In the text, Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing Wisdom of Leading by Serving Others, the second is “Put People First”. This pillars deals with the relationships leaders have with the people in their lives. It states research shows that putting people before profits is a profitable choice and companies that adopt this value “out perform their competitors” (pg. 36). Serving others by our actions is an important aspect of servant-leadership and the desire to affect the lives of others as a “calling”. In discussing the strengths of a leader, Frick describes the lessons taught to him by his mentor, Dr. Ann McGee:

“She taught me how to celebrate, but also how to be accountable.”

I thought that this quote was particularly powerful because it is so relevant. In life as well as business, we will encounter successes and failures and learning to deal with them appropriately is key. These are such hard lessons to learn and in the spirit of the layout of the book, I asked myself did I know how to celebrate my successes. I feel that I have learned what accountability entails and in my daily attempts to not abuse, I am comfortable with accountability. Celebrating is harder, so my annotated question is:

Is celebrating successes harder than taking account for things that go bad?

Do you think that companies should spend more resources teaching their upper level managers these so that they can share them with their teams? Will the teams be any stronger if they learn and act them out together?