Quotes from Robert K. Greenleaf

The world of affairs, as I have experienced it, is a very ambiguous one. The problem of preparing people to serve and be served by this society is, as Chesterton says, that the world is nearly reasonable but not quite. It is not illogical, yet it is a trap for logicians.

Orthodoxy is a dam that is built by persons who think they have reached the ultimate in human thought, and that there will never be anything as good. They are finding that it is easier to become interested in the dam than in the great current that it is holding back. These

W. Edwards Deming—that arguably, over 90 percent of problems are due to bad systems, not bad people. However, Greenleaf correctly points out that people are the programmers.

The great asset of a broad liberal arts education, as I know it, is that it does not have much bearing on any vocation in particular but has great relevance to all vocations in general—provided that the college environment within which it is carried out is accepted as real, as real as any chapter in one's life, and provided that an explicit effort is made to prepare students to serve and be served by the present society, using the college experience as the working laboratory.

Joy is inward, it is generated inside. It is not found outside and brought in. It is for those who accept the world as it is, part good, part bad, and who identify with the good by adding a little island of serenity to it. Hermann

The skill of foresight is crucial. The "lead" that a leader has is his ability to foresee an event that must be dealt with before others see it so that he can act on it his way, the right way, while the initiative is his.

The grand design of education is to excite, rather than pretend to satisfy, an ardent thirst for information; and to enlarge the capacity of the mind, rather than to store it with knowledge, however useful.

Knowledge is but a tool. The spirit is of the essence.

The answer to this question is that trustees need a new view of people at their best in institutional roles. That view can be simply stated: No person is complete; no one is to be entrusted with all. Completeness is to be found only in the complementary talents of several who relate as equals. This flouts one of the time-honored assumptions—almost an axiom—of administrative lore: "You cannot manage by committee! Delegation of authority must be made to an individual.

The new assumption is that delegation of authority from trustees to operating executives is best made to a team of several persons whose exceptional talents are complementary and who relate to one another as equals, under the leadership of a primus inter pares (as discussed in the last chapter).

Some basic principles will need to be explicitly accepted, such as that no one, absolutely no one, is to be entrusted with the operational use of power without the close oversight of fully functioning trustees.

Preparing the young for responsible roles as servants is neither expensive nor difficult to do, but it is not now the focus of much explicit effort. It is assumed to be one of those things that is implicit; it is just supposed to happen. And we have charmed ourselves into believing that it is being done. It is not being done!

Too much of the public concern for the quality of society is still devoted to caring directly for individuals and not enough attention goes to caring for institutions and the way they are structured. Structural flaws can cause harm to individuals; conversely, conceptually sound and ably administered institutions can build people and enrich society. All too often we seem to disregard this important influence that institutions can have on people.

Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.

Love without laughter can be grim and oppressive. Laughter without love can be derisive and venomous. Together they make for greatness of spirit.

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.