Audio Transcript Auto-generated
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hmm,
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Hey, my name is Ron ewing.
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I'm a chapter president with truth at work here in central indiana.
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Um, but I spent a time in my career,
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about 14 years where I worked with a firmware servant leadership
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was the core value of a for profit company.
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And the fact that that core value was there did flow out of the faith in christ
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of our founding Ceo.
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And I saw this play out in all the other core values that flowed from it,
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but also from this statement that we would talk about
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all the time that if we would serve people well,
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they would allow us to lead
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and that leadership would happen internally and externally and whether it
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was different areas of the company where there was outside clients,
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one of the stories was really popular that it was so effective is that when
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our Ceo did onboarding anytime between your first and 90th day with the firm,
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you'd go meet with him about a 10 minute
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meeting and he would ask you essentially one question
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whether you were coming in as an intern, whether you're coming in as a,
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as a partner in the firm
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and the question would be this, what's the core value Assessment Associates.
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And if that person didn't roll off their tongues servant leadership,
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he would quietly say, I'll tell you what, let's pause our meeting.
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You go out into the out into the company of about 110 people
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and you just ask until you feel comfortable,
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you found you found what the core value of Schmidt is.
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And so it was interesting because some people would
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go and ask the first person they'd see,
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they would get the answer.
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They'd come right back.
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Some people would have to go and ask 56 people to make sure they felt like
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they were getting the right answer or hear the answer enough times to believe it.
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Um and they'd come back and have the rest of that meeting with the Ceo.
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But it was incredibly impactful of just driving in.
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Do is there anybody in the company does the random person you run into?
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Are they gonna know what the servant said that
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servant leadership was the core value of the company?
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Another thing that happened that I'll end with this is we
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had a graduate student one time from Canada reach out to our
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Ceo and they were doing their um their graduate thesis work
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on servant leadership as a core value for for profit companies.
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And they reached out to Ceo and said can we come interview some people in your firm.
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And so they did the CEO gave me access to about
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25 people and um I wasn't on the list of the 25
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but I got called in to sub for someone who was sick
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and I was the 25th person to walk into the room.
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And when I did I sat down and the lady doing the research looked
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at me and she says I really don't need to ask you any questions.
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And I said why is that?
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She goes, I've already heard the same answer from 24 of your coworkers,
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but I've heard it in 24 different ways.
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You guys aren't repeating a mantra,
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servant leadership is your core value and you're living it out
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no matter what part of the firm that you work in.
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So that was really cool from just seeing the depth
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of the penetration of core value being servant leadership.
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Now,
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the fun part from the face standpoint is I got to look to that
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as a graduate student and I said I want to ask you a question then
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and she said okay, she had her pen ready
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and I said I want you to go back to your research and ask yourself this,
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is there any company that has servant leadership
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as their core value?
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That in their founding or in their current ownership or leadership
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doesn't have christ followers
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because I don't think there are.
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And I could tell by the way she intently wrote down the question,
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I'm not sure she came at this perspective, this,
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this research from a from a faith in christ
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and the wonderful thing about servant leadership is
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we get to model the ultimate servant leader,
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jesus,
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who clearly was the leader of the king of the universe, creator of the universe,
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but came to serve us as a suffering servant to come to die on the cross for us.
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So just a quick story about servant leadership that can really be powerful,
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really be effective in the, in the marketplace, in the for profit world.
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So thanks a lot.