Some employees baulk when values are expected at work, rather than merely written on a poster. Company builder Sonny Vu explains what happened when he institutionalized servant leadership.

Transcript:

We had values that I would say were fairly cutting. You either believed in them or you didn’t, and definitely there were people who would say, “You know what, I just really can’t take that.”

The servant leadership thing was incredibly controversial.

It was very nice sounding, like: “Oh yeah, I’m a servant leader - I serve my team - yeah.”

Great. Well, if you’re upgraded to business class are you going to give up your seat for the intern you’re traveling with? Because that’s what’s expected. It’s not even a nice thing to do; you’re just supposed to do that.

“Oh, um, I don’t know. Let me think about that.”

On the surface values are easy to be said and poster-ized. But to really institutionalize them, that’s where the rubber meets the road, whether people actually act on them or not.

Watch the full Faith & Co. film series from Seattle Pacific University.

This video serves as an illustration to the TOW Bible Commentary article Servant Leadership (Matthew 20:20-28).