The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

—Mahatma Gandhi

We now tackle the greatest challenge of your journey: the transformation from I to We. In your early years, you are measured primarily for your individual contributions. Thus, the most difficult transition for emerging leaders is recognizing that leadership is not about them—it's about serving others and bringing out their best. We leaders are servant leaders.

I first encountered the notion of servant leadership in 1966 when I invited Robert Greenleaf to share his views with a Harvard seminar I was leading. As he wrote in his 1970 essay, “The Servant as Leader,”

The servant leader is servant first. One wants to serve first; then one aspires to lead. This is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions.

A servant leader focuses primarily on the growth and well‐being of people and their communities. The servant leader shares power, puts the needs of others first, and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.

Nelson Mandela: Seeking Reconciliation

While spending 27 years in prison for a political crime he didn't commit, Nelson Mandela endured many different forms of pain: hard labor, racist taunts, and extreme illness. Because of his efforts, he saved South Africa from civil war and inspired leaders all over the world.

On February 11, 1990, he walked out of his prison cell on Robben Island, a free man for the first time since 1963. He described the scene:

As I walked toward the prison gate, I raised my right fist and there was a roar from the crowd. I had not been able to do that for 27 years. It gave me a surge of strength and joy.

That evening, Nelson spoke to a large crowd at the Grand Parade in Cape Town. His carefully chosen remarks set forth his plan for South Africa's future:

I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands.

In those few words, Nelson declared that his purpose was to be a servant leader for all South Africans. Despite his many years in prison, he harbored no bitterness. He wanted democracy for all, not just Black South Africans. In his book, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela elaborates,

I knew people expected me to harbor anger toward Whites. But I had none. I wanted South Africa to see that I loved even my enemies while I hated the system that turned us against one another.

We did not want to destroy the country before we freed it, and to drive the Whites away would devastate the nation. Whites are fellow South Africans. We must do everything we can to persuade our White compatriots that a new, nonracial South Africa will be a better place for all.

Nelson Mandela did not start as such a servant leader; he learned to be one through years of reflection. When the Afrikaners took power in South Africa in 1948 and created apartheid, he became a founding member of the Youth League of the African National Congress (ANC), aligning with young leaders that included Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, and Thabo Mbeki. Eventually, the Youth League took over the ANC.

In the 1950s, Nelson was repeatedly arrested for sedition. Later, he joined the South African Communist Party and founded a militant group to sabotage the Afrikaners' apartheid government. He frequently organized anti‐apartheid boycotts and demonstrations that erupted in violence.

In 1956, the Afrikaner government arrested him for high treason in causing violence. He endured the 4‐year treason trial and was declared not guilty. That didn't satisfy the Afrikaner government, which arrested him for political crimes in 1962. During the ensuing Rivonia trial, he gave his most important speech, defending the ANC's actions and laying the groundwork for South African democracy 3 decades later. He concluded his 3‐hour oration, saying:

I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against White domination, and I have fought against Black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live and to see realized, but an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

The speech was to no avail. On June 12, 1964, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment. During his long years in prison, Nelson went from a young rebel to a transformative leader who realized his greater purpose was to serve his nation by saving it from civil war and reuniting all the people of his country. He reframed his leadership purpose from the I of leading Black South Africans to becoming a servant of all South Africans who could reconcile Blacks and Whites to create the new South Africa, centered on social justice and opportunity for all.

If ever someone had a right to be bitter toward his captors and the injustice done to him, it was Nelson Mandela. How then could he honor the prison guards who looked after him and forgive the judge who sentenced him? How was he able to negotiate with the leader of a minority government that repeatedly ordered his people beaten and killed to stay in power? When he was elected president, how was he able to cast aside calls for revenge and offer reconciliation to his oppressors?

To know the answers to these questions, one would have to walk in Nelson Mandela's shoes or look into his soul. When I met privately with him in 2004, I was moved by his serenity. He was passionate and calm, focused entirely on his mission of reconciliation from racial injustice. As a servant leader, Nelson Mandela rose above discrimination, injustice, and hatred. His leadership transformation inspires us to serve and lead others in greater callings.

