Leadership can be defined as the capacity to influence others by unleashing their power and potential to impact the greater good. James Ferrell’s story illustrates what a every-day servant leader might look like. Consider the people around you, might they be an everyday servant leader you know of?

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I DISLIKE THE word “service.”

There, I said it. And I believe it needs to be said in a book about servant leadership. As odd as it might sound, I believe that a focus on service is incompatible with servant leadership. True servant leaders don’t focus on service; they focus on something else entirely. In this chapter, I will explore the kind of nonservice focus that forms the foundation of servant leadership.

Two Tones or Mindsets

Years ago, I recorded a podcast for Arbinger Institute in which I drew an analogy between tonal spoken languages, such as Chinese, and life itself.

When speaking Chinese, the speaker’s intonation determines the meaning of every word and phrase. In Cantonese, for example, there are nine different tonal variations. Two of these are too subtle for Westerners, so foreigners usually learn just seven intonations. These intonations begin with three variations—low, mid, and high—in the initial pitch the speaker uses when uttering a word. There are additional variations within each pitch level: the low pitch can stay steady, rise, or fall; the mid-level pitch can stay steady or rise; and the high-level pitch can stay steady or fall. The meaning of every Chinese utterance depends on these tones. For example, consider the following Cantonese sentence: “Go go go go go go go go go go.” Its meaning, when uttered with different tones, is “That tall man over there is taller than his older brother.” No joke. The speaker’s tone determines the meaning of everything.

Without realizing it, we too are living in the middle of a tonal language—a tonal system that determines the meaning of everything we do and say. One of the insights contained within Arbinger’s work is that we can see others either as people who matter like we matter (we call this an outward mindset), or as objects (an inward mindset).

Mindset and Impact

These different mindsets operate the way the different tones operate in Chinese —they change the meaning of everything we say. For example, I may tell a colleague, “I appreciate the effort you put into your presentation.” If I am seeing that colleague as a person when I say this, she will likely interpret my comment as a kind compliment regarding her effort. However, she may experience the comment differently—and attach entirely different meaning to it—if she senses I have an inward mindset and am seeing her as an object. In that case, she may interpret the meaning as “It’s about time you put effort into something around here!” Although I utter the same words, my underlying mindset—my tone—can change the meaning of what I have said.

This brings me to what I think is troubling about the word “service.” What is true about the meaning and impact of our words is equally true of the meaning and impact of our actions—even our acts of service. We can perform almost any action with an inward or an outward mindset. When our mindsets are outward, we are serving others. When our mindsets are inward, on the other hand, we are serving ourselves. This inward orientation corrupts everything—our selfunderstanding, our views of others, our intentions, and even our service. This means that the foundation of servant leadership can never be a focus on mere actions—even on actions that may seem, on their face, to be for the benefit of others. True servant leaders focus on something else.

The Servant Leader’s Focus

What does a servant leader focus on? I’ll answer that question by returning to the story of the podcast. In that presentation, I invited people not to speak about Arbinger with others, but rather to put more effort into simply living in the right tone, which I called speaking Arbinger. My invitation was to focus less on talking about Arbinger concepts and more on living the tonal language of seeing people as people.

After the podcast, a robust discussion broke out about it on social media channels. People generally were complimentary of the ideas I shared, but then one gentleman completely shattered my whole argument.

The man said that after listening to the podcast, he resolved to apply what he had learned in his interactions with his wife. Instead of speaking about Arbinger concepts with her, he resolved to focus on simply speaking Arbinger with her— that is, on simply seeing her as a person. However, he said that this new approach wasn’t yielding any better results than before. Then he shared an epiphany—an insight that completely changed the nature of his interactions and relationship with his wife. He said, “I realized that instead of focusing on speaking Arbinger, I needed to focus instead on speaking Becky”

If you think about those in your life whom you would call servant leaders, you will see the truth in this gentleman’s insight. What distinguishes true servant leaders and makes them so precious to us is not that they do things for us— although they do. No, we are grateful to them because we know that they see and value us. We are, as it were, Becky, and the servant leaders in our lives have cared enough about us to learn to speak our language.

The Example of My Garbage Man

Let me share an example of one such person in my life: the man who collects the trash in our neighborhood every week—the inspiring servant leader who is my garbage man.

Our trash is collected on Friday mornings. I am the one in our home primarily responsible for making sure that our trash bins get out to the street in time.

However, one Friday morning, as I heard the garbage truck pull into our cul-desac, I realized that I had forgotten to take the bins out. Panicked, I hurriedly threw on some clothes and hustled down the stairs. However, before I reached the front door, I heard the truck pull away. A week with no room in our garbage bins! I grimaced, feeling frustrated. I glanced out the front window as the truck rolled down our street. There in front of our house were our two bins—empty! My frustration washed away in an instant. I was overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude for our amazing neighbors.

A few weeks later, I was talking with two of those neighbors—David, whose home is directly across from ours in the cul-de-sac, and Randy, who lives around the corner. David was telling a story.

“About a month ago on a Friday morning, I noticed the garbage truck parked in front of my house. The driver was walking around and picking up trash that was all over the street. I remembered that I had overpacked my bins the night before and I guess maybe there was a wind storm, or some kind of animal got in the bin and made a mess. Either way, here was the truck driver picking up a mess that I had caused. When he was finished, he climbed back into his truck, emptied the bins, and drove away,” David said.

As I watched the garbage truck go, I realized I had never even acknowledged the man—not even just then—and I felt ashamed. I decided that the next week I’d go out and thank him and give him a gift.

So the next Friday, the truck got here earlier than I had expected. I ran to put on some shoes and rushed out the front door but I was too late—the truck was already rounding the corner. I grabbed my coat and ran out into the snow to catch the truck. Rounding the corner, I saw the truck parked in front of Randy’s house. Then I saw the driver wheeling Randy’s two garbage bins down from the side of his house!

“Wait!” Randy interjected. “The garbage man did that? I remember that morning. I thought the neighbors had helped us out.”

Of course, listening to the story, I had the same reaction. The driver must have helped me with my bins as well. Our neighbors are great, but it was the garbage man who had helped me.

Now, you might think that David, Randy, and I, and the others in our neighborhood had it made at this point. After all, we wouldn’t even have to take our trash out to the street anymore; the garbage man would do it for us! But that isn’t at all how we responded. On the contrary—suddenly I felt very motivated to make our driver’s life as easy as possible. I never wanted to forget to take my bins to the street again—not just because I didn’t want to have to go another week without room for our trash, but also because I didn’t want to make things harder for our driver. Until that moment, for example, I had never cared a lick about making sure to leave ample room—five feet or so—between bins, which I had heard we were to do. But from the moment David shared his story, I began pacing off space between my bins every Thursday evening so that our driver wouldn’t have any trouble emptying them.

In a way, our garbage man trained an entire neighborhood to make his life easier. How did he do this? By making our lives easier—which is the essence of what servant leaders do. And they don’t tire of doing it, as they would if they just focused on all the tasks they must perform for others. What a drag it is to do things for those we view as mere objects! And yet how invigorating it is to do the same things for those we see and value as people.