The essence of leadership
In The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership, a book that has sold 480,000 copies in Brazil, author James C. Hunter presents a fictional tale that analyzes the main attributes of a leader on the basis of Christian principles
José Enrique Barreiro

John Daily is a businessman whose outwardly successful life is not going well at all. He is the general manager of a flat glass factory in the US state of Michigan, with 500 employees and annual sales of over USD 100 million. He lives with his wife and two children in a beautiful apartment, has a house on the shores of Lake Erie and two brand-new cars in his garage. He can take two vacations per year and has built up a sizeable savings account. But he is still unhappy with his life, so he decides to attend a weeklong leadership retreat at a Benedictine monastery in northern Michigan.

When he arrives in the monastery, John has a big surprise: the retreat will be led by Brother Simeon, who is none other than former business executive Leonard Hoffman, a man who featured in the Fortune 500 in the 1980s. Hoffman had written The Great Paradox: To Lead You must Serve, a book that spent over three years on the bestseller list. Then one fine day, at the peak of his career, Hoffman had disappeared from public life. John had never heard anything more about him until he found him at the monastery, renamed Brother Simeon. During their first class, the former executive makes something clear to the group: he is going to challenge them to reflect on the great responsibility they took on when they chose to become leaders.

James Hunter uses a fictional narrative to present and elaborate on concepts of leadership. He believes that a true leader is a servant. In other words, leaders must identify and satisfy people’s legitimate needs, not their desires and wishes. He demonstrates that true leadership requires tremendous selflessness from a leader, who must establish and maintain healthy relationships with clients, partners, shareholders and suppliers (everything in life revolves around relationships, and this is especially true in business, because without people there is no business). A leader must put clients first (if the client isn’t being served and kept happy, there will be no next course because everybody will be out of work). One participant asks: What is the most important ingredient for a successful relationship? Simeon has a simple answer: trust. Trust is the glue that holds relationships together. (For anyone familiar with the Odebrecht Entrepreneurial Technology, James “Simeon” Hunter’s answer sounds very familiar. In fact, Norberto Odebrecht began expressing similar concepts in his writings nearly 40 years ago, and has practiced them for over 60 years. This observation is not meant to celebrate his pioneering spirit but simply to point out a historical fact.)

The most significant aspect of The Servant is the relationship between leadership and the highest Christian principle: love. According to Brother Simeon, love is patient and good; it is never boastful or arrogant, it does not act rudely or selfishly; it does not condemn mistakes or take delight in wickedness but delights in truth. Love is tolerance. It never fails. John Daily realizes that these are also the qualities of leadership. Simeon agrees, but makes a point of explaining that the ideas and the model of leadership he is presenting are not his. He has borrowed them from Jesus. It was He who showed that influence and leadership are built on service.

The reward for loving leadership, says Simeon, is happiness, inner satisfaction and the conviction of being in harmony with the deepest and most permanent principles of life. Serving others frees us from the shackles of the ego and the self-centered focus on ourselves that destroy the joy of living.

Ever since Max Weber published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in the early 20th century, relationships between religious and economic principles have begun to make sense. At the end of that century, in La société de confiance (The Society of Trust), Alain Peyrefitte returned to this theme, making it clear that there are many religious intangibles involved in the processes of economic development. Without claiming the stature of a Weber or Peyrefitte, James Hunter returns to the subject in his own way by establishing a direct connection between Christian principles and leadership in the workplace; between the monk and the executive.

Imbued with these principles, John Daily returns home a new man, determined to change his ways. When he embraces his wife, she says: “What a great hug!” She can’t remember the last time she’s let go first.