Hero's Journey to Leader's Journey

As we enter the world of work, most of us envision ourselves in the image of a hero who can change the world for the better. This is a perfectly natural embarkation point for leaders. After all, so much of our early success in life depends upon our individual efforts, from the grades we earn in school to our performance in individual sports to our initial work assignments. Admissions offices and employers assess us based on these achievements. But as time moves forward, it is imperative to grow past this narrative.

PPG executive Jaime Irick explains the I to We transformation:

You must realize that it's not about you—your ability to do well on a standardized test or be a phenomenal analyst or consultant. When you become a leader, your challenge is to inspire others, develop them, and create change through them. If you want to be a leader, you've got to flip that switch and understand that it's about serving the folks on your team. The sooner people realize it, the faster they will become leaders.

When we are promoted from individual roles to leadership, we believe we are recognized for our ability to get others to follow us. If we think leadership is just about getting others to follow us and do our bidding as we climb the organization ladder, we will alienate those whom we need as teammates.

While people succeeded in the past by pushing others aside to get ahead, our colleagues today won't tolerate that kind of behavior. A New York Times headline blared, “No more working for jerks”; Stanford Professor Bob Sutton wrote The No Asshole Rule; and financial services firm Baird has even codified “the no asshole rule” in its training and terminated employees for violating it.

Unfortunately, most organizations tolerate people with these bad behaviors, thinking they cannot get along without their performance. That is a myth. These I managers create a lot of destruction in their wake, have high turnover in their organizations, and never empower their teams to perform. As I learned from many of my mentees, people don't leave companies—they leave bad managers. I know that from personal experience as I had two jerks as bosses, which accelerated my departures.

On our journey to be authentic leaders, we must discard the myth that leadership means having legions of supporters follow us as we ascend to the pinnacles of power. In place of this myth, we realize that leadership is serving others and empowering them to achieve their dreams. This transformation from I to We is the most important step in your development as a leader.

Only when leaders stop focusing on their personal needs and begin to see themselves as serving others are they able to develop other leaders. They feel less competitive with talented peers and subordinates and are more open to other points of view, enabling them to make better decisions. They overcome their need to control everything and learn that people are more interested in working with them. A light bulb turns on as they recognize the unlimited potential of empowered leaders working together toward a shared purpose. An empowered team unleashes much greater energy than a directed team because people can do the work to fulfill a purpose, not to meet the boss's objective.

Figure 8.1 captures distinct differences between I leaders and We leaders.

Making the journey from I to We is not easy. It not only requires a mental rethinking of your leadership but also necessitates changes in behavior to focus on others rather than yourself. A fulfilling life is about serving something or someone greater than ourselves—a worthy cause, an organization important to you, your family, or a friend in need. In my experience, that's the best way to know your life matters.

Share Power

Steve Jobs struggled with sharing power in his career. As founder of Apple, Steve was teamed with CEO John Scully, who was recruited from PepsiCo. He not only competed with John but also intentionally undermined engineering teams competing with his beloved Macintosh. That forced the Apple board to fire him from the company he founded because he was so disruptive in pursuing his own agenda.

In his Stanford commencement address, he reflected on the experience:

Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next 5 years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.

When Apple bought NeXT, Steve returned to Apple. During his time away, he realized he didn't have to do everything himself and that his greatest gift was inspiring innovative people to create great products. At Pixar, he worked with two of the world's best innovation leaders, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, and learned the benefits of nurturing great teams. When Steve passed away from cancer in 2011, he left Apple in an extremely strong competitive position. His hand‐picked successor, Tim Cook, has built Apple into the world's most valuable company.

Life is about serving something or someone greater than ourselves—that's the way to know that your life matters. Becoming a servant leader propels you on the I to We journey.

Emerging Leader: Anjali Sud

Anjali Sud grew up in Flint, Michigan, in a traditional Indian immigrant family where she was raised to pursue the American dream. “My parents helped me see that one of the ways I could have an impact on the world was through business, because business can have a real impact on the community.” Anjali's father is a doctor and entrepreneur who instilled in her a passion for lifting others up: “Even though he was saving lives, what he found most fulfilling was creating livelihood through economic opportunity and jobs for people.”

