July 14, 1904 Robert Kiefner Greenleaf born in Terre Haute, Indiana.
1908–1921 George Greenleaf takes Bob along to his workplace and meetings of the city council, school board, and machinist’s union. They make educational visits to factories, machine shops, repair facilities, and municipal works. Bob notices father’s ability to “see things whole” while diagnosing and repairing machines.
1910–1913 Attends Montrose Methodist Episcopal Church. Impressed by young minister, Rev. John Benson.
1913 George Greenleaf acts as community trustee, takes over relief efforts after massive flood and tornadoes.
1915 George Greenleaf joins in testifying against Mayor Donn Roberts and other municipal officials in “the biggest election fraud in American history.”
1917 Uncle John Parkhurst exposes Bob to the “world outside the working class environment.” Introduces him to astronomy at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin.
1918–1922 Attends Wiley High School. Is popular, sociable, president of senior class.
1918–1924 Works at shoe store, machine and electrical firm, and construction company. Decides he does not want to “run things” as a manager.
1923 Looks through telescope at Mount Wilson observatory. “I shook with awe and wonder at the majesty of all creation,” he reports. “This primitive unstructured feeling… is to me the source of religious feeling at its greatest depth.”
1923–1924 Attends Rose Polytechnic Institute, studies math and engineering. Supports effort to get deceptive president of school fired.
1924–1926 Attends Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota to study astronomy.
Active in behind-scenes work in school plays. Takes lead in getting Glee Club director replaced. College hijinks land him in President’s office. Becomes disillusioned with astronomy and university education. After hearing comment from Professor Oscar C. Helming, makes vocational decision to work with a big organization to change it from inside.
1926–1929 Hired by AT&T Ohio Bell subsidiary. In Toledo and Cleveland Greenleaf works his way up from “ground-man” to Supervisor of Technical Training, responsible for the skills development of hundreds of employees. Develops innovative approach to teaching algebra to the unschooled and begins developing foremen through group processes.
1929 Transferred to AT&T headquarters in Manhattan with broad portfolio to consult and conduct research in all phases of personnel. First assignment is to investigate hiring policies and assessment techniques.
Discovers author E. B. White and is influenced by White’s ability to “see things whole.”
1930 Meets and does research with Johnson O’Connor, pioneer in testing for human potentials.
Begins national travel and consulting for AT&T. Always takes the train because, “I like my solitude.”
1931 Meets and marries the artist and architect Esther Hargrave, beginning a lifelong love story. They attend the (Unitarian) Community Church of New York and become friends with its minister, John Haynes Holmes.
Meets Eugene R. Bowen, becomes involved in the Cooperative Movement.
1932 Meets Mary Arnold, a leader in the Cooperative Movement. Greenleafs live in a Manhattan cooperative.
1934 Bob and Esther take a delayed honeymoon and learning trip to Europe where they sightsee, hike, and study modern architecture, Grundtvig’s Folk Schools of Denmark and the Cooperative Movement.
Outlines his philosophy of education in a series of wide-ranging letters to Dr. Donald Cowling.
1935 In speech titled “Industry’s Means for Personality Adjustment.” Greenleaf says, “A search for the capabilities and possibilities in people is gradually supplanting the search for their limitations. It is a more optimistic philosophy.”
Greenleafs move to Mt. Kisco. Their neighbors Levi Hollingsworth Wood and his sister Carolena interest them in Quakers. Join Society of Religious Friends. Bob and Esther begin intense study of Quaker history and practice.
First child, Elizabeth, is stillborn.
Bob and Esther write for Cooperative League publications.
1937 Newcomb Greenleaf is born.
1939 John Lovejoy Elliot of the New York Society for Ethical Culture invites Bob to serve with Eleanor Roosevelt on the Good Neighbor Committee and help relocate European refugees. Elliot impresses Bob as “the starter of useful work.”
Anne Greenleaf is born, contracts a hospital infection, and dies within one week.
  Attends weeklong conference where he becomes better acquainted with original Hawthorne Studies researchers, including Fritz Roethlisberger, William Dickson, and Elton Mayo. Greenleaf already knows Hawthorne Plant managers.
Sometime during the 1930s Greenleaf (1) meets and takes courses from Alfred Korzybski, founder of modern general semantics and (2) begins developing a management course which was later known in its printed form as “Management Ability.”
1940 Taking what he has learned from the Hawthorne “counselors” and Quaker practice, Greenleaf develops a course in listening called “Talking With People.”
1941 Elizabeth (Lisa) Greenleaf born at home. Mother and child are healthy.
The Greenleafs move to Short Hills, New Jersey, plant a large organic garden and eventually keep bees.
1943 Madeline Greenleaf born.
1942–1945 Receives secret clearance, works closely with War Communications Board to protect vital AT&T personnel and facilities during wartime.
