2008 Woodie Awards
Trustee espouses servant leadership
Zoetina Veal
Issue date: 10/8/07 Section: News
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"If you take care of the employees first, make them real happy and loving where they work, they will take care of the customer," Ferguson said during his lecture on servant leadership Sept. 18 at Brookhaven College. "And when you take care of the customer, then you will make money."
The lecture was coordinated by Joy Arndt, director of Student Programs and Resources and the Student Leadership Institute. Arndt said SLI is a leadership development program open to all Brookhaven students.
Ferguson said great leadership in management is the key to making employees happy. All 1,600 employee-partners at TDIndustries, the construction company where Ferguson is partner and managing director, are required to take the servant leader course.
Ferguson said the course is based on the book "The Servant as Leader" by Robert K. Greenleaf who was a friend of TDIndustries founder John B. Lowe.
Greenleaf's book is the inspiration for popular management books such as "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey, "In Search of Excellence" by Thomas J. Peters, "The Fifth Discipline" by Peter M. Senge, "Synchronicity" by Joseph Jaworski and "Management" by Peter F. Drucker.
Ferguson said managers must be servants before they can be good leaders.
Good servants make sure other people's high-priority needs are served.
He said the duties of a servant leader are to learn to listen, build people up and to create the next generation of leaders to take their place.
"There is a little mistrust right now about corporate America," Ferguson said. "People don't seem to trust the business climate like they used to."
Ferguson said the main problem with companies like Enron was they did not take proper care of their employees.
"In today's world it [the corporate world] is highly competitive," Ferguson said. "If we don't get 100 percent of people coming in to work every day, we will not be able to keep up with the global economy."
He said high employee trust put TDIndustries on Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" list for 2007. Employees rate their companies in six areas that make up Fortune's High Trust Index: great place to work, camaraderie, pride, fairness, respect and credibility. Ferguson said TDIndustries is one of only 22 companies to be on the list every year since 1998.
"If America is going to keep up with the rest of the world, for one we have to be educated," Ferguson said. "The second thing is that we've got to bring 100 percent of everybody to work. We can't bring half of ourselves to work every day and remain competitive. The way you do that is you have to create an environment of trust."
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