001 How I got the Servant Leadership ‘bug’ bad and why I will take it to my grave!

Welcome to the inaugural episode of the Servant Cultures Podcast.  In this podcast, we dive into how Servant Leadership if applied and practiced can take your organization to the next level.  My name is Patrick Van Abel and I stumbled into Servant Leadership almost 10 years ago.  I was handed a book called “The Servant” by James C. Hunter and it changed my life and all of the organizations that I am a part of.  I got the Servant Leadership ‘Bug’ bad and I will take it to my grave.

I have started 10 businesses over the past 25 years and most of them are still thriving today.  For 16 of those years, I was a ‘culture by default’ guy.  After meeting with some execs from Festival Foods, I knew immediately it was time for action and I needed to be much more intentional about my culture realizing that ‘culture by design’ was a much smarter decision.

We did a book review with my business partners and our leadership team.  We eventually started a Beer Fund to help build our commitment to the common language having GUESTS and NOT customers…. TEAM MEMBERS and NOT employees …. finally we now have LEADERS and not managers.  May seem like just words to many but our commitment to put real action and meaning behind these words has led to a much stronger organization.  This leap of faith set us onto a path of more open communication and candid conversations AND way fewer red flags and fires to put out.  Our people feel heard and are more engaged than they were before.

We are so excited about sharing the systems and processes that high performance organization from around the planet use to show their people that they truly care.

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Servantcultures.com/iTunes

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2 Book Recommendations Below – (full disclosure I am an affiliate partner of Amazon and do receive a small commission on your purchase.  You get the same price regardless of how you buy on Amazon.)

“Everybody Matters” by Bob Chapman –

“The Servant” by James C. Hunter – For sale on Amazon

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