The Servant Leader: James A. Autry on Building Creative Teams, Great Morale and Better Results
How do you build a creative team, foster great morale and improve results? In the twenty-first century, productivity, efficiency and profit set the rules of business. It is therefore essential to understand that there are ways of leading a team that deliver good results and bring prosperity. The Servant Leader proposes a series of steps that any manager should apply in the workplace to achieve personal, spiritual and material fulfilment.
Author: James A. Autry
Title: The Servant Leader: How to Build a Creative Team, Develop Great Morale, and Improve Bottom-Line Performance
Format: English paperback (Crown), 288 pages
Scope: Leadership and management
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/1400054737 (ASIN 1400054737)
Why Old Methods Fade
With everyday examples, brevity and clarity, the author sets out his point of view. In the short term, the old methods of management worked: offering employees pay rises and encouraging competition among them produced good results quickly. But in the long term their motivation declined, and what they had once done eagerly they now did reluctantly.
Purpose at Work
The book proposes an idealistic form of leadership in which workers find purpose in their tasks and therefore do them as well as they can. Redefining the company in terms of social interest, and not merely as an instrument for producing profit, is certainly a change of mindset for many executives.
The Author
James A. Autry grew up in rural Mississippi, the son and grandson of Baptist ministers, studied journalism at the University of Mississippi and flew fighter jets for the US Air Force before starting a long career in magazine publishing. He rose to be editor-in-chief and president of the Meredith Corporation’s magazine group, publisher of titles such as Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies’ Home Journal. He is also a poet, with collections such as Nights Under a Tin Roof, and his business books, from Love and Profit to Real Power, written with Stephen Mitchell and inspired by the Tao Te Ching, are marked by that literary sensibility.
Where Servant Leadership Comes From
The phrase "servant leadership" was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf, a former AT&T manager, in his 1970 essay The Servant as Leader. Greenleaf argued that the best leaders are servants first: they lead because they want to help others grow, and they measure success by whether the people they serve become healthier, wiser, freer and more capable. Autry takes that idea out of the realm of philosophy and into the daily practice of running a department or a company, drawing on decades of experience managing editors, designers and salespeople.
What It Asks of Managers
The book’s advice is practical: be present and available, listen more than you speak, be honest about bad news, accept vulnerability, and treat people as whole human beings rather than as resources. Autry insists that this is not softness. A servant leader still sets demanding goals, makes hard decisions and holds people accountable, but does so in a way that builds trust instead of fear. His argument is that such trust is what produces creativity, loyalty and, in the end, better results.
In Context
Readers who enjoy this book might also try Greenleaf’s original essays, or more recent books on the same theme, such as Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last. Autry’s distinctive contribution is his voice: reflective, personal and occasionally poetic, the voice of an executive who believes that work can be a place of meaning.
Tip
Read it slowly, a chapter a week, and try one idea at a time with your own team.
Who Is It For?
It is a practical, humane book for anyone who manages people, from small-team leaders to senior executives, and a good antidote to purely numbers-driven management.
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