Transcriber: Anna Sobota Reviewer: gaith Takrity
So, let’s get this straight -
I’m the Chamber of Commerce guy,
but I love you.
(Laughter)
I might not know you, but I can still love you.
Don’t get me wrong - not in some mushy, squishy kind of love way.
No, I love you because I believe
our purpose in life is to love and serve others.
And when we combine love and service in our daily lives,
we become servant-hearted.
That changes how we lead our organizations,
changes how we live our lives,
and for many CEOs,
it is a radically better way of running their companies.
I have to admit, though, I didn’t always think this way.
I have been and at times still am, a prideful, stubborn ladder climber.
But, I do believe to love and serve is the most important imperative
we have today.
No matter where you are in your career building,
no matter where you are in growing your company,
this will fundamentally change everything.
I want to share with you how I got here,
how other people help me understand a deeper way to matter
and an alternative to traditional leadership.
Now, it all started
at a very pivotal point of my young career.
I was weighing multiple job offers:
some offered more money, some cooler locations.
At the same time my grandmother was in the hospital.
I was a very good grandson,
so I thought I’d go visit her to lift her spirits
and share with her this gleaming list of impressive offers that I had.
So when I finally finished rambling or, let’s face it, bragging,
I waited for some kind of word of praise
for her soon to be very successful grandson.
Now, you need to know this - nanny was about four foot eight and tough as nails.
And she looked at me and she said, “Don’t go get too big for your britches.”
That is southern for becoming arrogant.
(Laughter)
You do not want your nanny to call you out. It stung.
And as I waited for that to sink in,
she looked up at me from that hospital bed and smiled and said,
“It’s awfully nice to be wanted, but it is far more important to be needed.
Go serve where you’re needed.”
I told you I was a good grandson so I follow Nanny’s advice
and I took the only job where the executives said,
“We need you here.”
And I have followed that same advice continually.
But, I was still a ladder climber
and I was thinking about the next position
before I could fully engage exactly where I was then.
I kept telling myself I was bound for better things
where I could have a bigger impact.
Few years later,
I was still climbing the ladder and I had a new role,
and the CEO of this global company came to visit me.
Now, you all, Brad was a giant in the corporate world.
But by the time he got to sit with me
that day, he’d entered that little old man stage of life,
you know, where your suits are too big and your ties too wide.
But Brad didn't care about those things. He had bigger issues to tackle, right?
Like literacy, water conservation.
He was a sage, an ambassador for corporate citizenship.
As we sat in my office, he wagged this long finger at me
and said in this gravelly voice,
“As men and women of faith, we are called to engage
and become committed to our communities.
To love others is to serve them, and from that comes joy.”
That was deep.
I was not ready for Brad's advice.
I understood the serve my community part,
but the people part and the love part I wasn’t ready for that.
I told myself
I did not have time for people.
Now, it was one thing to take a job where I was needed.
It was another to have to wake up every day
and think about serving all these other people.
But Brad was planting a seed. He was letting me in on a secret.
A few years later, still climbing the ladder,
I believed that I was a servant leader.
I gave talks about it. I wrote about it.
But, my pride and my ego were still running the show.
So I gave this big, important speech and I talked about our organization
and how we were going to serve and make a difference.
Afterwards, Ernest pulled me aside.
Now, you know, Ernest is a big deal -
He’s a visionary,
a mentor to a generation of corporate and community leaders.
He built a whole culture around service.
He got this,
and he was about to enlighten me and call me out, too.
He said, Chris, “You talk a lot about serving others,
but you never once talk about helping actual real people.”
Brad and Ernest understood the bigger secret that it’s about people.
Businesses are just men and women that work together.
Communities are neighbors who live, work, play and pray together.
The economy is made up of hard working men and women with their own issues.
I wanted to understand this so much more.
And so I've been blessed to work with thousands of executives.
And I started calling former governors, CEOs, small business owners,
asking them about their own experience, how they lead this type of life.
I dug in deep. I did research.
I wanted to know how to build a culture and a character of servant heartedness.
I didn't expect this theme, though,
of values and service to run so deeply through so many executives.
They were telling me the same thing that my nanny had told me 25 years ago,
that businesses can do good things if we just care about other people.
