In January I took two weeks off to go to Kolkata, India to do some volunteer work and personal study at Mother Teresa’s organization called the “Sisters of Charity.”
About the time I was leaving, I was asked to write an article on Servant Leadership for the Direct Selling News publication. So the decision of what to write about, given the timing and the topic, was pretty easy.
However, the actual writing itself about acts of service, specifically Servant Leadership, is among the most difficult for me personally. In part, because I have so much to learn about it. And, also in part, because I realize I’m not particularly good at it.
So I’m approaching the topic with a lot of humility and acknowledgment there’s much I don’t know and I realize there are many things I don’t get right.
I’ve got some great memories from that trip; today, at this very moment, it’s almost surreal that it happened. Such a world apart from where life is right now.
This week my blog theme will be based around the entire theme of Servant Leadership; I’ll be taking the core of the article I wrote and will break it into several smaller parts along with some pictures from the trip along the way. At the end of the week I’ll post the full article.
The article comprises the lessons I learned about Servant Leadership–or more simply just service and heart–from Mother Teresa and the Sisters of Charity. If word count for my article weren’t limited I could’ve written about dozens of lessons learned, some big and some small. But these three were the most profound to me–at least at the time of the writing.
So here it is: Part one of “Lessons Learned from Mother Teresa” from my Direct Selling News article published this past March.
I jumped head first into the Direct Selling industry in winter of 2005. In the years since then, I can’t think of another industry where more time and effort are invested in developing a corporate and field culture.
If that thought causes you to think of power suits, rushed lunch meetings, and the host of Dilbert cartoons you’ve enjoyed over the years, I wouldn’t blame you. After all, I had worked for some exceptional Fortune 500 companies prior to joining Univera. “Corporate culture” was embedded into my business vocabulary, but it wasn’t always in a flattering light.
It wasn’t until the last few years where I looked upon the word “culture” with such a positive tone. Our environment encourages a culture of respect, integrity, listening, and helping others – a term referred to as “Servant Leadership.” To be clear, as an organization and as individuals—particularly myself—we’re far from perfect. Yet I’ve loved the opportunity to work in an environment that shares this aspiration.
And it’s this very thing that I love about our industry—that culture is sustained by heart and driven by purpose.
Altruistic terms such as “Servant Leadership” that are adopted by the business world are often rooted in more selfless endeavors, and my awareness of and adherence to Univera’s credo is no different—thought I didn’t know it as “Servant Leadership” at the time.
In the summer of 1996, I had the privilege of volunteering at one of Mother Teresa’s “Missionaries of Charity” homes in Kolkata, India. After a month of working with the poorest of the poor, I gained a perspective that changed me as much as any other event in my life — including the birth of my two daughters, the passing of a newborn son, and the experiences of living in Manhattan during 9/11 just blocks away from the World Trade Centers.
The reason for the impact is difficult to describe, but I would attribute it largely to the impact that a spirit of service can have on both a single individual—and an entire organization.
In the first two weeks of this new year, I was blessed with the opportunity to go back to Mother’s home in Kolkata and again take up the call to serve those most in need. This trip was initiated by a personal commitment I made to pursue some of my own dreams in different arenas of my life in 2009, this being one of the cultural ones.
During my time there, I started my mornings working at “Dya Dan”, a children’s orphanage for kids—often disposed of by their parents—with mental or physical disabilities. If you have kids, it’s an environment so “primitive” that you wouldn’t leave them there for weeks or even hours. Yet, for these kids and in their environment, it’s a home of laughter and joy. It’s paradise, relatively speaking
My afternoons were filled by Mother Teresa’s first love; a home called “Nirmal Hriday” or more commonly referred to as “The Home of the Sick and Dying.” Fundamentally, it’s a very rudimentary hospice where people go to pass from this life to the next. It’s a home that has very little light; the walls speak with a muted echo, the facilities smells of a combination of infection and disinfectant—yet it’s also a home filled with great love and compassion.
So here, rather than trying to put a new spin on often-discussed topics such as corporate strategy, leadership development, and even our industry’s advantage in light of the current economic collapse, I hope instead to share some of the life and business lessons that I learned, or re-learned, during my most recent journey to this place many thousands of miles away…
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