Staying the Course

By Duane Trammell, M.Ed.

Do you remember the first time you bought a brand new car? When you took it home from the dealership it had that new car smell, everything was shiny and super clean. You made promises to yourself that you wouldn’t eat fast food in it and that you would take it by the car wash each week to keep that shiny new look. But, somewhere down the road, perhaps a few months later, the “newness” began to wear off. You were in a hurry and decided to drive through McDonald’s. A french fry dropped between the console and the driver’s seat so that you couldn’t easily retrieve it, and you thought… “I’ll dig it out later.” And instead of waiting in the car wash line on Saturdays, you thought, “it’s going to rain, anyway, and it’s silly to pay all this money just to have it shiny for a few days” and you decided to live with the rain splotches most of the time. For some, after a few months… a new car just didn’t seem as special as it did when you drove it home from the show room.

If we are not careful, servant leadership can be like the new car syndrome. We go to our first conference or workshop and are introduced to this great way of teaming and leading. We are excited. It fits. It sounds so good and it is the way that we all want to be treated and led. We might even tell others about it. But after a few months, the new wears off and the discipline of cleaning, caring, and maintaining it becomes effort. At this point, some may revert back to old ways of being…putting me first instead of other’s welfare; blaming others when things go wrong; griping and complaining when things get tough; assuming the worst in others, and taking relationships for granted.

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Servant Leadership… Staying the Course