The other thing that I found was that at their core
all of these successful executives had an incredibly deep faith,
and that faith allowed them to be intently authentic in their character.
They were kind. They were appreciative and they were humble.
And guys, humility is critical
if you want to make a difference in the lives of other people.
Another little secret they told me,
“stop climbing the ladder long enough to look around and listen.”
All these impressive men and women
had made service the centerpiece of their life and their business.
One of those CEOs was Shan.
Now she is comfortable in her own skin - strong, compassionate,
caring the conscience of the business community.
So she and I were talking about service and heart, and she said,
“Listen, I get it. It’s easy to sit behind your desk
far from the difficulties of your employees,
it’s easy to build this wall around your business
and it’s easy to climb the ladder.
But, when it’s all said and done,
have you made a difference and have you helped anyone?
(Inhales)
Here was another CEO
who understood the incredible impact of service and purpose.
And here’s the critical thing -
if you serve with purpose, then you love.
Yes, the chamber guy is going to talk about love again.
Stick with me.
I know you think that love is this squishy, soft thing.
It’s a really bad 80s pop song,
or it’s this horrific poem you wrote to someone in middle school.
(Laughter)
No? It’s that the only one?
(Laughter)
I did that and I apologize. It was not my best work at all.
But that love is a feeling. It’s infatuation.
The love I’m talking about is when you set aside your own ego
and your own wants for the needs of others.
Because love does stuff. It matters.
I went back and ask Ernest about his own motivation.
He looked me dead in the eyes, unblinking,
and said, “My purpose is to love and serve the unseen and the unheard.”
To love and serve people you don’t know - that is a powerful servant’s heart.
And greatness lies in the path of service.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about customer service.
That’s not saying the person behind the cell or behind the counter.
No, servant-heartedness it is to see the people for where they are.
They’re not customers.
Maybe their parents have a bad day and they need your help.
They’re not clients or your relatives or your family,
and they are not employees.
They are young men and women dreaming and building their careers
just like I did.
And by the way, for those of you thinking about the labor shortage out there,
Deloitte tells us,
if you want to keep those young men and women,
you know what they want first and foremost?
It is to work for a company that matters
and to work for leaders that care about them.
So I’ve had all this in my head and I’m struggling with
how to put it all together and connect to the personal piece,
and so I’ve reached out to Sonny.
He is a dear mentor and friend, a faith-filled corporate citizen,
run and created so many companies and banks.
I wanted to know how he does this, how he lived this type of life.
Sonny said in this sophisticated southern drawl,
with all the passion that you can imagine,
“I just wake up every day
and pray to be a blessing to one person, just to impact one life.”
That's not how I started my days. It is now, though.
That’s the the motivation that we try to carry forward.
Imagine a company or a classroom even
where everybody wakes up every day and says,
“I want to be a blessing to the people I don’t know.”
I’ve got to see that. It’s so impressive.
I’ve watched businesses work with landowners and conservationists
to protect the gopher tortoise and preserve the longleaf pine ecosystem.
I’ve watched CEO’s
so passionate about helping minority and veteran entrepreneurs.
They create diversity supplier programs for them.
And I’ve seen executives that care so much and want to change lives
that they’ll take their own profits and invest them into the schools
and the communities where they serve.
That's absolutely incredible.
And I could go on and on and on,
but I believe with every fiber of my being
that the CEO imperative,
the imperative for leaders, students, parents, family members
is to live a life of servant-heartedness.
That’s how you change your company from being just another business
to actually a change maker and a difference maker
that people want to work for.
But I have one more secret to share with you.
Through all of this I realized
you don’t have to be a CEO to make a difference and to serve.
You can make a difference and serve wherever you are,
whatever your assignment is for the day.
I’ve watched my wife for the last 13 years
walk away from a successful multimedia career
to volunteer in our son’s school
because she loves him, she loves his friends.
She loves all those kids in the hall that she doesn't even know yet.
I mean, I get to see love and service up close and personal every single day.
So the question becomes,
are you stubborn like I am and will take this long to figure it out?
Or will you become a servant-hearted difference maker where you are?
I invite you to follow the wise counsel of my nanny
and all those other CEOs too
and to take your servant heart into the office, into the public square,
because we desperately need your servant heart.
(Applause)