The Servant Leader's Manifesto

by Omar L. Harris

From the author of the breakthrough book on high performance team leadership, Leader Board: The DNA of High Performance Teams, comes a call to action for leaders to transform in the face of a global employee engagement crisis.

Leadership today is outmoded and ill-suited to activate and engage the most diverse work-force in history.

This is why leaders capable of inspiring, engaging, aligning, coaching, and coaxing out individual and team brilliance are more in need than ever before.

Hence the reason for this manifesto.

Paradoxically, the answer does not lie in systems but in humanity.

The more technology pervades our lives, the greater our need for clarity, courage, caring, culture, and talent cultivation—all things that machines cannot create for us.

We cannot wait for C-suite executives to respond appropriately to this crisis of employee engagement.

We—the managers responsible for the people who create value for our companies—must do this for ourselves, and our people.

This is our manifesto!

Genres: Leadership, Business, Nonfiction

110 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2020

About the author

Omar L. Harris is the founder of Intent Consulting and the architect of WHOM — a character intelligence framework built on positive psychology and Jim Collins' research, designed to measure the part of you that you can actually grow.

Before he built WHOM, he spent 22 years operating businesses across four continents as a senior pharmaceutical executive. In the decade since, working with thousands of leaders on their toughest people problems, he grew convinced that the personal-development industry was answering the wrong question.

Personality tests measure who you are. The tools that matter most measure who you're choosing to become.

That's what WHOM measures — across four dimensions: Work-Ethic, Heart, Optimism, and Maturity. The character you build, not the personality you're stuck with.

Omar is the bestselling, award-winning author of seven previous books on leadership, character, and team performance. Grow With W.H.O.M. is his introduction to the framework that took him a decade to build — and a lifetime to understand.

Reviews

[Matt McAvoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is, quite simply, a hugely professional business strategy publication, by a highly proficient author. Servant leadership, in a nutshell, is the art of good people management skills, which are essential in modern business and, as anyone with any degree of business sense or even just common sense will tell you, creates an infinitely more productive and engaged workforce. Valuing employees and giving them input, and a psychological or even actual stake in the company’s future, is undoubtedly more beneficial for all parties concerned. That’s what this book is about – with detail. Whilst equality people management is a common message, it is unlikely you will read such a comprehensive, properly sourced and extremely articulate case for servant leadership style elsewhere. This book is simply a must for those working in management at any level, as it combines business reporting, motivational quotes from inspiring historical moments and, perhaps most vitally, the importance of positive psychology in industry leadership. Likewise, if you are an ambitious employee, looking for ways to achieve greater status or purpose in your current position, this book also shows how servant leaders can be motivated into existence by juniors, if they are persuasive enough.

What sets this book apart is its quality, and the professionalism of its author Omar L. Harris – he is superb; if you are looing for ways to inspire an under-motivated workforce, he can teach you a lot, to be sure. He doesn’t just write a book on the subject, but present an entire ideology of working practice, as thoroughly and clearly as he can. Furthermore, Omar is experienced enough to provide a control sample, via the more traditional, mercenary approach to business management – humbly and with some embarrassment, it has to be said, as he fully admits that whilst the traditional model boasts financial success, revisiting companies where he applied it years earlier showed evidence of a bitter legacy.

At around midway, Omar begins to apply his model to apparently all of the world’s social injustices and, whilst there is relevance here, these moments do seem to veer the book toward another overall, much bigger agenda of liberal discoursing. But, it quickly gets on track, and these parts are acceptable inevitabilities of an informative non-fictional book of this day and age; furthermore, in the main, this book is right on the nail in its message. Perhaps by the end, I felt one important element was missing, and that was more concrete evidence – proven case studies and evidence from companies which have put servant leadership into practice policy; such a section as this was perhaps conspicuous by its absence, and may have contributed in small part to the underlying feeling of global idealism.

There is some fantastic referencing in the book, high quality, credible and comprehensively crossed in an appendix of endnotes. There is no question that Omar has put huge work into this publication, both in its writing and the knowledge that involved. He has produced an essential book for every management professional’s business bookshelf.

[Shelby Elenburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Received as a GoodReads Giveaway. I am a physician with life coaching training, so many of these concepts are familiar to me but framed in a different way. I appreciated the relatability to the healthcare field, where the medical minded often naturally lead from a servant leadership framework, which clashes with the Leadership 2.0 model of hospital administrators and executives. I know examples make relationships between paradigms more understandable, but discussions of Steve Jobs were a little antagonistic for my taste. Otherwise, great pacing and presentation and I will share with colleagues!

