Self-Transcendent Leadership: SERVANT-Ship

What if the highest form of leadership isn't about leading at all, but about serving?

In this powerful episode of the Apex Performance Podcast, Dr. Anthony Simmons introduces his groundbreaking concept of Servantship. This leadership philosophy moves beyond traditional servant leadership into what he calls self-transcendent leadership. Drawing on decades of military leadership, coaching, and organizational research, Dr. Simmons explains why the greatest leaders don't seek recognition. They dedicate themselves to helping others grow beyond themselves.

Through inspiring stories, leadership research, and real-world examples from the military, business, education, and sports, he explores the power of humility, sacrifice, coaching, mentorship, and purpose-driven leadership. You'll discover why authentic influence isn't measured by personal achievement, but by the lasting impact you have on the lives of others.

Whether you're leading an organization, a team, a family, or simply striving to become a better version of yourself, this episode will challenge you to rethink what leadership truly means.

Because leadership isn't measured by how high you climb.

It's measured by how many people you help rise with you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Do you ever feel like you're doing all the right things, but success still doesn't last? If you're struggling with trust, strange relationships or performance that feels harder than it should, then this podcast is for you. Here's your host, executive leader, and scholar practitioner, Dr. Anthony Simmons.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Hey greetings, everyone. I'm Dr. Anthony Simmons, and as always, I'm honored to welcome you to another episode of Apex Performance Podcast, where all pathways are cemented in authentic relationships through a common act. We must continue to appreciate, communicate, and demonstrate trust. While I continue to offer or accelerate the pathways to excellence, today's podcast will focus on servantship. It's the legacy servant leadership, which anchors on serving an interest that exceeds oneself. It's self-transcendent leadership. Servantship is essentially encouraging excellence by pushing others forward. It's placing the personal and professional well-being of others above that of oneself. In his book on leadership, Peter Northhaus defines servant leadership as placing the interest of a follower at the forefront by emphasizing and nurturing as necessary to ensure that personal and professional growth takes place. Servant leadership is also, I find, to be paradoxical in that people get too hung up on the prospect of leader. Now, because of the oxymoronic interference with servant leadership, in my book Champion Organizational Wellness, I coined the term servantship to escape this paradox. In the Journal of Applied Christian leadership, R. L. Overstreet suggests servants don't lead. They set examples through their actions. Servants champion the interests of others through positive influence by infusing them with the confidence to remove barriers to elevate their well-being. So servantship, which I also deem as the answer to upside-down leadership, characterizes the essence of transcendent individual needs for the best interest of the whole. The goal of this leadership series is actually to provide a tool for leaders to fix their position on the transactional transformational or now self-transcendent leadership curve. To that end, I have talked in the past about DNA of exceptional leaders as well as upside-down leadership as they relate to being transformational or transactional, respectively. Now, as I look into self-transcendent, it really speaks to going to the next level within that tier that Maslow has presented on his needs theory there. Where I look at how he talks about the foundational needs that has to be in place before we can move into the higher level needs. And these foundational needs I find to sometimes align with some transactional behaviors where transformational leaders are more aligned to the higher level needs, what we talked earlier about self-actualization and self-esteem. Now, as we move to the higher level, Maslow talked about self-transcendence, which actually eclipsed both of the earlier stages. And I find this self-transcendence to be the catalyst to this new term I've called servantship. So, for context, in his later writings, shortly before his death in 1970, Maslow identified a sixth and higher tier known as self-transcendent leadership, where he said you must transcend oneself in order to live for greater cause there. So his sixth tier enables servantship. So we'll talk more on that as I move through this episode here. In addition to the Maslow theory, I'd like to also highlight Jim Collins' book, Good to Great, where he talks about level 5 leadership as well as John Maxwell High Road Leadership in a book that he had actually published in 2024. Now, as I move through this episode, I would like to minimize the use of leadership and use self-transcendent instead. Now moving into my bonus for Diaz, I always like to say people first, servantship always. That's my why and my approach. Watching people grow, I feel, is one of the best gifts that I could ever receive. So it's really not about you. My mantra is make sacrifice your ally. It's legacy. Helping one another will help us all. During my 28-year Navy career, I will always say, despite operating complex high-end warfare systems and being charged with technical and technical responsibilities, when I look back on my career, I like to consider myself a social worker where I was committed to making those around me better. Having the opportunity to positively impact their success, I felt was paramount. In that vein, my most proud times was the chance I had to develop the next commander or the next leadership coach. I thought it was a key metric, you know, during my command