Service Leadership: How Having a Calling Makes the Workplace More Effective

Summary

What will motivate an organization’s employees to be fully engaged in the corporate purpose? How can a company be less “Big Brother knows best” and more supportive of individual employees’ pursuit of workplace meaning? Pioneer business strategist Theodore Roosevelt Malloch’s Service Leadership answers these questions and more.

“Service leadership” is the service of the diversity of interests of employees and their quest for purpose under the corporate umbrella. An organization will not get the most out of its workforce unless it respects and facilitates each individual’s framework for the pursuit of meaning, which is often done in the context of spirituality and religion. Malloch examines spirituality in Western culture in terms of broad societal trends―the context within which people engage in their individual discernment of meaning. Service leadership takes many forms and is not the same for everyone. People can and want to learn how to become service leaders.

Both a practitioner and a professor, Malloch shows how these ideas can be implemented through a detailed framework. His extensive research has confirmed that organizations that do not address the existing core belief systems of employees will be disadvantaged in the marketplace. Interviews with and analysis of top executives at organizations like Whole Foods, Facebook, Gloria Jean’s Coffee, and Costco shed light on how both companies and employees can utilize service leadership to find and keep meaning in the workplace, improving both job happiness and performance.