Needed: servant-leaders.

In senior housing, the goal is ultimately about "serving" our customers, whether through the CEO's responsive programming decisions or the executive director's management of a team faced with a myriad of individual customer requests on a daily basis. Another way we see "service" in senior housing is through CEO's and executive directors' efforts to put the frontline staff's needs "first" so that they are highly motivated and better equipped to respond to customer expectations promptly and effectively.

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Our research shows that whether it is the CEO motivating executive directors or the executive director motivating the frontline staff, a model of "servant-leader-ship" that embraces the primary focus of serving customers is particularly effective in our industry.

The concept of servant-leadership as a business model was first put forward by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970 in an essay titled "The Servant as Leader." Greenleaf was a specialist in management research, development, and education at AT & T, during which time he formulated his thinking on servant-leadership. His ideas have influenced some of the most well-known management experts of the past few years, including Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), Ken Blanchard and Patricia Zigarmi (Leadership and the One Minute Manager), and Max DePree (Leadership Jazz).

An ever-increasing number of companies have adopted servant-leadership as part of their corporate philosophy, including Southwest Airlines, The Toro Company, The ServiceMaster Company, The Men's Wearhouse, and TDIndustries. TDIndustries, consistently voted among the top ten of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For, adopted servant-leadership as a model in the early 1970s. Today, all new employees are given a copy of Greenleaf's book The Servant as Leader, and every supervisor is required to go through servant-leadership training.

So what is servant-leadership? In his book, Greenleaf says that "the first priority of any leader should be one of service and putting others first, including employees, customers, and the community." This represented a huge shift from the hierarchical "command and control" management models that dominated much of American business at the time.

Greenleaf believed that "the key difference between servant-leadership and other leadership models was found in the motivation of the leader." He maintained that the best leadership involves a dynamic commitment to serve others rather than the need to serve oneself.