If serving is below you, leadership is beyond you.

—Anonymous

The first part of the Caring to Lead Leader Formula is to serve. You won't get those you lead to even think about following you unless you serve. Pouring a big portion of this selfless action into your leadership is the magic sauce of Care to Lead Leaders. It's the first ingredient of connection between you and your team and organization. And it is the fastest way, hands down, leaders can connect and start building trust with their people. Service starts with your personal commitment to selflessness.

Selflessness

An anthropologist was studying the culture of a remote African tribe. On the final days of his studies he had prepared to leave and was waiting for transportation to take him to the airport. While waiting, the children of this tribe had gathered around him as they had done many times before.

The anthropologist decided to gather the candy he had collected from a town he had visited on his way to the remote tribe days before. He filled a basket with the sweets and then placed it underneath a fairly large tree. He then walked about 100 or so yards from the tree and drew a line in the dirt. The children were told that when he said go, they were to run as fast as they could and that the first one to the basket would win all of the candy for themselves.

The anthropologist gave the signal and then something surprisingly happened. The children held hands and ran to the tree together. Once there, they excitedly sat in a circle and shared the candy. The anthropologist was a bit shocked. He asked them why they all went together when one of them could have had all of the candy for him‐ or herself.

A younger girl in the group looked up at him and said, “How can one of us be happy if all the others are sad?”

Africans use a term called Ubuntu. It means “I am, because we are.” Desmond Tutu, the well‐known South African human rights activist, said of Ubuntu, “It speaks of the very essence of being human. When we want to give high praise to someone we say, Yu, u nobuntu; hey, so‐and‐so has Ubuntu. Then you are generous, you are hospitable, and you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, my humanity is caught up, inextricably bound up, in yours. We belong in a bundle of life.”¹ Ubuntu is at the very core of Care to Lead Leaders and what they do as they work on building team and organizational cultures focused on selflessness and service.

Ubuntu is everything that a leader should commit to and aspire to practice, to be, and to create. Like the little girl who so sweetly answered the anthropologist, it's about your personal selflessness: caring about and putting others first. It is realizing that you are not a leader without those you lead. You are a leader because others have chosen to follow you, not because you were simply appointed to be such. Because of that you have an important and even sacred responsibility to selflessly serve those you lead with all of your heart, might, mind, soul, and strength. You aren't superior to others; you are dependent on them as much as they are dependent on you. Leadership is not about you; it is about each of you. That's the essence of Ubuntu and it is the way of life for Care to Lead Leaders.

As you commit to and practice selflessness as a Care to Lead Leader, your leadership naturally instills and creates Ubuntu types of cultures on your teams and in your organizations. Service becomes a priority, and team and organizational concerns about each other's needs is foundational to who you become together. Everyone is more focused on what they can do together than what they can do alone. Egos, money, and career aspirations take a back seat to the success of the entire team. There is no such thing as a solitary individual. When one succeeds, it is the success of everyone, because everyone had a role in it. Can you imagine the power of teams, organizations, and even entire nations practicing Ubuntu, with such a large focus on selflessly serving one another? It is a complete and powerful game changer for sure.

Creating such cultures of selflessness and service starts with you, and it always starts with you, as I will highlight now and several times throughout this chapter. Personally focusing on selfless service is the key to unlocking Care to Lead Leadership.

Service Unlocks Leadership

Not too long ago, I was speaking at Southwest Airlines. The airline, as you might know, has a strong culture and reputation of caring and service that many other companies have tried to replicate over the years. Although historically the airline industry has lost money, Southwest Airlines has amazingly turned a profit year after year. As I spoke to many of the employees there, I quickly learned that much of that success has had to do with their deep connection to their history, culture, and a focus on serving each other, which started with their cofounder and past CEO, Herb Kelleher. He was a model of what he hoped the culture at Southwest would create.