tours. I was grateful, you know, for the opportunity to champion the cause for others. My track record includes years of developing new leaders. Over, you know, 25 of my understudies went on to command ships and beyond, as I felt that was the plan. You know, they reached levels that exceeded my capacity. This is testimonial for my place in their personal and professional well-being above that of myself. As I highlighted in my book, Champion Organizational Wellness, chapter 8, some of the practices that I implemented to accelerate their growth and also sustain the professional actions of the aspiring leaders that was under my oversight. I felt this is the essence of servantship. Now, as I look and discern between transformational and servantship, I look at self-transcendent leaders as someone who don't just meet people where they are. They actually move, you know, in with them in their space and they walk the walk alongside their smiring leaders. Also, as transformational leaders, they focus on bettering followers while self-transcendent leaders elevate the followers' inches above that of their own. They have a commitment to the betterment of others. That's their superpower. This superpower aligns the Maslow sixth tier, where I said leaders go beyond individual self-actualization, realizing your own personal potential to focus in on altruism or deontology and dedicating oneself to a cause that's greater than self. It's a self-transcendent, really involves selfless service to others and connecting, you know, with the broader purpose to identify with universal instrumental values like truth and beauty and justice. I also capture this whole essence of this instrumental values in my episode on coaching love. Now, in concert with what I had talked earlier about the vanishing scenes between leaders and followers, leadership is really no longer leader-centric. It's to have a new focus. Now it's on serving. This humble leadership attribute is also resident in Collins Level 5 and Maxwell High Role Models, where Collins' level five basis is on unselfishness and humility. Humility is grounded in modesty, self-efficacy, being quiet, reserved, and praising company success outward to team members and failures inward to themselves. Level five channels their ambition into the success of the enterprise and its mission rather than into their own personal glory, wealth, or ego. John Maxwell moves into the high rule leadership where he talks intentionally about choosing to value people and prioritizing others. He posited that this is really not about the moral high or either being better than others. It focuses on promoting others rather than self. It's a matter of bringing out the best in others. Now, the Keith helps others discover and harness their unique strengths is grounded in humility. Although I have spoken extensively on the value of self-confidence, servants have a unique skill to balance confidence and humility. Humility keeps relationships client-based. So servantship is anchored in humility. It's these humble spirits, it's really what holds everything together. It's the heesiveness that never relents. It's the sand that fills the gap in order to make the pebbles and the rock wholesome. So to place humility in perspective, John Maxwell suggests one should be grateful for their gifts and proud of their choices in life. So speaking of choices, I was like to use a famous quote by President John F. Kennedy where he always talks about doing something that's bigger than self. He once said, Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask rather what can you do for your country. My vision has always surrounded what can I do to make those around me better, as it is my conviction that people should wake up every day and ask, what can I do to make those that I encounter better? As I move into the pathos, into the storytelling aspect of this podcast, I was listening in on the funeral of President Carter, and Pastor Tony Loudon said that every time he would see President Carter, he would ask him four questions. Where have you been? What have you done? Who have you helped? And how can I help you help them? And another good example for servantship, I'd like to quote Malcolm Jenkins, a former NFL player. He talked about during his last season in his book on What Werners Won't Tell You. He quoted, I wasn't playing for a Super Bowl. I was planning to make everyone around me better. When not playing for myself, it resulted in a season that was as much fun as any in my career. To highlight two other, I think, perfect scenarios for servantship, I'd like to speak to the former president of Hampton University, Dr. William Harvey. It was noted that over his 30 plus years of a university president that in Hampton he had over 17 of his administrators to go on to become presidents of other colleges. And Coach Nick Saban, the renowned coach from University of Alabama, provides another good example of a coach understudies exceeding some of his successes. One example is Texas AM coach Jumbo Fisher, who won over Coach Saban, University of Texas coach Steve Sakijan and Georgia coach Kirby Smart, who not only beat Saban but went on to win a few national championships himself. And also recently it was exemplified in one of his other understudies, the Nana coach Sinati, who actually won the championship this past year. So as I quoted in my recent episode, Coach Saban actually coached his coaches. Now I like to talk about two personal accounts of what I call servantship, where I say make sacrifice your ally. My high school principal, the late Mr. Robert Armer, taught me a valuable lesson on servantship at an early age that has stuck with me throughout my life and throughout my leadership endeavors. Although he was aspiring to reach heights beyond the small town of Goodwater, Mr. Armor sacrificed for the betterment of his hometown community by returning to Goodwater as an educator, where his influence expanded my parents