Service Leadership

What will motivate an organization’s employees to be fully engaged in the corporate purpose? How can a company be more supportive of each individual’s pursuit of workplace meaning? Service Leadership answers these questions and more.

“Service leadership” is the recognition and cultivation of the varied interests and beliefs of employees on their quest for purpose at work. An organization will not get the most out of its staff unless it respects each individual’s framework for the pursuit of meaning, which is often done in the context of spirituality and religion. Service leadership takes many forms and is not the same for everyone. People can and want to learn how to become service leaders.

Service Leadership shows how these ideas can be implemented through a detailed framework. Extensive research confirms that organizations that do not address the existing core belief systems of employees will be disadvantaged in the marketplace. Interviews with 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.

Richard J. Goossen is chairman of the board of the Entrepreneurial Leaders Organization, director of the Entrepreneurial Leaders Institute, Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford, and strategic counsel to Covenant Family Wealth Advisors. He is the author of several books, including Entrepreneurial Leadership: Finding Your Calling, Making a Difference and E-Preneur: From Wall Street to Wiki: Succeeding as a Crowdpreneur in the New Virtual Marketplace.

Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is chairman and CEO of Roosevelt Global Fiduciary Governance LLC, a leading strategy thought leadership company. Malloch conceptualizes and executes some of today’s most dynamic international projects. He has served in the US State Department and was president of the World Economic Development Congress sponsored by CNN, where Lady Margaret Thatcher dubbed him a “global sherpa.”

“Goossen and Malloch are masters at coupling important leadership concepts with compelling practical examples. In Service Leadership, they leverage extensive research to provide informative accounts of the motivations and practices of service leaders across a variety of companies and contexts. Surely, readers will be inspired to align their own work and the work of others in pursuit of meaningful service.” —Mitchell J. Neubert, Professor of Management and Chavanne Chair of Christian Ethics in Business, Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University

“Hard thinking and tough choices are the marks of Service Leadership. That is what Goossen and Malloch’s book demonstrates. The naïve, the simple-minded, the neurotic, the self-absorbed, and the power-hungry will inevitably create authoritarian and protectionist structures. But it is “service leadership” that co-creates a value driven business ecosystem, and makes it possible to have more satisfied and more productive employees. In today's volatile and complex business environment, that is the only route to sustained and sustainable organizational success.” —Prabhu Guptara, Distinguished Professor of Global Business, Management & Public Policy, William Carey University, India; Executive Director, Relational Analytics, Cambridge, UK

“This is a major and insightful addition to the growing constructive literature on employer-employee relations. It is must-reading for any student of leadership—indeed for anyone who wants to lead." —Nicolas Capaldi, Distinguished Professor of Business Ethics, Director, Center for Spiritual Capital, Loyola University School of Business

“Before the needle in a compass will respond to the pull of the North Pole, it must be magnetized. Once it is magnetized it will never be the same again. The effective leader, the service leader is the element that magnetizes the needle. They model excellence, determination, values and accountability. They are champions of the dream as this book wonderfully explains.” —James H. Amos, Jr., Chairman and CEO, Eagle Alliance Investments LLC

“Richard Goossen and Theodore Malloch have given the world of business an important gift and reminder. In all their extensive research they have uncovered something that was already present in the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago. In German language the words for “calling” and “job” have the same root—“Beruf.” If you follow your “Berufung” (calling) as Luther himself termed it you will follow the purpose of life and become more engaged in work, in leisure, at home and in worship. Service Leadership is great encouragement toward this approach.” —Timo Plutschinski, Director of the WEA Business Coalition

“Through extensive research and powerful prose, the authors make a strong case for valuing the spiritual dimension of employees in organizations of all sizes. Anyone who leads a group or an organization stands to gain from their profound insights on the pursuit of meaning in the workplace.” —D. Michael Lindsay, author of View from the Top, President, Gordon College