Author Ekaterina Walter shares an interesting story on Inc.com of a friend, Gregg Gregory, who was once on the same Southwest flight that Kelleher was on. With a giant Mickey Mouse baseball hat on, Gregory had noticed the CEO way up front in the boarding line. Although he thought it kind of cool, he didn't really think much more about it, until Kelleher walked by him on the plane taking a seat all the way at the back and then plopping himself in a middle seat. As you may or may not know, the back of the plane and a middle seat for most passengers are the least coveted spots and seats on the entire plane.

As the aircraft reached a safe altitude, Gregory watched Kelleher walk to the front of the plane where he began chatting with airline attendants for a little while. The CEO then made his way down the aisle and started assisting flight attendants by serving peanuts and beverages to passengers. Walter writes, “Eventually he came up to Gregory's seat and said, ‘Hi. My name is Herb Kelleher. Thank you for flying my airline. Can I get you something to drink?’”²

Herb Kelleher's actions on that flight was what Care to Lead Leaders do. Service is a way of life for Care to Lead Leaders, and as mentioned previously, it spreads throughout their teams and organizations. It's something they do without thinking about because it is something they always do. They are regularly asking themselves, what can I do to help someone, what can I do to cheer someone else up, what can I do to make something easier for others, what can I do to inspire those I lead? They deeply understand that they need and depend on those they lead as much as their people need them, and those they lead know this. Ubuntu!

Selfless service signals a number of things in your leadership to others. It conveys that you care, that you can be trusted, that you are approachable, that you have wisdom and direction others can benefit from, and that you are someone to be followed. In other words, your service to your teams and organizations is your key to unlocking your leadership. In fact, as mentioned previously, it's the quickest way there is to establishing trust in others and yourself as a leader.

Service is fundamental to the rest of the Care to Lead Leader Formula. As with all formulas, you can't miss this part; it is the key ingredient to everything else. It is a staple. The other parts of the formula in this book are deeply connected to the principle of selfless service, as I highlight in the following chapters.

Service Changes Hearts, and Changed Hearts Change People, Teams, and Organizations

I have always found it amazing how service changes people and as a result people change the world around them. It's why we have a Global Youth Service Day, International Volunteer Day, National Volunteer Week, and Random Acts of Kindness Week, to name a few. It's also the reason we have wonderful organizations dedicated to service, such as the Lion's Clubs International, Kiwanis, and the Rotary Club. It's because we as a world understand that service changes hearts, and changed hearts together change all of us. It can even change the heart of an enemy.

The Civil War was one of the most ugly and vicious wars in American history. At least 620,000 men lost their lives in battle, which was approximately 2.5% of the entire population of the country at the time. Total casualties exceeded those of all other American wars, from the Revolution through Vietnam.

In winter 1862 one of the most decisive and bloodiest battles of the Civil War was fought in Fredericksburg, Virginia. One in 10 Union soldiers had lost his life, though the Union soldiers far outnumbered their confederate adversary. When US president Abraham Lincoln got word of the casualties, he was quoted as crying, “If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it.”

The campaign in Fredericksburg had initially looked promising for the Union Army, but it quickly turned bad after many blunderings and red tape delays. On December 13, 1862, Union forces attacked the Confederates at Marye's Heights, a large sloping hill overlooking the town of Fredericksburg. The Confederate army had fortified themselves against a stone wall that ran along the crest of the hill, sitting four deep and out of the sight of the Union army.

As the Union army began their advance, they were viciously ambushed by the hiding Confederates. By the morning of December 14, more than 12,000 Union soldiers were injured or fell at the hands of the Confederate army; not a single Union soldier made it to the wall and very few Union soldiers came within 50 yards of their firing adversaries.

