I wish I was sharing a “positive” example of servant leadership today – but we can also learn from those who exhibit absolutely no servanthood whatsoever. To be specific, let’s look at the worst case of leadership on the planet – that monstrosity we call the U.S. Congress. With their latest public approval rating of 14%, they officially became the lowest-rated congress in history. What’s interesting is that, at 14%, it’s evident that every political segment of the voting population (republicans, democrats, independents, illegals, foreign terrorists in our military, even dead voters from Chicago) believes that our congress has reached an all-time low. It’s not just the conservatives’ view.
But they have reached all-time HIGHS in several areas: arrogance, personal wealth, wasteful spending, tax evasion, ignoring the people they’re supposed to be serving, really bad hair, etc. If you got a 14% rating at your next performance review, would your employer keep you around?
Many remedies come to mind: perhaps first and foremost the option of voting ALL of them out of office. This has a lot of merit, with very few negatives. 86% of voters seem to agree that this congress would be better off doing NOTHING – vs. what they’re doing now. I’m willing to sacrifice the 4-5 good congresspeople for the good of the whole.
Of course cutting their pay and work hours would help. How about we go to a part-time legislature, as a few states do? They can work for 4 months only – so we can cut their pay and benefits by 66%. That OK with you? They’ll do a lot less harm this way. Isn’t it interesting that our nation’s first congressmen were part-timers; they were “citizen congressmen” – who went back to their farms and stores when their term was up. They didn’t view it as a profession – they viewed it as their patriotic duty. The idea of leaching off the public for decades was something foreign to them.
Don’t forget: we employ these people. They’re supposed to be working for us. Never have so many got paid so much for doing so much – harm.
Servant Leadership 