Begins using persuasion and consensus decision making in his AT&T work. Conducts his own experiments in cultivating heightened awareness.
“Around the age of forty” Greenleaf gets the idea of preparing to be useful in old age, even though he does not know the goal of his preparation. Broadens his reading and personal contacts with top thinkers.
1946 Reads about the OSS assessment work during the war and initiates a long-term plan to adapt it to industry. Invites prominent psychologists and social researchers to speak with AT&T executives.
1947 Attends the founding meeting of National Training Labs in Bethel, Maine. Later he co-facilitates a “T-Group” but is quickly disillusioned with what he
believes is cult-like attention given to Kurt Lewin, who died before the Bethel meeting.
1948 Is assigned responsibility for AT&T personnel research.
1950-1957 Faculty member of the Graduate School of Credit and Financial Management at Dartmouth College.
1951 First visits the Wainwright House in Rye, New York and becomes involved in the Laymen’s Movement.
1952 Suggests the creation of two new organizations: the Yokefellow Institute and the Earlham Institute for Executive Growth.
1953 Writes his “hole in the hedge” philosophy.
1954 Bob and Esther develop the Receptive Listening Course for Wainwright House, which would offer a version of the course for many years. They evolve the course from its business roots to a group-facilitated journey of spiritual exploration.
1953-1958 Takes on responsibility for the Bell Humanities Program. Six universities would eventually offer some version of the in-residence program which exposed executives to the humanities.
1953-1964 Is involved in developing and delivering the Management Objectives Program (an offshoot of the Bell Humanities Program) and the Bell System Executive Conference, a four-week course focused on business-related issues.
1956 Hires Douglas Bray to design, staff, and deliver the first AT&T assessment program. Eventually AT&T’s success leads to thousands of corporate assessments centers around the world.
Assists Thomas Watson, Jr. in reorganizing IBM.
1958-1960 Engages in Jungian-based “dream work” with Dr. Ira Progoff and Dr. Martha Jeager.
1958 First experience with LSD—then a legal substance— under the direction of Gerald Heard and a medical doctor.
Begins writing a book titled The Ethic of Strength, which he completes seven years later but was only published after his death.
1957–1964 Trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation, New York. Other activities during this period included:
1962–1963: Visiting lecturer at Harvard Business School and the Sloan School of Management, MIT.
1962–1964: Consultant to Ford Foundation Public Affairs Program.
1963: Consultant to National Council of Churches to develop a program for education of church executives.
1964: First trip to India as a consultant to the Ford Foundation’s South Asia Program. Helps organize India’s first school of administration set up after India’s independence. Bob and Esther make a total of six trips to India between 1964 and 1971.
September, 1964 Retires from AT&T. Organizes the Center for Applied Ethics as a nonprofit umbrella organization to support his consulting and writing activities.
1964–1978 Dozens of consultancies. A partial list includes:
1965–1971: Member, Overseers’s Visiting Committee for Harvard Divinity School.
1966: Consultant to the Committee on Structure of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Inc.
1967–1974: Consultant to the president and trustees of the Sloan School of Management, MIT.
1968–1969: Special consultant on continuing education to the President of Dartmouth College.
1968: Faculty member, Salzburg Seminar in American Studies.
1968: Lecturer, Dartmouth Alumni College.
1967–1968: Consultant, Prescott College. In 1968 Greenleaf coins the phrase “servant-leader” after a
consultancy at Prescott College which he termed a “miserable failure.”
1968: Executive in Residence, School of Business, Fresno State College.
1969–1970: Consultant to Fondacion Giovanni Agnelli, Turin, Italy.
1969–1970: Consultant to Douglas Williams Associates on a project examining causes of student unrest at Cornell University.
1972–1985: Consultant to the Lilly Endowment. Meets Robert Wood Lynn and is deeply influenced by Lynn’s thinking about religious institutions.
1973–1977: Consultant to the Mead Corporation.
1973: Olsson Professor of Business Ethics in the School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia.
1974–1978: Consultant to the Hill Family Foundation (later renamed the Northwest Area Foundation).
1976–1983: Consultant to the Sisters of Mercy Health Corporation.
1970 Bob and Esther move to the “dream home” they built in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
1970–1974 Publication of Greenleaf’s most important essays: The Servant as Leader (1970), The Institution as Servant (1972), and Trustees as Servants (1974).
1977 Bob and Esther move to Crosslands, a Quaker-related retirement facility at Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
Paulist Press publishes the book Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness.
1984 Bob suffers his first stroke.
The Center for Applied Ethics changes its name to the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.
1988 First national Symposium on Servant Leadership is held in Atlanta. Bob attends by speakerphone.
February 22, 1989 Esther Greenleaf dies.
September 29, 1990 Robert K. Greenleaf dies.
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