Many of those remaining on the battlefield were still alive, but they suffered from wounds, cold, and thirst. During that long night, both sides were forced to listen to the cries and moans of those soldiers still living. Several described these cries to be “weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear.” Listening to these men who were “lying crippled on a hillside so many miles from home—broke the hearts of soldiers on both sides of the battlefield.”³

Richard Rowland Kirkland, a 19‐year old infantry sergeant for the Confederacy, could not bear to listen to the suffering soldiers any longer. That morning, he asked his commanding officer if he could scale the wall and provide water for the suffering Union troops who could be seen strewn across the battlefield. The young sergeant exclaimed to his commanding officer, “All night and all day I have heard those poor people crying for water. Water! Water! And I can't stand it any longer. I come to ask permission to go and give them water.”⁴

The commanding officer initially denied Kirkland's request because of the danger, but with Kirkland's persistence he later granted him permission. With several canteens hung around his neck and to the astonishment of men on both sides, Kirkland climbed the wall to provide much needed help. Several shots were instantly fired, thinking that Kirkland's motives were to wound more. However, after realizing what was happening, the shooting quickly ceased.

Sergeant Kirkland made his way to each soldier, comforting them the best he could by laying his jacket over one and providing water to the thirsty lips of another. For the next hour and a half, he would scale the wall a number of times with his canteens to get more water for his enemy as cries of “Water, please water, for God's sake water” could be heard all over the field. It was a heartfelt and loving act of service that stopped a vicious war for just a moment.

The Union Army was actually planning to make another attack that morning; however, they decided otherwise and marched a different direction. Many attribute the Union Army's changed heart to the selfless hero who risked his life to aid an enemy whom he had risked his life to defeat the day before. Sergeant Richard Kirkland's actions changed the hearts of men on both sides. Regardless of what position you took or side you were on, I believe every soldier was different from that day forward because of the selfless service of Sergeant Richard Kirkland. He became known on both sides as the Angel of Marye's Heights.

Service changes hearts, and changed hearts change teams and organizations and even entire armies. You may not ever be asked to risk your life for someone you lead, let alone an enemy. However, service is a tool that you can regularly use to turn your heart toward those you lead and to turn their hearts toward you and toward each other, even the hearts of your adversary.

I told my children as they were growing up that the fastest way to make a friend out of someone you don't like, or to make a friend out of someone who doesn't like you, is to serve. One kind act, even one simple kind act, can change the way others feel about you. Service has the ability to strongly influence every relationship that you have as a leader, both on your team(s) and in your organization(s).

On occasion I teach part‐time in the school of business at the university in the town I live. I give an assignment to students each semester in which I ask them to share with me how service has changed a team they belonged to. One student shared with me a project team that she had been assigned to in school. She said that this team consisted of a mix of strong and diverse personalities and that there was personal conflict almost from day one. Teammates started showing up late for meetings and turning in their portions of the work late, which of course had downstream effects for the rest of the team. She was worried that this was going to end badly and that they were going to get a failing grade.

One evening during class it had been snowing rather hard. As she was walking out to her car, she didn't look forward to scraping and brushing the snow off of her windows. But as she got closer, she noticed to her relief that her windows had already been cleared of snow. She stopped and looked around the parking lot to see who had done such a kind thing and spotted one of her teammates going around scraping and brushing the snow off of the cars of each of her project teammates! From that day forward the hearts of everyone on that team changed she said. Teammates started caring more about each other and as a result caring more about the project. The team ended up with a much better grade than she had thought they would. One teammate's choice to lead through service changed the hearts and performance of this project team.

Several years ago, I was speaking with a client who was the leader and business owner of a growing company. He had shared how at one time he did not like his job very much. He even started dreading coming into the office each morning. “I liked everything about what I did, except for the people problems,” he said. I can see some of you right now nodding your heads and saying yep! Tired of the gossip, negative attitudes, and having employees regularly coming to him complaining about what others had done or said, he was at his wits' end. That all changed, when one member of his team made the choice to start serving others. When this teammate had finished her work and sometimes just at the end of the day, she would ask others what she could do to help them. Her service became contagious and over time others on the team started asking what they could do to help each other. To his surprise hearts began to change and the team as a whole began to change as well. Negative interactions began to be replaced slowly with more positive interactions and he started getting his sanity back! One person's choice to lead through service changed the hearts of a team and changed this owner's company.

