Building on a firm foundation

Photo By Kristen Bergeson | Jon Winkler is the Energy Division chief at the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville.  

HUNTSVILLE, AL, UNITED STATES

11.13.2020

Story by Kristen Bergeson 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville

Article by Jon Winkler, Energy Division chief, U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center

Coming from a structural design background, I have a tendency to look at everything from a “load path” perspective. In other words, how does a building’s weight and other loads on it travel back to the ground? Even going out to eat, when I sit down, my wife catches me always looking up and around to check out the roof structure framing—where it transfers load to walls or columns and how that load is taken back to the ground through to the foundation. Neither the framing design nor the quality of construction matter if the foundation is flawed. Everything has a foundation, and from my perspective, that includes leadership.

If you accept the premise that there is a foundational element to successful leadership, to being a leader, then it begs the question, “What is the foundation of leadership?” Asking the question to multiple people, you are likely to get just as many varied answers in response. If I were asked the question, my answer would be “serving.” I believe the concept of serving first was tagged as “servant leadership” several decades ago, but this isn’t something that should be thought of as one of the trendy leadership concepts of recent. It is much more than that. Serving is about something much bigger than the selling of some books.

The belief of “service first” goes back not just decades, but centuries and then some; it is time tested. The basic concept of service first, by nature, is a calling of one to serve. It very simply means putting the needs of others ahead of self. While I believe that service is the foundation of leadership, a good leader does not serve solely for the purpose of becoming a leader. However, many servants do later make a decision to take on the task of leading. As such, there have been countless people that evolved from service to become great leaders who are not well known, primarily because of their foundation of putting the needs of others first. That said, there have been some great leaders whose efforts were founded in service who are very well known, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln.

The next time you feel so inclined to help out— let’s say with the PTA at your kids’ school—it doesn’t mean you have to run for PTA president. There are many ways to serve, and then who knows, you might eventually find yourself deciding that you would be able to serve in even a greater capacity from the office of president and decide to go for it. I really like how Dr. King summed it up: “Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve.” If you look back at the leaders you have encountered in your life in sports, church, work or other arenas, chances are the most impactful and successful of them started by serving and retained service as their foundation throughout. If you take away one thing from this, remember: everybody can be great.

• Date Taken: 11.13.2020
• Date Posted: 12.15.2020 16:01
• Story ID: 382968
• Location: HUNTSVILLE, AL, US