One of the great implications of Care & Growth leadership is the insight that although leading according to Care & Growth can start on any leadership level (i.e. it doesn’t have to start from the top), the Leadership Standard must be built bottom up. To be able to give your people the Care, Means, Ability and Accountability they need, a Standard must be set based upon what the frontline people of the organisation are supposed to do – else we cannot know what the leaders need to do to support them!

Human Excellence

At Schuitema, apart from running the consultancy, we run a retreat south of Johannesburg. It is a spiritual retreat, and people are welcome to come and stay at no cost to work on themselves on their path of spiritual enlightenment. As part of the life at the retreat, they are expected to take part in activities like cleaning the space they live in, cooking the retreat’s food and working in the gardens to grow the vegetables they eat. Now and then, there are disputes, like “he left dirty dishes in the kitchen” or “he is not courteous enough to me”. The place becomes like a pressure cooker, with people living so closely together, sharing food, space and chores.

A few weeks ago, we decided to do a Leadership Standard exercise with this group (seven people at the moment) to clarify expectations on and from people. What became apparent in this context was the extremity of the statement “your people are your product”. Of course they are! What on earth would the retreat else be there for if not for the people living there? Therefore, this time we started the process with identifying what human excellence of the people on this path of spiritual enlightenment would mean. What does that person look like? Together we formed a list that included things like:

• The person is grateful for all the mercy and all the blessings in their life
• The person serves because they want to
• The person respects their leaders and their peers
• The person foregoes their own agenda in the interest of the other
• The person is working on their self-discovery and are willing to change.

Wow! Before we knew it, we had a list of what we were striving for, and it was clear to all involved.

Indicators of Human Excellence

As a next step, we looked at indicators for this. What would we be able to observe in the retreat if the people living there were like described above?

Again, we had a long discussion and ended up with quite a long list, too. In the end we could find a few categories, including:

• Cleanliness of the place, the people living there and the atmosphere
• A welcoming approach.

Makes sense, don’t you think? If the people living there are grateful, want to serve, respect each other and their leaders and are willing to change, chances are good that there will be a cleanliness from different aspects, as well as a welcoming approach. We can also call this a Wanted Position – but remember why we do it: for Human Excellence.

Tasks for helping each other succeed

Note that so far in the process, we had not yet come to the leadership perspective! We were still busy clarifying what the people living in the retreat themselves can to for their own empowerment. And we were not done – we also wanted to find how they can help each other succeed, help each other strive for Human Excellence.

To do this, they first got to describe the person they would like to share the retreat with. What should they be like? Again, we got a long list, including things like:

• Gives with good intent
• Makes positive contributions
• Is approachable
• Shows Care
• Is willing to listen, change and learn
• Shares knowledge as well as things unconditionally
• Assumes the best intent in others.

All very kind traits! There were also a few tougher ones:

• Stands up for someone who needs it
• Is willing to confront if necessary
• Is sincere and honest.

Interestingly enough, the ratio between the softer and the harder traits that people wanted to see in their peers was at least 80-20. This means we want to share our living space with a kind person, who is only tough when necessary. Makes sense to me!

We then turned the question around and asked how they could help each other succeed and what do you know – here came all the tougher ones first, about correcting behaviours, giving honest and tough feedback and confronting!

This, as you can imagine, led to a very interesting discussion. How come there was that discrepancy, that the person they wanted to share the space with differed so fundamentally from the person they thought they themselves should be to be helpful? You could almost hear the pennies drop around the room: cling, cling, cling!

The list changed completely, and the main components of how they could be helpful to each other ended up being:

1. I assume the others’ good intent
2. I am here to purify myself, not the others.

Wow, how enlightening and inspiring!

That is when it became clear that what we have up until now called the Leadership Standard when we work with it commercially, both can and should be so much more: an Empowerment Standard for all, not just the leaders.

Evolving the Leadership Standard into an Empowerment Standard

The intent with the Standard shifts with this insight. It is enhanced from using the tasks of the frontline workers to find the what the leaders must do into something bigger. When we start with identifying what Human Excellence means in the specific context, the Wanted Position (which is a Result, really) turns into Indicators for Human Excellence and the tasks are more clearly directed to that purpose: the Human Excellence of the frontline workers.

Empowerment for all

It might feel a bit unfair that all attention should be on the Empowerment of the frontline workers – what about all the leaders in the organisation, don’t we want to Empower them, too? Do not worry, by continuing working upwards in the hierarchy with the Standard and finding what each layer of leaders must do to Empower their direct reports, that will create Empowerment all along. It will spread like a benevolent weed and create a work culture we could otherwise only dream of. Empowerment for Human Excellence is key. The results will come.