When Rodney King was assaulted by four policemen and each of the four officers were then acquitted, community anger turned into horrible violence and significant property damage. The 1992 Los Angeles riots resulted in 63 deaths, 2,383 injuries, approximately 12,000 arrests, and close to 3,600 buildings set on fire with 1,100 being totally destroyed. There were times that calls were coming in every minute of another building being set on fire.

I was a student in college at the time living in Southern California. I clearly remember the live footage of fires, devastation, protests, arrests, and of many angry people throughout the Los Angeles metropolitan area. It was a scary moment when civility and quiet protests quickly gave way to complete disorder, mobs, looting, brutality, and bloodshed.

However, in the heart of the riots in South Central Los Angeles and surrounded by destruction and smoldering buildings, five McDonald's restaurants were left completely unscathed. Not a window broken or a single streak of spray paint could be found on any part of these five buildings. A miracle? No, not really. The entrepreneurs and leaders of these McDonald's restaurants were servants in the community. They had given hundreds of basketballs away to youth groups and basketball centers in this economically poor area. They had given hundreds of free cups of coffee every morning to homeless men. They also created jobs and put in place literacy programs. When people were asked why they had left the McDonald's buildings untouched during the riots, they responded by saying that those businesses were like one of them and were always looking after the community. A group of leaders and entrepreneurs who made the choice to lead through service had softened the hearts of a community toward their businesses, which in turn saved five of their restaurants from destruction.

What impact will you have when you choose to regularly serve? What hearts do you have the opportunity to soften and change? How can you as a Care to Lead Leader not only serve more to connect at a deeper level but also to get your team to serve more and connect at unprecedented levels? The answers to these questions start with your understanding of why service works.

The Magic of Service (The Service Effect)

What is going on that makes service magically work on teams and in organizations? I have noticed for years that if I was a bit moody or even feeling a little down, that if I forgot myself and did something kind for someone else, my mood would change instantly. I didn't quite understand why, but it was a great tool for getting me out of any funk I was in. Perhaps you have noticed the same thing. This is the very reason therapists have used service through volunteering as a way to combat depression.

I also discovered that service changed how I felt toward others and oftentimes how they felt about me. There is a strong correlation between service and caring. The more we serve, the more we care, and the more we care, the greater desire we have to serve. I particularly have noticed this in a variety of leadership positions I have held. The more I consciously served those I was leading, the happier I was, the greater caring connection I made, and the stronger our team and organizations became.

I started calling this the service effect. It is the reason for the change you begin to see on teams and in organizations and companies that make service a priority. It's the very reason why, as talked about previously, service changes hearts, and changed hearts change teams. It connects people and entire groups of people in ways that nothing else can. It benefits teams, customers, and even families. Entire cultures within organizations are built on creating this service effect, and the positives of such focus are difficult to deny.

A study was conducted by the Great Place to Work organization of several hundred companies and more than 380,000 employees. The research showed that companies who made giving back through service a priority were associated with greater employee retention, higher levels of brand ambassadorship on the part of workers, and more enthusiastic employees. Staffers who believe their organizations give back to the community are a striking 13 times more likely to look forward to coming to work compared to employees who do not perceive their employers to be generous toward the community.⁵

We just feel better about companies, organizations, teams, and leaders that are focused on serving. The reason is due to the service effect and its three connecting components; connection, reciprocity, and multiplicity (figure 1.1). There is scientific research to back up each one.

Connection

The first phase of the service effect begins with the act of service. You are probably familiar with Charles Dickens's classic story, “A Christmas Carol.” An elderly curmudgeon by the name of Ebenezer Scrooge is the focal point of the story. He is mean, lacks any type of giving spirit, and is obsessed with his own personal gain. Scrooge is a miserable person, as any person who focuses entirely on himself would be. However, on the night of Christmas Eve he is given a second chance to redeem his sad mortal life in the form of three Christmas spirits. The ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas present, and Christmas yet to come take him on a personal eye‐opening journey. When Scrooge wakes up Christmas morning, he is a changed man. As a result, he makes amends to those he had wronged before by doing a number of selfless good deeds for others. Service is now his focus, and he becomes the opposite of what he was in his past. He becomes filled with love and a lot of giddiness and laughter.

