Dear Servant Leader:
There is so much good news to share this month! I would like to lead off with hearty congratulations to several dear friends and exemplary servant-leaders who have just published two significant new books.
George SanFacon (gasanfan@umich.edu) is a name familiar to many of you. For two decades, he served as Director of the Housing Facilities Department at the University of Michigan, where he pioneered implementing a council-of-equals approach to governance and management using consensus decision-making. The organization was nationally recognized for its culture, innovation, and effectiveness.
Today, George is a part-time caretaker and host at a private retreat center in Michigan, and an executive coach who is active in the environmental movement. He has published A Conscious Person’s Guide to the Workplace (130 pages, $18, Trafford Publishing, http://cl.exct.net/?qs=960421fedd295a1744851a9a810bf003b35d73ebd3c04729c456e28744b90bba ), a unique compendium and practical resource for creating workplaces that evoke and engage the human spirit in pursuit of a world that works for all. (photos below left to right: George SanFacon and front book cover)
From the back cover— “Distilled from over four decades of workplace experience, SanFacon provides an integrative approach using concepts and principles that have been field-tested and proven to work. This remarkable guide offers sage advice useful for all who aspire to servant-leadership: ‘Hold the concepts and principles as compass and guide, then deal openly and forthrightly with whatever arises.’ Through this process, workplaces become enterprises where people ‘show up’ to co-create the kind of experiences, organizations and world that are right, good, and desirable.”
George and I have recently co-authored an essay, “Holistic Servant-Leadership,” and we will be leading the first Servant-Leadership Writer’s Workshop and Retreat in Michigan, September 26-28, 2008. [See information on that in this newsletter.]
Another important work now available is Servant-Leadership: Bringing the spirit of work to work (213 pages, Management Books 2000, http://cl.exct.net/?qs=a7fc9c456ca10aeefcbd19638faf61ce1e99d27a5dfb1dff8978dcfc32a6cfc0 ; Ralph Lewis and John Noble, Editors).
Ralph Lewis (ralph.lewis@virgin.net) and John Noble (http://cl.exct.net/?qs=ffe128c05d116e41f5e5137c1739ba64399b9c7391edf680bbf35d40c87213b9 ) co-founded the Greenleaf Centre-United Kingdom in 1997. Both of them are longtime friends of mine, and I have collaborated with each of them over the years. John and I have been co-presenters and workshop leaders together in both the U.K. and the U.S. Ralph and I have recently co-authored an article on “Myers-Briggs and Servant-Leadership,” which appears in the 2008 International Journal of Servant-Leadership (and an excerpt in this newsletter), and we both presented earlier this month at the Global Servant-Leadership Research Forum that was held at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. (photos below left to right: front book cover, Ralph Lewis and John Noble)
Servant-Leadership: Bringing the spirit of work to work is a wonderful collection of thirteen essays and interviews on servant-leadership. Contributing authors are from the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Sweden, South Africa, and the United States. They include James Autry, Lance Bloch, Charlie Foote, Jan Gunnarsson and Olle Bloom, Bob Henry, Jaap Huttenga, Ralph Lewis, Jane Little, Terri McNerney, John Noble, George SanFacon, Henry Stewart, and Andrew Walsh.
From the back cover— “This book is a collection of writings by leading practitioners in the field of servant-leadership. It sets out to explain the principles, and to show how they can be put into practice, to the benefit of all concerned. The surprise, to some people, is that businesses that adopt these principles become more successful and more profitable than those that don’t. This book explains how, and why.”
I invite you to explore the wonderful ideas and inspiration that is to be found in both A Conscious Person’s Guide to the Workplace, and Servant-Leadership: Bringing the spirit of work to work.
Three friends. Two books. One world.
Warm regards,
Larry
Larry C. Spears President & CEO
