COMMUNICATION
Servant Leaders and the Art of Healthy Communication
Sometimes ignorance is the most effective way to disable abusers.
If there is something uncomfortable to communicate, we must be tasteful in our delivery. We must not dignify them with violence or toxic humor. We leave that to trolls. Instead, we simply bypass their ignorance with silence… let them live with their own hatred instead of indulging their need for conflict. ~ Aaron Towle
Those lines said by a fellow writer and good friend, are, with no doubt in my mind, some rare gems of wisdom. If I may add my 2%, I would say servant leaders wouldn’t include “must”. It is a word they erase from their dictionary.
How come?
Simply put, it is their natural way of showing up in life. They pay the price, to be irresistible beings who we look up to. They are bold and stay with the pain of transformation long enough — given most individuals on the planet have been conditioned to some extent even when it comes to the healthiest family systems.
Who are those servant leaders?
Servant leaders are people who reconnect with their gifted virtues and develop a high level of the four seeds of intelligence during their transformation adventure. Should you be interested, I shared a non-exhaustive list of their lovable virtues in this piece:
Interestingly, the seeds of intelligence exist in every one of you, given you all have a servant leader buried under the layers of a life-time of conditioning, waiting for you to clean the dust:
- Intellectual intelligence (IQ): We develop this first form through being humble enough to unlearn & learn again.
- Physical Intelligence (PQ): This includes being paid fairly for our contributions so that we can live decently, continuously giving back to the world.
- Emotional Intelligence (EQ): Determines our ability to build trust and healthy relationships.
- Spiritual Intelligence (SQ): Fuelled by our Centre, giving us direction in any endeavour. This form is the only one that does *not* depend on others and is the foundation of servant leadership.
The manifestations of these forms of intelligence are, respectively: Vision, Discipline, Passion, and Principled legacy. Let’s take an example, if you don’t mind, of the dictator, Adolf Hitler:
Hitler had a vision; world peace is realisable only when one power has achieved complete supremacy. He was successful in building a motivated and disciplined army blindly believing in him as a leader and and his vision.
Can we call him a leader? Absolutely not. Why not? What was missing? The most crucial component of the equation: the ‘Principles Centre’, the conscience.
He was an ego-driven individual who, instead of uplifting the world, could only create chaos!
More to the point, servant leaders are the ones who worked on re-writing their invasive subconscious programs to move back to their original Center. Developing the seeds of intelligence — most importantly, the SQ — and maintaining them to happen naturally, in parallel with the transformation process.
This investment gives birth to what we call interdependent individuals. If you feel interested in understanding the difference between interdependency and wholeness, this article might be a good fit for you:
The art of healthy communication.
Servant leaders are emotionally mature people.
Maturity is the balance between compassion and bravery. If I have real maturity, I can listen. I can empathically understand, but I can also courageously confront.
Stephen Covey
Thus, servant leaders would avoid reactivity and displays of hatred. I believe their drive would depend on the person, though. While it is compassion and inspiration, when dealing with kind souls, the main reason when dealing with character-disturbed individuals or tormented souls, is to use their emotional maturity to disable them.
Curiously, I feel there is a common confusion between diplomacy and emotional intelligence. Whilst diplomacy might imply wearing a character mask, to fit in or manipulate, emotional intelligence allows us to speak hard truths without giving offence, provided we are principle centred.
As you may have guessed, servant leaders belong to the latter group. They educate and elevate global awareness. (For those of you who are interested in learning about developing EI, I explored the topic in this article.)
Takeaways
Being loyal to the principles, servant leaders fight the lack of them in others without demeaning them. They only talk about the manifestations of the distortion. They are not violent in their delivery because they are unapologetic truth-tellers and principle centred at the same time.
A low level of emotional intelligence uses masks to manipulate, deceive, control, gain power, nurture a sick ego, etc. When the masks are dropped, we see the true colors, which have nothing to do with principles or being an activist for any noble cause. It’s all about protecting a fragile ego.
Pay attention and you will notice many manipulators who pretend empathy, are fans of the word “mercy”. Although I am aware it is used on auto-pilot by kind souls, I believe it has been absorbed into the global subconscious hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago by narcissists to nurture their grandiosity pattern, while faking goodness:
We’re not equal. I’m better than the rest of humanity. I have all the power to destroy you. But I choose to spare you because I want you to believe I’m a good person.
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