When we make the choice to serve others with pure motives and not expect anything in return it feels not only right but good, too. Ebenezer Scrooge was experiencing what is called the helper's high or the giver's glow. His kind deeds felt unlike anything he had experienced before. Science shows that when we selflessly give to others we are flooded by powerful neurochemicals, such as endorphins (released to help our nervous system cope with pain and stress), dopamine (helps us take action toward our goals), serotonin (helps us feel significant and important), and oxytocin (creates trust, cooperation, and connection). This quartet of chemicals is the factor behind happiness. No wonder we feel so good when we are helping others! These chemicals are not only released by the act of service but also when vicariously watching someone serve, anticipating service, or recalling something kind we did for someone.

What does this mean for you as a leader and those you lead? Serving others has the potential to connect you to the people you lead in deeper and more meaningful ways due to these neurochemicals, specifically, oxytocin—the same connection chemical released when a mother feeds her baby. As a leader you want to personally create connections with those you lead. Connection leads to greater trust, empathy, and loyalty between you and those you lead. It also creates greater trust, empathy, and loyalty between and across your teams and within organizations. Connection is the foundation and fabric to effective leadership.

Serving your team puts into motion real changes to the team(s) and organization(s) you lead. As you start to feel a deeper connection with those you serve, they begin to feel a deeper connection with you. This is in large part due to reciprocity.

Service to Results

The key for Care to Lead Leaders is to take action now and start selflessly serving. Your kind and generous acts of service are the start to changing your culture and creating a multiplicity of goodness. When you begin to regularly think of others, the magic begins to happen. That was the case for entrepreneur, angel investor, public speaker, mentor, and philanthropist Amy Rees Anderson. In a Forbes article written by Anderson,⁸ she shares a story that demonstrates the power of what one leader can create and how that is multiplied not only across an organization but across a customer base as well.

During her time as CEO of a past company that Anderson had founded, she began to notice that holidays were great for some of her employees and not so great for others who were going through hard times. She creatively thought of ways she could help everyone to have a happy holiday. Anderson said, “I realized that as the leader I had the ability to get the employees focused on helping each other over the holidays by launching what [was] called our company ‘Santa Store.’”

The Santa Store became a game changer in her organization. The way it worked was that during the holiday season, employees who were able were asked to go through their things at home and determine if there was anything that they didn't need any longer and contribute them to the store. Employees were then told that they could take any items from the store that they needed. It was a chance to both give and receive. Anderson said, “We had employees donating everything from kids' clothing to adult clothing, to toys, DVDs, video games, winter coats, gloves, computers, bicycles, televisions, DVD players, furniture, books, games … you name it, we had it donated.”

There was no limit to what employees could take from the tables of the store; however, they were asked to only take the things they truly needed for their families so that there was an assurance that employees' families were taken care of first. Once employees had enough to make sure their families were taken care of, they made time for them to look through what was left and take what they thought might help someone else in need that year. This became a great thing for everyone, but as Anderson explains, it didn't stop there.

She said through employees giving compassionately to others in need, the morale of the company started to improve. “People were happier at work, they were kinder to one another, and then suddenly that ripple effect began spreading beyond the walls of our company.” For example, employees on phones started showing much higher levels of care and concern for their customer's needs, which resulted in more focus on how they could make their customers happy. Employees started going the extra mile and sending personal handwritten thank‐you notes to customers, and as a result Anderson said, “over time we saw these clients begin to go the extra mile for us as well. They began referring more business to us, both from their own organizations as well as from other organizations. As a result, our company began to grow and flourish in ways we couldn't have imagined and the impact to our bottom line was amazing.”

