I’ve been talking about servant leadership for years, so I was happy to see that the topic is now trending in business. Maybe people are finally understanding that servant leadership is not a lax situation where the inmates are running the prison. Instead, it’s a two-part process: the leadership part, where the leader plays a…
In my new book Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust—cowritten with my colleague, trust expert Randy Conley—we take a look at some practical, day-to-day leadership principles leaders can apply in their organizations. Simple Truths of Leadership is broken down into 52 concepts/quotes, half on the topic of…
Effective leadership is an influence process where leaders implement everyday, commonsense approaches that help people and organizations thrive. Yet somehow, many of these fundamental principles are still missing from most workplaces. In their new book, Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust, legendary servant leadership expert Ken Blanchard,…
I recently announced the February 1 publication of my new book with longtime colleague and trust expert Randy Conley, Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust. Now I’d like people to know what inspired the book and why I’m so excited about it. The beginning of my mission…
“Relationships And Results.” Which of those three words is most important? I posed that question to over 100 participants in a series of workshops I recently conducted for a client. As you might suspect, about half the people thought relationships was the most important word. Their rationale essentially boiled down to people are the ones…
Over the years, I’ve talked with thousands of people about servant leadership. Every so often somebody will come up to me after a speech and say to me, “You know, Ken, the style of leadership you just talked about is exactly the way I’ve been leading people for years—I just didn’t know there was a…
“I’m sure you’ve heard the saying People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. And that is so true for anyone who is in a leadership role today,” says Kathy Cuff, senior consulting partner at The Ken Blanchard Companies. “In our SLII® leadership development class we conduct an exercise…
As an antidote to the negative consequences of personality-based leadership theories, new generations of leadership, learning, and talent development professionals are rediscovering servant leadership. That’s great news for those of us who believe that simply focusing on acting like a leader is a poor substitute for developing the character and behaviors of someone who truly…
Let’s imagine for a moment that you are a scientist running a grand experiment on leadership. Your laboratory is an organization with hundreds of leaders at varying levels, and with technology, you can watch and listen to them 24-hours a day over an extend period of time. Sort of like the TV show Big Brother, except…
In their academic paper Identifying Primary Characteristics of Servant Leadership, researchers Adam Focht and Michael Ponton share the results of a Delphi study they conducted with scholars in the field of servant leadership. A total of twelve characteristics were identified, five of which were agreed upon by all of the scholars polled. These five most…