At 30, Anjali joined IAC's video platform, Vimeo, as director of marketing. Three years later, Anjali was promoted to CEO, and four years after that, the company went public with a market valuation of $5 billion—a stunning rise.

Before Anjali became CEO, the company was pursuing a different strategy as a consumer media company. Anjali sensed that Vimeo was missing a better path, so she approached the interim CEO and pitched him on pivoting the business from a consumer viewing destination to a software company for business customers, saying, “It's not as sexy and it's not media, but it's a huge, untapped market. I have a personal conviction that there's something here.” Anjali was given a small team to test the thesis. The new strategy quickly got traction—revenue began accelerating and customer satisfaction scores skyrocketed.

One Friday, the interim CEO called Anjali into his office and asked what her plan would be if the company shut down the consumer business and gave her all the company's resources. “I wasn't prepared for the question, but I had an answer,” she says. The following Monday, the IAC board appointed her CEO.

Anjali credits building strong relationships as the chief reason for her successful rise to CEO, because they gave her credibility and momentum throughout the organization.

The greatest strength I have is building good relationships. I've always believed that if you support your colleagues and give credit where it's due, that will ultimately help you effect change.

Within a week of her appointment to CEO, Anjali laid out a new mission, vision, values, and strategy for Vimeo. “I knew I had to inspire the team to be passionate about something totally different. The vision was Creators First. Instead of focusing on the viewer as we had previously, we care about the creator and their success. And we broadened the definition of ‘creator’—it was no longer just the filmmaker or video pro, but every business in the world.”

Anjali gained buy‐in from her team on the new strategy by being transparent with them about the problems the company was facing and collaborating with experts across the business—always with the goal of helping them be successful. “People saw that I was respecting their roles and not trying to take something away from them but genuinely wanting to do what was right for the business so we could all succeed together, which really helped.”

For leaders like Anjali, the I to We transition isn't an easy one. She admits she can still struggle with delegation:

One of the hardest transitions for me was going from being a doer to an enabler. As a leader, you get to a point where you realize, I'm not the expert—my job now is to set a vision and then empower other people to do their best work and be the expert.

Ultimately, Anjali sees her I to We journey as a badge of honor:

Now a decision gets made and I think, “Wait a minute, nobody checked with me on that. I can't believe everyone's just moving.” Initially, I questioned whether that meant I was doing my job well. Now I recognize that if that's happening, I'm absolutely doing my job!

Bill's Take: My Long Journey from I to We

Early in my career I thought I had great visions and innovative ideas, so I tried to sell people on them, rebutting their concerns and not really listening to their feedback. I was aggressive and willing to take risks and couldn't understand why people weren't willing to get on board. Quite often, I overpowered them by signaling people what I wanted to do, and they went along, however reluctantly. I had not yet adopted the adage, “People support what they help create.”

It took lots of feedback from people I respected before I realized I needed to listen much better to people's ideas, understand their concerns, and bring them together as a group to make decisions. At first, I didn't trust they would come to the conclusions I thought were right. As I matured and gained confidence in my leadership, I became a better listener and learned to trust my teammates. I realized that when I gave people space to develop their own ideas, we generated better ideas and greater commitment to the eventual plan.

For me, it was a long journey from I to We.

Idea in Brief: I to We

Recap of the Main Idea

• We leaders are servant leaders, focusing primarily on the growth and well‐being of people and the communities to which they belong.
• When leaders make the transition from I to We, they move from thinking that leadership is about them and their personal needs to seeing themselves as serving others by bringing out the best in them.
• The journey from I to We is difficult because leaders are used to being measured for their individual contributions like good grades or promotions. We leaders are measured on the success of their teams.

Questions to Ask

1. Have you made the transformation from I to We? If so, what experience(s) triggered this transformation for you?
2. If you have not yet made this transformation, what do you need to let go of for a transformation like this to occur?

Practical Suggestions for Your Development

• Ask your team to conduct a 360‐degree survey on your leadership, with specific questions on how well you empower, inspire, and grow individuals.
• Create a personal leadership development plan based on the feedback; share the plan with your team and ask for their help in measuring your progress.
• Meet with each of your team members to discuss their strengths, weaknesses, and motivations. Consider how you can help them apply their strengths and improve their weaknesses. How can you use their motivations to help them reach their full potential?