Servant Warrior Stories & Movies

Movies That Illustrate Authentic Leadership™ Habits And The Servant Warrior Journey 

Authentic Leaders™ Come In All Shapes And Sizes

• Oseola McCarty
  
  1908-1995
  
  Ms. McCarty died on September 27, 1999 in Hattiesburg, a town in Mississippi, in the southern United States. She was 91 years old. Although she was a small delicate woman, Oseola had worked hard as a washerwoman all her life. She took in clothes for laundering and ironing from many people in the town. She seldom left her small house except to walk to church or to buy groceries. She always saved money, a dollar or two at a time and by the time she was 87 she had over $250,000 in the bank. Because she was getting close to the end of her life and didn’t need the money for anything she decided to give almost all of it way. She used $150,000 to establish a scholarship fund to help poor students in Mississippi get a university education. Even though she had made the gift in preparation for death, Oseola’s generosity threw her into a life that during the last four years of her life was very different from the one she had been leading for so long.
  
  1995-1999 (The Last Four Years)
  
  She quickly became famous. She was honoured by the United Nations. She shook hands with Bill Clinton and received the Presidential Citizen’s Medal from him. She received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University. In 1996 she carried the Olympic torch through part of Mississippi. And in the same year she flicked the switch that dropped the ball in New York City’s New Year’s Eve celebration. She was the first time in her life she had stayed up past midnight. The American public loved Oseola. At airports admirers always surrounded her and people reached out to touch her as she went by. Although she had not expected this sort of attention she enjoyed it very much. Her generosity inspired over 600 other people to make contributions totaling $330,000 to the fund. When Ted Turner heard about what she had done he made a personal contribution to the United Nations of one billion dollars.
   
   
• Abraham Lincoln
  
  Abraham Lincoln embodied many of the elements of an exceptional leader. His actions and results act as an inspirational example of the best Authentic Leadership™ can be. In my view, Lincoln was great because he possessed the critical traits of honesty, compassion, and a 'people' approach to results.
  
  He seemed doomed to fail - shortly before he took office in 1861, the southern states seceded from the US federal Union. He was perceived as an awkward inexperienced lawyer from a small constituency. Many predicted he would be the last U.S. President. Yet he achieved such enduring results when so much seemed stacked against him. Through the yeas of conflict that marked the American civil war, Lincoln always practiced a degree of honesty that cemented his reputation as a man with the highest level of integrity and fairness (his moniker was "Honest Abe"), and it provided him a great degree of leeway with his critics when he needed it, and an incredible loyalty from his governing team as well as ordinary citizens who might have otherwise lost faith in him and the Union.
  
  In addition to his honesty, historical accounts widely note Lincoln possessed a remarkable compassion and empathy for all, even for those that he privately acknowledged perhaps didn't deserve it. He always gave people the benefit of the doubt, even his underperforming generals and his opposition that frequently attacked him. To be sure, he was a highly results oriented man, he held those around him accountable but never personally took responsibility for their own actions, he left that to them, empowering and encouraging them where necessary but clearly articulating what was expected every step of the way. And it's Lincoln's sense of empathy and understanding that paved the way for his place in the history books.
  
  At the end of the civil war, the issue of the South's fate was hanging in the balance. Lincoln avoided the mistake that so many in history before and after had made. He didn't publicly persecute the Confederate leaders, nor did he penalize and hold down the South through punitive trade and governing restrictions, instead he began a long healing and unification process by making the South a stakeholder in the nation. Lincoln was not vindictive in the least, he knew that people always want to know how much you care, and he made frequent and genuine efforts to show it.  
  
  Like all good leaders, Lincoln was ultimately all about results. But he knew results come from people, not memos and directives. Authentic leaders view results as a direct derivative of strong people relationships. For Lincoln people always came first, results were simply something that were produced when they're truly empowered, inspired and motivated. Lincoln spent a great deal of time out of the White House and in the field meeting with commanders, citizens, civic leaders and others. It's one of the reasons he's widely viewed as having been a 'man of the people'.
  
  If Abraham Lincoln was alive today he would be trumpeting the MBL™ process. Many of the tools and insights that he discovered and used during the course of his life are very consistent with what's offered in this process.
  
  Jeff Hayward, VP Marketing Canada