“Great leaders start within.”

It has been an amazing year for my learning blog, Lead.From.Within. Who knew the journey would yield great learning experiences (and yet more to come), allow me to network with many great leaders, and get my message across to leaders in 38 countries!!! Wow, for a person who just started learning how to blog, that’s mind blowing!

In the last few days I have been writing and contemplating goals for 2016 (as many of us do at the end of the year and the start of the next).

I’ve read a few blogs and a couple of key messages (questions) resonate with me that I’d like to share with you but first let’s take a quick glance back at what we’ve learned and the tools we’ve gained for our Servant Leadership tool box;

5 Books

1. Start with Humility: Lessons from America’s quiet CEO’s on how to build trust and inspire followers by Hayes & Comer.
2. Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership by James Sipe and Don Frick
3. Authentic Conversations: Moving from manipulations to truth and commitment by Jamie Showkeir and Maren Showkeir.
4. The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M. Covey
5. A Force for Good The Dalai Lama’s Vision for Our World by Daniel Goleman

Themes

1. Lessons on humility as Servant Leaders
2. 7 Pillars of Servant Leadership (Character, puts people first, skilled communicator, compassionate collaborator, has foresight, systems thinker, moral authority)
3. The value of real authentic conversations at work that lead away from parent-child like conversations to adult conversations and consciousness.
4. The five waves of trust (Self-trust, relationship trust, organizational trust, market trust, and societal trust)
5. Trust (13 behaviors and the 4 Cores)
6. Compassion (A force for good)

Two bloggers that challenged me to greater depths of service and spirituality are David Berry and Gregory Toole. If you have a chance, you should check them out in 2016.

Servant Leaders understand that to serve others, one must be open to learning and to ever emerging as a leader who serves.

“What is it you believe you do that makes a difference to other people and to mankind?”

Clifton and Nelson, Soar with Your Strengths

In 2016, I will continue to ask myself the following questions to stay present with Servant Leadership and its message;

1. How can I serve?
2. How can you serve?
3. How can we serve together?
4. Under what context am I serving?
5. What do I want the end result of my service to look like?

I wish to thank each of you whole heartedly for your support of my blog! I am indeed in a debt of gratitude to you. I look forward to 2016 with great joy and anticipation for our work together. All is well. We are complete. And so it is. Namaste.

To 2015,

Dr. Crystal