I was struck not only by the writings of W.H. Behren, but also by his story.<\/p>\n
A young man who has pursued a career focused on helping others.\u00a0 An educated man, a physician, who, for the time period would be considered privileged, perhaps, superior.\u00a0 Embracing a profession that, as the story outlines, required daily contact with individuals who were self-centered, self-focused, people who were \u201c\u2026unhappy because they look inward instead of outward\u201d. (Watson, 1951) And yet Behren was a man who was humble enough to recognize that his purpose came from serving others and in the center of an environment that consisted of self-focused individuals was able to persist and endure and retain his own outward focus.\u00a0 I am truly inspired.<\/p>\n
Whereas the excerpt from Behren\u2019s writings speaks to finding happiness, it also speaks to finding purpose and meaning:\u00a0 \u201cNo one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellow men\u201d.\u00a0 (Watson, 1951)\u00a0 W.H. Behren\u2019s reflection identifies the only starting point possible in the pursuit of servant leadership as identified by Greenleaf (1970) in Nordhouse, 2016:\u00a0 \u00a0\u201c[Servant leadership] begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.\u201d <\/em>(p.226) \u00a0\u00a0Any person seeking to be a leader for the sake of power, authority, prestige or selfish ambition will not be happy, for all of these motivations are self-seeking.\u00a0 To seek leadership for the purpose of serving others will bring personal fulfillment and completeness.\u00a0 Having observed the opposite to be true in his practice, Behren was able to articulate the truth that servant leadership not only benefits the recipients, but also the leader.<\/p>\n The relevance of Behren\u2019s writing to my own practice is multi-faceted.\u00a0 First is the reminder to me personally.\u00a0 As a leader in my work environment and as a representative of Christ I would be irresponsible to dismiss the reminder that \u201c\u2026 the way to find happiness\u2026 is in doing things with and for others.\u201d (Watson, 1951)\u00a0 Second, as a leader in a health care environment it is my role to model a focus that is outside of myself.\u00a0 As I focus on serving our employees they in turn learn to focus on serving their patients.\u00a0 Third, in an era where mental health concerns and issues are more predominant and increasingly a cause for lost time in our workforce, there is the potential to mentor others in changing their focus for their own mental well-being.\u00a0 Fourth, though it is recognized that this statement is a generalization and does not apply to everyone, a new generation of employees is entering the workforce with a strong sense of entitlement and \u201cwhat\u2019s-in-it-for-me\u201d attitude.\u00a0 Behren\u2019s insights highlight that there is a pressing necessity to attempt to negate these mindsets and attitudes for an individual\u2019s own benefit.\u00a0 Lastly, as I focus on promoting servant leadership in my front line managers they in turn promote servant leadership in their employees.\u00a0 The work by Hwang et al, 2014 provides evidence that this will in turn impact the employee\u2019s perception of their patient\u2019s satisfaction with their care and trust in the healthcare system.\u00a0 Patients and families, the \u201cend users\u201d reap the rewards.\u00a0 Lasting change is created by the actions of one person as proposed in this quote credited to Mother Teresa:\u00a0 \u201cI alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.\u201d<\/p>\n The relevance of Behren\u2019s reflections to my personal life is also multi-faceted.\u00a0 I travel to Kenya in June to visit with post-secondary students who would be living on the streets if not for the organization that I am a Board member of.\u00a0 The teenagers in my youth worship team are graduating to the adult worship team and are serving the entire congregation with excellence.\u00a0 These volunteer pursuits outside of my workplace make me happy.\u00a0 When it became necessary to step down from overseeing the adult worship program there was a sense of deep loss because I turned inward and self-focused; I recognize now that I created my own unhappiness.\u00a0 Coming to this awareness will help me from making the same mistake again and equip me to help others avoid the same pitfall.<\/p>\n Behren\u2019s excerpt in Watson, 1951 states:\u00a0 \u201cTo find happiness we must seek for it in a focus outside of ourselves\u2026\u201d (p. 13).\u00a0 Where have you found this to be true in your life?<\/p>\n Hwang, HJ et al (2014). The influence of a leader’s servant leadership on emmployee’s perception of customers’ satisfaction with the service and employees’perception of customers’ trust in the service firm:\u00a0 the moderating role of employees’ trust in the leaders, Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science,<\/em> 24 <\/em>(1), 66-76.<\/p>\n Nordhouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership:\u00a0 Theory and Practice, 7th Ed<\/em>.\u00a0 Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.<\/p>\n Watson, L. E. (1951). Light from Many Lamps<\/em>.\u00a0 New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was struck not only by the writings of W.H. Behren, but also by his story. A young man who has pursued a career focused on helping others.\u00a0 An educated man, a physician, who, for the time period would be considered privileged, perhaps, superior.\u00a0 Embracing a profession that, as the story outlines, required daily contact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,2,26],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ldrs500","category-emr-posts","category-ldrs500-unit-2","tag-light-from-many-lamps","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/achsahs-springs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/achsahs-springs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/achsahs-springs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/achsahs-springs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/achsahs-springs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/achsahs-springs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/achsahs-springs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/achsahs-springs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/achsahs-springs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/achsahs-springs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}