The Secret: What Great Leaders Know--and Do by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller. Copyright 2004, published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.



The Secret is a short book on leadership, offering a fictionalized account (or modern-day parable) of one worker's discovery of the keys to successful leadership. It's a vehicle for spelling out the five broad areas that leadership guru Ken Blanchard finds important, using the acronym SERVE. He bases his work on the model employed by Chick-Fil-A, which emphasizes servant leadership. Not surprisingly, it is a Christ-centered model, considering the fact that chick-Fil-A is run by Christians who insist on being closed on Sunday, even at their locations in malls.



You can read the book to follow the protagonist Debbie's pilgrimage, or you can simply flip over to the penultimate chapter Let's Review and get it all in a nutshell, but it wouldn't be near as entertaining.



Here's what Debbie learns about servant leadership and what a good leader must do to be great:



I. See the Future. A good leader will help their followers know where they are going and the advantages of going there. Visioning, in other words.



II. Engage and Develop Others.



A. Recruit and select the right people for the right job.



B. Engage the hearts and heads of followers. If you really want to succeed, you will focus on this area. Workers often get the impression they are to "check their brains at the door" and simply do as they are told, but when they are permitted and encouraged to "buy in" to their work and actually use their brains and hearts, results will increase dramatically.



III. Reinvent continuously. Be creative, be inventive, and do it in three different areas:



A. At the personal level, it's important to continue to grow. Ask, "How am I learning and growing as a leader?" "What am I doing to encourage others in my group to constantly learn and reinvent themselves?"



B. At the systems and processes level. Ask, "How are we doing our work? How can we do it better? What changes would enhance our ability to serve our customers and each other?"



C. At the structural level. Ask, "What structural changes do we need to make to be more efficient and effective?



IV. Value Results and Relationships. If you value your customers, that value will guide your behavios, thus ensuring continued success. We are involved in people work, not paper work, and we mjust make sure to build relationships and connect with people, helping them perform better at the same time.



V. Embody the Values. The leader who loses credibility will find his or her leadership potential greatly limited.