One leader, one creative service idea, and the determination of that leader to make it happen across her organization affected not only people but results as well through the service effect of connection, reciprocity, and multiplicity. Service is magical when it starts with you—your teams and organizations as a result become service‐focused, not self‐focused. When this happens, you create a culture of service that includes strong feelings of connection and community. What's your idea to make this happen on your team(s) and organization(s)?

The Practice of Service

The effects of service on you, your teams, and organizations sound great, right? But … what do you do? Where do you start? How do you find ways to serve? How do you make service a habit? You start by having the right heart, becoming aware of opportunities, regularly reminding yourself of opportunities, and making time for opportunities.

Acts of Service

In the bestselling book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, the story is told about a relationship of a young boy and a tree. Perhaps you have read it. The tree throughout the boy's life tries to selflessly do everything it possibly can to make the boy happy. She allows the child to climb and play on her, swing from her branches, and even to pick and eat her apples. The boy visits the tree every day. He loves the tree and the tree loves him and is very happy.

As the boy grows older, he spends less and less time with the tree except for making time for things such as bringing his girlfriend to the tree and carving their initials into its trunk. Later as the boy becomes a man, he comes to the tree for material things as needed. She is able to provide for him things such as apples to sell for money and wood to help build a home and a boat. The tree remains happy by being able to continue to serve him.

In the final sad stages of the tree's life, it is but a stump. The boy, now an elderly man, pays the tree a visit. The tree is sad because it doesn't think it has anything else to offer. The now elderly man says that all he needs is a place to sit down and rest. The tree is happy to provide a stump. The man is then able to use the tree to sit and rest.

What this story demonstrates to me is the many and creative ways there are to selflessly serve. I have always loved seeing leaders find ways to serve: a fast food manager stepping up and taking over a cash register to help a busy team, a grocery manager stepping in to bag some groceries when seeing a checker who needs help, a leader staying late into the evening working with an employee to meet a project deadline. I have been the benefactor of such service myself.

Early in my career I was fortunate enough to have the most caring and thoughtful boss on the planet. At the time I was working on a training program that was due the next morning. Most managers would have said adios, goodnight, see you in the morning as they went home for the evening. But that wasn't who this leader was. Instead he asked me what I would like for dinner, ate with me, and then stayed with me until 5:30 the next morning!

That was over 20 years ago, and I still remember just about every detail of his kindness that evening. But this wasn't just a one‐time thing with this thoughtful leader; he was regularly thinking about others. It was through his consistent and day‐to‐day acts of service that made the real impact on others. It was his sincere and specific compliments, cards with personal notes, and a willingness to be there and do anything he could to help that made the biggest difference. We don't forget those who deeply care about us.

Motivational author and speaker Simon Sinek dished out wise advice on love in an interview with Tom Bilyeu in 2017. In that interview he said, “She didn't fall in love with you because you remembered her birthday and brought her flowers on Valentine's Day. She fell in love with you because when you woke up in the morning, you said good morning to her before you checked your phone.”¹⁰ What Sinek was saying is that she fell in love with you because of the selfless and consistent acts of service over time, not because of some huge, once‐in‐a‐while, grand and romantic gesture.

You won't make as strong of a connection with those you lead by doing only a once‐a‐year birthday celebration or an occasional team dinner. Although those acts of service are meaningful, they aren't enough. It's through the consistent selfless service, day in and day out, that really says, “I care.” It's the wiping down the top of your teams' cubicles with Lysol. It's taking a package to the mail department or post office for a busy member of your team. It's shoveling the entrance to your building so others are safe. It's having sandwiches delivered to the team so they don't have to go out in a bad snowstorm. It's showing up for a couple of hours to help someone on your team move. It's bringing in a mobile car wash service to wash your teams' cars in the parking lot. Okay, that last one is a big one, but I think it is cool! It's also as simple as giving a smile, holding the door open for someone, saying a kind word, and saying hello. It's doing these types of things day in and day out that make a difference in your leadership.

There are lots of opportunities to thoughtfully find meaningful ways to help others. The list of ideas we could come up if we were all in a room together is limitless.

