitudes and giving them the opportunity to consider going to a more -we-orientation.

In so doing, in his brilliant book, Jackson quotes the 13th century Buddhist priest and teacher, Nichiren:

The spirit of many in body, but one in mind, prevails among the people, they will achieve all their goals; whereas if one in body, but different in mind, they achieve nothing remarkable.

The following is an inspirational story about mindfulness meditation. During the Chinese cultural revolution during the 1960’s, Chinese pianist and composer Liu Shih-Kun was incarcerated for six years in prison, with no piano, and no paper to write on. During his incarceration he practiced his music in his head, mindfully visualizing himself playing at a high level over and over. He even composed a concerto and kept it memorized. In 1973, following his release from jail, Liu played before his peers and was deemed to be even better than before he went to prison. Thus, the power of mindfulness meditation.

And it is apparent in all sentient beings. You may have noticed that animals instinctively use a method of stillness in nature. They all meditate. Observe the heron poised motionless on one leg, the monkey climbing to the uppermost branch, the snake basking in the warmth of the summer sun, or the cat lying on a pillow, its eyes focused on a small object. Speaking of cats, I observed my cat, Simon, sitting and staring at the fireplace watching the flames dance for twenty minutes without movement. He was in the zone.

What follows in the book is the specific way I teach how to meditate and practice mindfulness each day