The Servant. James C. Hunter. Today I’m in a revival mood. The Servant was one of the first management stories I read, more than 20 years ago. Last month, in my interview to David Cantallops (click here), we discussed this book, which for years I recommended over and over again to all the teams I worked with.
I am a big fan of the concepts of power, authority and leadership which are so well-developed by the author. They inspired a team dynamic I repeated in almost all my management sessions in 4 continents (I haven’t covered Australia yet). Beyond generations, culture, gender, race or religion, the conclusions of this dynamic were always the same. In short, The Servant represented the fundamentals of my first steps developing teams. And, in fact, it is still a reference.
Today, re-reading it, I am just wondering why in Spanish it was translated as “La Paradoja” (“The Paradox”). The Servant is about service leadership (“to lead you have to serve”). It’s puzzling that for the Spanish translator, in the 90s, associating the verbs “to lead” and “to serve”, made him/her think about the “paradox” concept. Ok, I am a translator and I am taking my reflexions too far. But am I the only one who finds this puzzling?
