Early on in my education, I had the opportunity to work on projects that helped society. I was part of the Mars Gravity Biosatellite team, a project funded by NASA to study the effects of Mars’ gravity on mammals, including humans. The goal was to learn more about Mars’ gravity to help plan for any future human settlements on Mars.
The work we did isn’t going to impact society today, and I personally didn’t go on to use what was created to turn a profit. The idea behind the program was to create something that would help people in the future. Our research would go on to make a Mars settlement more achievable even though it’s likely that few of us alive today will ever go to Mars.
While the experience was great and the work was rewarding, the importance of the project was that it will help others. Society doesn’t live and die with the generation you’re born in, and we should always try to leave the world in better shape than we inherited it. We need more of today’s leaders to take on the role of a servant leader.
Servant leadership was first coined by Robert Greenleaf, a man who recognized the need to support our communities. Greenleaf believed that “caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built.” The concept calls on people to consider themselves servants before leaders. Servants are looking to help others while leaders can tend to focus on their own goals. By being both a servant leader can create opportunities for others while still acting as a leader in society. As history shows us, he wasn’t wrong.
Andrew Carnegie, one of the most famous entrepreneurs in American history, also supported the idea of servant leadership. Carnegie understood the importance of knowledge and education in his own life but recognized that the means to an education weren’t readily available for most people. To fight this, he funded the construction of thousands of public libraries across the nation. The goal was to make society better by helping future generations get the materials they needed to succeed.
What followed was multiple generations of people gaining free access to information. Even today you can find people visiting a public library to educate themselves. While a number of Carnegie’s public libraries have since been replaced, the impact of his initiative was felt.
Carnegie’s example of servant leadership is one of the greatest in American history. However, Carnegie was also one of the wealthiest people to ever live. Today’s leaders and entrepreneurs shouldn’t feel pressured hold themselves to Carnegie’s standards but should still consider themselves servants before leaders.
Acting as a servant to society will always lead to the betterment of society. But a servant leader cannot adequately act as a servant without also acting as a leader.
Leadership is a quality that some people are born with and others must learn. The hardest part about learning how to act as a leader is that it cannot be easily taught. Each person must take their own path to success. Some people believe that emulating Steve Jobs or Bill Gates may seem like the right way to become a leader. But Jobs and Gates were the first of their kind; they didn’t copy anyone else and blazed their own trail.
This is one of the most important lessons an aspiring leader needs to learn. Leaders should learn from one another but they should never copy each other. Each person is made differently, and we have a number of different experiences that make us unique.
You can try to force yourself to be like Steve Jobs, or you can be yourself.
Find your niche in society. I’ve always had a love and appreciation for tech, but I realized early on that I would never succeed in creating the next Facebook or Twitter. Instead, I focused on what I was good at. I naturally gravitated toward marketing.
My first successful marketing company, Status Labs, was an excellent experience. An Inc. 500 and Fast-50-ranked company based off my time there as CEO and COO from 2012 to 2015, Status Labs markets for hundreds of clients and companies across the world – including multiple Fortune 100 companies.
I’ve also been fortunate enough to find success in another marketing and PR firm, Notability Partners. Now an O’Dwyer-ranked company, Notability Partners is growing at a healthy rate. All of this was created even though I have a background in biomedical engineering.
While I’m certainly no Andrew Carnegie or Steve Jobs, I’ve made my mark by pursuing what I’m good at. I’ve enjoyed the work I do, and I’ve understood that I have my own limitations as a person. This has allowed me to lead these companies toward success.
As a leader, people need to be doing something that makes them happy. When you wake up in the morning ask yourself: What is it that I’m really good at? And do that one thing each day and every day.
We’ve reached an age where we have access to whatever information we want or need, and we can contact just about anybody we want. People shouldn’t be working on something that doesn’t make them happy. Steve Jobs loved the work he did, and it made him even better at his job.
The future is going to be built by servant leaders. We need more leaders who are willing to work for themselves and for others. If you ever find yourself in a leadership role where you have the opportunity to make an impact, consider Greenleaf’s idea of a servant leader: a person that shares the power they have and puts others first. This creates a highly functioning society, one that can support itself for years to come.
We need more servant leaders in society. Do what you love, become a leader and share your success with others so that they can have the opportunity to do the same.