[L E · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you for this copy I received in a Goodreads Giveaway.
This book is a succinct and impactful. It makes servant leadership seem very attainable and the way to success. It got me fired up and now I look forward to reading the author's other book - "Leader Board."

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I strongly agree with Harris’ desire to revolutionize leadership into servant leadership. Employees are humans and people not just workers. They have their own goals and desires and I think it’s important to try and find those and help them play to their strengths in the roles they choose. I am not always a perfect leader, sometimes I fall prey to the circle of managing up like leaders above me, but people are the most important thing. Aside from being aligned in my philosophy, I did find suggested further reading great, and appreciated that this was short and sweet.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short but impactful

This book tied together so many aspects of the leadership role models I know and try to embody. It was an Aha! I get it now! read. I recommend anyone and everyone read this book by Mr. Harris; particularly those who are leading a team, company, or any other group with goals.

[Sally Rejas]

"Don't be a boss, be a jedi!" Now why did't the book start with that. Loved the reference and samples of servant leaders. The do's and don'ts. Very easy and fun read.

[Jeffrey Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book. Could have been just as effective without the paragraph in chapter 7 where the author blames assault weapons for the death of people and goes on a short liberal tangent. If you can set that part aside, the book was great otherwise.

[Corie · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times the book was hard to follow and formatting got in the way of the author's message. I wish it had more--It barely scratched the surface of servant leadership and leaves the reader with a shallow understanding.

[Emma Thornton]

Also read for school🤪

[Alexandria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Nice quick read filled with great information and insights.

[Christy Mcfadden · Rating 2 out of 5]

Skimmed. Pretty choppy read. One of those books in which a video is more effective.

[Jon Conn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this book and I had a difficult time understanding the author’s voice as sometimes I had to rewind to ensure I heard correctly. There was also a good amount of “leadership jargon,” which I’m not a fan of, just use plain, simple words. There were some interesting and thought-provoking ideas scattered throughout the book, and I appreciated the concise message. I also enjoyed the other book recommendations the author provided near the end. Thanks.

[Jenna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I agree with most of the points in this book, but I don't think stating that good leaders treat people well is particularly revolutionary. The formatting was strange and distracting with bold sentences, numbered lists, and paragraphs with a stripe in the margin. I was surprised at the lack of sources/influences only to find them in their own chapter at the end. I got the impression throughout that being turned down for a promotion or denied a raise resulted in the author's negative attitude towards business leaders.

Then there were the unnecessary political moments. I hope that, as a small female, if I ever find myself in a dangerous situation one of his servant leaders will pop out of the shadows to save me since apparently having the right to defend myself is "antiquated."

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway.

[Marni · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this as part of a class on leadership. During the discussion we hadn't brought up this book yet, so I casually asked, "So who loved this one?" Silence. Then chuckles. No one in the class liked it.

My reasons...

This book needed an editor BAD. Weird word choices, no transitions between ideas, and random bolded sections (sometimes with a line down the side for EXTRA EMPHASIS). I started twitching early on, but my favorite, er, least favorite example is regarding his M.H.T. Immediately after introducing Mindset, Habits, and Tracking, he reiterates this great combination as "mindsets, habits, and commitment levels." In explaining the three, he hardly ever references the actual M.H.T. words, so the reader is wondering why he chose them.

But even worse, the ideas. If you've ever studied servant leadership through true experts like Greenleaf and Covey, you'll note the bits of truth in here that are presented then bent. It made my skin crawl. For instance, he explains that servant leaders are people developers, then turns right around and says they are hard to replace. If they are actually people builders, there should be others they have trained to take their place someday.

Another example from page 35-36.
"If you can achieve consistent results without burning people out or throwing them under a bus, you will gain just as much (or even more) trust and respect within your organization as someone who commands and controls their way to results." So don't destroy people and you'll get respect similar to someone that commands and controls. Neither are good examples of the respect we should be looking for.

I emailed the instructor leading up to the class and asked if she was presenting this as a good example, because if so we need to talk. She told me to keep looking for truth. The purpose of using this in the class was to help us see that truth was there, but not completely. Everyone got it. I do not recommend this unless that is your purpose.

[Megan Tidd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Succint and valuable modern leadership