International Journal of Servant-Leadership
Abstract
My father, Ted Potter, is supposedly retired. He has had a long, interesting, and varied career, first as a teacher, then as a real estate agent, broker, appraiser, and consultant. Although my dad has not formally studied the literature of servant-leadership, I believe his life and work exemplify much of what Greenleaf and other scholars have conceptualized as characteristic of the servant-leader approach to interpersonal and organizational management and leadership. Over the course of a few days at the end of summer, as the leaves on the trees began turning on their fall flare, I engaged my dad in an online conversation aimed at highlighting and exploring what I see as his servant-leader qualities and tendencies over the years and into the present. In the mode of a kind of appreciative inquiry (Hammond, 2013), I aimed to delve into my sense of my father as a servant-leader, to better understand how he developed into the man I know and love, and to test my evolving grasp of servant-leadership as a vital philosophy that can inform and enhance the life of an individual, a family, or an organization, as well as the larger community, in an outward flowing ripple effect.
Recommended Citation
Potter, Jonathan
(2018)
"My Father as a Lifelong Servant-Leader,"
International Journal of Servant-Leadership: Vol. 12, Article 12.
DOI: 10.33972/ijsl.76
Available at:
https://repository.gonzaga.edu/ijsl/vol12/iss1/12
Copyright Information
Copyright 2018 The Author(s). All rights reserved14