Clik here to view.
With more than 50 books to his name and dozens of years speaking on management and leadership, Ken Blanchard said the biggest change that’s taken place in the business world is the dissolution of hierarchy between superiors and subordinates, and that’s a good thing.
“The big thing that’s changed is that I think we’ve really moved from a philosophy of command and control as leadership — you know, my way or the highway — to much more of a partnership relationship,” said Blanchard. “I think the young people have really pushed that.”
Blanchard spoke Wednesday evening at Armstrong State University, discussing his forthcoming book and the concept of “servant leadership.” He is perhaps best known for the 1982 best-seller “The One Minute Manager,” which has sold more than 13 million copies worldwide.
The author said he observed servant leadership first-hand when he worked on a consulting gig with Southwest Airlines and its former CEO, Colleen Barrett. He and Barrett co-authored the 2010 book “Lead with LUV: Helping People Win at Work.”
“Southwest Airlines has had such a clear vision,” said Blanchard. “They really get it.”
Blanchard said their success is in part due to the way they value their customers and employees, key ingredients to servant leadership.
“There are two parts of servant leadership, which I talk a lot about. One is the vision and direction and goals parts. You have to know where you’re going ... that’s the leadership part. The other part is if you don’t have anything to serve — a vision, direction, goals — then the only thing to serve is yourself.”
He said a good example of this is the widening gap between executive compensation and workers’ salaries.
“You’ve had stories of people who lay off thousands of people and the CEO gets a $20 million bonus, I mean give me a break, how much money do people really need?” he said. “Where you get in trouble with people is when they think their self-worth is a function of how much wealth they accumulate.”
He said the recent dialogue about getting more women into corporate leadership roles, propelled by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s own book on the subject, is also productive.
“I think the opportunities haven’t been there, but the data is starting to come out that women make better top managers than men because they’re better listeners and they don’t have as big of ego needs,” he said.
The most important lesson for managers and supervisors today, he said, is keeping an open door and open ear policy.
“Everybody can really contribute and you need to seek the input from people throughout an organization because they are usually the ones closer to the action,” he said.