However, I know what you might be thinking at this point: “How do I do all the things I have to do if I am serving as often as you are suggesting, Michael?” That is a fair question. However, service is never about the number of times, and I never said it was. It's not about serving 10 times, five times, or even one time a day. It's about consistency, not irresponsibility. It's about regularly doing the right thing at the right time for the right person.

Service is a priority with Care to Lead Leaders, but, of course, it isn't the only priority that leaders have. When service becomes a habit, you simply and consistently look for those little things (occasionally big things) that are most meaningful to those you lead in that moment. In the end, it's not as much or as hard as you think. And as you create a culture of service on your team(s) and organization(s), you aren't the only one generating good feelings and connections; the entire team and organization eventually is as well. It's not just your opportunity, but an opportunity for your entire team(s) and organizations too. But, as is the case with many of things I talk about in this book, again, it starts with you.

Service Impacts

Few have ever heard of Nicholas Winton. He was a humble man with a huge accomplishment that wouldn't be recognized by the world until 50 years after the fact.

Mr. Winton was a London stockbroker, and in December 1938, he was looking forward to a Swiss skiing vacation when a friend asked him to forgo his planned trip and visit him in Czechoslovakia to rescue Jewish children. At that time, Britain had a program called Kindertransport, which sent representatives to Germany and Austria to rescue Jewish children, saving 10,000 before World War II started.

In Czechoslovakia, however, there was no such mass effort for rescuing Jewish children. So, in response to this lack of effort, Winton got to work and created his own rescue program. It involved a great deal of time, work, ingenuity, and courage to accomplish.

The New York Times's obituary of Nicholas Winton read, “[Winton's rescue efforts] involved dangers, bribes, forgery, secret contacts with the Gestapo, nine railroad trains, an avalanche of paperwork and a lot of money. Nazi agents started following him.”¹¹

Through his selfless courageous efforts, Nicholas Winton saved a total of 669 children from the Holocaust. To this day, these children call themselves “Winton's children.”

Knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003, Sir Nicholas Winton was a hero. Not many knew of Winton, and even fewer knew of the breadth of his accomplishments. His wife wasn't even aware of the extent of his heroism, that is, until 1988 when she found an old scrapbook in the attic containing the names of the children he rescued, their parents' names, and the names and addresses of the host families.

When Winton's wife brought the scrapbook to his attention, Winton suggested she throw it out, thinking it had no value. Of course, she didn't. Instead, she gave the scrapbook to a Holocaust historian. In that same year, 1988, the world also came to know this great humble servant and leader through a BBC television program titled “That's Life!” Winton was honored and was a member of the audience during the broadcast. The television host pointed out that he was sitting next to one of the children whom he rescued. The greeting was emotional as Winton wiped away tears, and the survivor expressed her heartfelt gratitude to this quiet hero. The host then asked if there was anyone else in the audience that night who owed their life to Nicolas Winton and if so, could they stand. Almost the entire audience stood. Winton slowly turned around to look and was overcome by emotion and tearfully touched by the moving surprise of so many that owed their life to him.

No one needed to ask Sir Nicholas Winton to take action. He saw a problem and found a way to use his talents and skills to serve and bless the lives of hundreds. That's what Care to Lead Leaders do. That's what you can do, too. This humble leader had no idea of the impact he had made on so many. You won't completely understand the impact you are having and will have as you humbly serve. But you are having an impact. Service changes those you lead. So, serve.

Serve First, Lead Second

In my first book, You Are the Team: 6 Simple Ways Teammates Can Go from Good to Great, I shared that, “At the heart of a successful team, you will find the selfless and caring hearts of its members.” However, if we were to go deeper you would find that at the heart of every successful team is the heart of a selfless and caring leader.

It's easy to lead when others know that you care about them because of the ways you actively demonstrate it. Previously I said that service was the key to unlocking your leadership and the quickest way to establishing yourself as a leader by connecting. Make the choice to selflessly serve first and leading easily follows.