and myself. Mr. Armour's perspective, he once shared his fulfillment surrounded, you know, the success of those he encountered. He told me once if he had the opportunity to just rejoice in the success of all those he had seen come through and do well, he could just do a party in his spaceman that would just be more than fulfilling the most powerful thing that he could ever see throughout his life. I just thought that really, really resonated quite well. So I feel that true leadership isn't just about what you accomplish, it's about how you serve and empower others to grow and also to succeed and create a meaningful impact throughout their lives. To this day, I still continue to expire to emulate his example. I was born to serve people through coaching. Coaches are born while in terms, coaches must continue to develop new leadership coaches. I think about my senior high school playing basketball. I have spoken about leadership, it's not something you read or learn. I think rather something about what you do is really who you are. So this takes me back to that senior year on my decision to play basketball. My junior year did not end on the best of terms. I was being recruited to play football throughout my senior year. And so I really had no really reason to play basketball, you know, other than plan for the best interest of my school and also to support my teammates who I had played with throughout middle and high school. I felt that was critically important. We actually had two players that was projected to play at the next level, and I felt it was incumbent on me to help counterput their success. And I knew I could counterput their success because my class had a unique touch to it. And I don't give myself all the credit in the world, but I would like to think that have a lot to do with the success of my class because we had a unique history where we actually won the Goodwater High School class tournament for four straight years. And we was pretty, pretty good in the fact that we was able to up in the senior class when we were freshmen, and also up in the senior class again when we were sophomores. Those were the biggest wins I think I could quite recall. Now they said save the best for last. And I feel our most powerful and most current episode surrounds the New York Knicks championship. I look at their guard, Jalen Bronson, and as I think about him, I was talking with someone. I said, you know, I said, Bronson is a good example of self-transcendent leadership. He is good, and he is also good for those around him. I feel he's the essence of servantship. Additionally, he made compensation concessions for the good of the whole, and I could not find a better example of deontology than Brunson has demonstrated in that New York uniform. The relationship he developed with Carl Anthony Towns by meeting him where he was is a true testimonial for servantship. Now let's talk about the future implications here and the so what from this episode of servantship. This model I presented, the ending argument, as I spoke to in introduction, surrounds the ability for leaders to do some self-scouting, to self-assess, their determinated location. And the bottom line, it's not so much about where you are on that leadership spectrum. It's more so about your commitment to improve your position. If you are transactional, you need to seek out transformational support to help you reach to the next level. And if you're transformational, seek out someone that can move you forward and become self-transcendent. Ask yourself, what can you do to make those around you better? And how can you position yourself to not merely meet but also to marry up to others in their respective zones? I've always been grateful for the opportunities I feel to champion the cause for others. You know, my years of developing new leaders is what really defines me, and it's something that I'm most proud of. As a prelude to servantship, you can't be a servant until you transcend oneself. Too many job seekers and leaders are seeking place too much emphasis on ambition and too little interest in sacrifice, which is today's norm. We need to make sacrifice our ally. This proposition is underscored by Maslow Sixth Tier. So I'm more inclined to engage those who are willing to make those sacrifices. As I think about my Navy career, you know, it didn't really end on my terms in an intentional manner, but I have been intentional since it ended. The terms was good because my influence transcended me. You know, the terms had universal impact on a better tomorrow and also for long-term implications. The fact that sacrifice was my ally, I was able to have enduring influence on the well-being of others. And to paraphrase the adage, one who does something for the good of self, it only lasts during their tenure. But if he does it for the best interest of others, it endures long after they are gone. Servant leadership fances as an oxymoron. A new term to upend this paradoxical condition is appropriate. Scholarship should advocate for the term servantship through self-transcendent leaderships. Simmons in champion of organizational wellness. Hey, please subscribe to the next episode of Apex Performance Podcast and join me on the next discussion about leading in pressurized environments, what I call on-scene leader. As always, Apex Performance Podcast will put game-changing information right there at your fingertips. Thanks for joining me and see you next time. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

So that's it for today's episode of Apex Performance. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on iTunes or Apple Podcasts will win a chance to win a grand prize drawing worth $5,000 for a private VIP day with Dr. Simmons himself. Be sure to visit ApexPerformance Podcast.com to pick up a free copy of your gift and ask your questions for Dr. Simmons in your own voice, and he'll answer you back privately in his. Then join us on the next episode.