Serve to Be Great Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom

Do you aspire to be a more effective leader who guides your team or organization to higher levels of lasting success? Would you like to look forward to each day and know that you are having a positive impact on the world around you?

This is possible for everyone, regardless of your title or position. In fact, Serve to Be Great: Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom will train you to make this a reality. Although it’s not an easy process, it is a worthwhile one.

By making a shift in your approach to leadership, you can become a highly effective leader who enjoys your work and makes the world a better place. The shift is simply a matter of gradually becoming more focused on how you can serve others and increase your capacity to do so. Being an extraordinary leader does not require a MBA or PhD. The reality is that anyone can be a great leader.

Author Matt Tenney has survived – and thrived – in situations where most people would have been quickly broken. In Serve to Be Great, he offers his life experiences and unique insights to help leaders apply the powerful principles of servant leadership. Servant leaders are not weak or timid. Motivated by the aspiration to serve, they achieve true power by empowering others to achieve excellence.

This is a practical guide to becoming a leader people want to follow. By shifting focus from short-term gain to serving others, leaders can create great workplace cultures that deliver superior, long-term results. Serve to Be Great is the perfect playbook for realizing the ultimate in personal and business success.

In keeping with the spirit in which Serve to Be Great was written, all author proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to charity.

MATT TENNEY is an international keynote speaker, a trainer, and a consultant with the prestigious Perth Leadership Institute, whose clients include numerous Fortune 500 companies. He works with companies, associations, universities, and nonprofits to develop highly effective leaders who achieve lasting success by focusing on serving and inspiring greatness in the people around them. Matt envisions a world where the vast majority of people realize that effectively serving others is the key to true greatness. When he’s not traveling for speaking engagements, he can often be found in Nashville, TN.

Foreword Jon Gordon xv

Introduction xix

Part 1 My Journey from prisoner to Monk to Social Entrepreneur 1

1 My Greatest Failure 3

Finding Opportunity in Disaster 8

2 From Selfish to Servant 13

The Practice That Changed My Life 20

What If Businesses Operated in This Way? 21

The Power of Servant Leadership 22

The Essence of Leadership 25

Serving by Helping Organizations Develop

Extraordinary Leaders 26

Part 2 Serve to Be Great: The Business Case 29

3 Winning the War for Talent 31

Attracting Top Talent 36

Fully Engaged People 37

Improving Retention 39

4 Creating a Highly Innovative Culture 41

Linking Innovation Directly to Profit 41

What Does Being Innovative Actually Mean? 47

Building a Highly Innovative Culture 49

Why Serving and Caring for People Results in a

Highly Innovative Culture 52

5 Delivering World-Class Customer Service 57

Quantifying the ROI in Customer Service 61

How Great Leaders Inspire World-Class Customer Service 63

Developing Employees Who Wow Your Customers 66

6 Why Serving Others is a Highly Effective Marketing Tactic 71

Smarter, More Enjoyable Marketing 78

Marketing with the Spirit of Service 81

Part 3 Making The Shift: Becoming The Ultimate Leader 89

7 Making Serving a Habit 91

An Easy Way to Jump in to the Top 1 Percent 93

Action is Most Important 95

The Habit of Serving Others 96

The Little Things Matter 99

What a Teenager Dying of Cancer Taught Me about Leadership 101

8 Grow by Empowering Others 105

Empowered People Equal Better Results 107

Empowering Others Helps Us Become the Ultimate Leaders 109

9 Inspire Greatness 121

Start with Why 123

The Gift of Inspiration 125

Values That Inspire and Guide the Way 129

Character That Inspires 131

True Greatness 132

Self-Sacrifice: The Ultimate Test of Character 136

10 Measuring the Right Things 139

Measuring the Intangibles in Business 140

Be Goals versus Do Goals 142

11 Becoming the Ultimate Leader 149

Becoming the Ultimate Leader is Enjoyable 154

Staying Cool under Pressure 156

The Ultimate Tool for Becoming the Ultimate Leader 157

Making a Profit While Making a Difference 160

Afterword 163

Author’s Note 165

Serve Your Team 167

Connect with Matt 169

About the Author 171

Acknowledgments 173

Appendix: A Quick Start Guide To Mindfulness Training 177

Notes 181

Index 187 

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