Opinion
Waiter- Serve Leadership Style
By Dr jalarth Uche Opara
Many leadership styles abound, each with its merits and demerits. There is the autocratic, democratic, transactional, inspirational and transformational leadership styles, among others.
None provides a one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges of leadership. A blend of styles, deployed appropriately and at the right time, may produce a more effective leadership approach. But there is one leadership style we hardly talk about: the Waiter-Serve Leadership Style.
A few days ago, I had a meeting at Transcorp, a five-star hotel, for those who do not know. Everything about the place is classic, the ambience, the service, and, of course, the prices.
A bottle of Nestlé water remains the same quantity and quality wherever you buy it. The same applies to a bottle of Coca-Cola. Yet the price differs considerably.
The difference is the environment. In such an environment, a waiter or waitress would ordinarily not sit down and demand to be served a bottle of wine, water or a plate of food. The prices may be far beyond their pockets. Yet, by the privilege of working there, they may occasionally have access to what they serve—not by right, but by the terms of their employment.
Their duty is clear: serve.They do not determine the price of the ingredients. They do not prepare the food. They do not own the restaurant. Their responsibility is to receive the customer’s order, transmit it through the appropriate channels, wait for it to be prepared, and deliver it to the customer as ordered.
That, to me, is the essence of Waiter-Serve Leadership.It is leadership built on stewardship, accountability, responsibility and boundaries.
The boundaries may sometimes be intricate, but they remain boundaries. Crossing them is a breach of trust.Every genuine leader should operate with the mindset of a waiter.
The waiter receives the customer’s needs, transmits them through the system and ensures that the customer receives what was ordered.
The waiter is a conveyor, not a consumer of the customer’s entitlement. A sensible and professional waiter does not eat from the customer’s plate on the way to the table. He does not drink from the bottle meant for the customer. He does not remove a portion of the order because he is hungry or thirsty.
Why?Because it is not his.That is the moral foundation of Waiter-Serve Leadership: integrity, selflessness, discipline, dedication to duty and the refusal to appropriate what belongs to those one has been entrusted to serve.
It is service-oriented leadership in which the citizen is the customer and public office is the table at which service is rendered. Imagine our President, governors, senators, ministers and other public officials possessing this waiter mindset. Imagine the executive, legislature and judiciary respecting the boundaries assigned to them by the Constitution, without undue interference or manipulation. Imagine legislators seeing their responsibility as faithfully conveying the interests and aspirations of their constituents, not hijacking the order on its way to the table.
Imagine public officials understanding that political office is not a buffet where one eats whatever catches one’s fancy.
You are the waiter. The resources belong to the people. The office is temporary. The duty is service. The tragedy of our leadership is that too many people enter public office as waiters and leave as owners of the restaurant.
They confuse access with ownership, privilege with entitlement and service with personal enrichment. Until we develop leaders with the mindset of a waiter, leaders who know what belongs to them and what does not, leaders who understand that their duty is to serve rather than consume, our leadership crisis will remain largely unchanged.
The waiter serves what belongs to the customer.The leader should do the same.
Perhaps what Nigeria needs is not another leadership style. Nigeria needs leaders who remember that they are waiters, custodian of people’ wishes, demands and craves.
The truth is, Nigeria has been very unlucky with waiters who lack the discipline, integrity and honesty of a professional waiter. They take the orders of their customers ( Masses) Get into the system without supervision and accountability, access the menu and feed on it, while the customers wait unending in expectation.
“WAITER- SERVE” –Jarlath’ leadership style. The best leadership that would take us out of the conundrum both in the church and in our political spaces.
#Jarlath Uche Opara
jarlathuche@gmail.com