Servant leadership

Leadership is of people. Controlling people, either in public or private work organizations, with budgets is not leadership. Controlling them with IT systems is not leadership; at best, these set up work structures. Leadership serves the people led, and in turn those whom those led serve.

This is not pansy permissiveness as is often alleged by "hard-nosed" business thinkers. It actually has been the philosophical basis for top military leadership for a long time. Military service is not primarily motivated by money. Service members motivated by money become derisively referred to as mercenaries, unreliable because they might switch to any cause for enough money.

This has a long semi-romantic history: privateering, piracy, freebooting, soldiers-of-fortune -- all the way down to unvarnished gangsters. 


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