The Secret," by Ken Blanchard, Mark Miller & Rick Adamson
Reviewed by Kristy Jones
Four years out of college, after serving her company first in the call center and later as project manager for sales and corporate clients, Debbie Brewster has been promoted to director of corporate clients for the southeast sales region. This is the happiest day of her life. After only a year under Debbie’s leadership though, her team is falling apart and Debbie starts looking answers on how to be a great leader.
Debbie joins a mentoring program at work and is soon being mentored Jeff Brown, President and CEO of the company. Over the course of a year Jeff teaches Debbie the secret of great leadership. He uses the acronym S.E.R.V.E. Great leaders serve. Each month the two meet and go over one of the letters in the acronym and Jeff assigns Debbie some homework.
The “S” stands for “see the future.” Great leaders have a vision of the future for themselves and their team. If leaders are passionate about the future, then their team will be passionate also. Leaders should always be asking question about the future and the values that they want to define their team.
The first “E” stands for “engage and develop others.” This means putting the right people in the right positions. Great leadership hinges on the people around you. If you don’t have the right people in place, then everyone on the team will suffer. This is why great leaders spend time recruiting good people to join their team. Then leaders spend time creating levels of engagement with their people so that they will stand for the same ideas that they stand for.
The “R” stand for “reinvent continuously.” This refers to not being satisfied with the status quo. Great leaders are constantly reinventing themselves. They are always interested in ways to learn new skills and become more knowledgeable. In the work place, they are always looking for ways to improve systems and processes. To do this, leaders must create excitement and the desire for improvement within their team.
The “V” stands for “value results and relationship.” Results are important, but they aren’t the only thing that’s important. Leaders must create valuable, lasting relationships in order to get the results they want. In Debbie’s case, this not only means developing relationships with her team members, but also developing good relationships with clients. Great results are a product of great relationships.
The second “E” stands for “embody the values.” Embody the values means building trust by walking the talk. Leaders should embody the values of their organization. People are only willing to follow people they trust.
At the end of the mentoring program, Debbie has completely turned her team around. They go from “worst to first.” Debbie has developed her leadership skills, and Jeff offers her the position of head of Leadership Development within the company.
This book was written in a way that was very easy to read and comprehend… but maybe a little too simple. I think that SERVE is a good approach to management. It seems very similar to the MBO system, which focuses on motivation, communication and results. The author even mentioned Peter Drucker a few times throughout the course of the book.
I wouldn’t recommend this book to other PR students because it was a little boring and, honestly, kind of cheesy. It was very much a Cinderella story of a businesswoman who is failing, and then just like magic, everything got better; at times, the book focused more on Debbie than on leadership. The basic principle of serving others is great, but I just don’t think it was presented well in this book.