How May I Serve?

I remember hearing that phrase—"How may I serve?”—in a podcast I was listening to on a morning walk, many, many years ago. The speaker was Dr. Wayne Dyer, and he was providing guidance to a young person, freshly graduated from college, who was feeling some desperation as they had not landed a high-paying career yet. Wayne suggested to the recent student that re-framing “when is something going to come to me” to “how can I serve.” It shifts the desperation and opens the mind to possibilities. The message really stuck with me from that moment on. 

The idea of “being of service” can be complicated—especially in a culture that traditionally has upheld “what’s in it for me” as a modality for living (those of us who grew up in advertising and marketing know all about “WIIFM radio”). Being of service to something or someone is the message: in giving, we are receiving. There is reciprocity. 

Certainly, those who work in the public and non-profit sectors are close to the service-for-a-greater-good model, but what about for those of us in the for-profit side of life? What are we in service to? Especially leaders and business owners?

There have been multiple books and articles written about Servant Leadership. While the philosophy and concept of leader as servant traces back to indigenous and ancient cultures, it was popularized in business management circles by Robert K. Greenleaf after he published his essay “The Servant as Leader” in 1970. A brief definition from his essay states:

The servant-leader is servant first … it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions … the leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

Over the last few years, I have met with several people who have expressed an interest in the consulting path here at Collabry. And I have met with folks who have been consultants for decades who have an interest in working with us and our clients. In both cases, I try to get an early sense of their service-orientation. 

I do my best to be upfront that “being of service” sometimes means doing tasks that our egos might suggest are below us. Not everything we do during our typical day is going to be the ultimate in strategic consulting. But everything we do is meant to be in service to (in our case) our clients and our co-workers. And by extension, in service to the lives of many others. In my observation, those consultants who have a higher orientation to “how may I serve” have been the most successful, and the most sought after. 

I know many business owners and leaders, myself included, that aspire to being a servant-leader—and it’s not always perfect! But the idea of “how can I serve” has become core to how I work. And when I started Collabry as a consulting and communications company, it was (and still is) the number one core value that guides our work and growth as an organization. The idea translates into one of our main purposes—helping our clients sleep better at night because they know we’re on the project.