One of the goals I have for the Department of General Services is to achieve organizational excellence through a culture of service based on respect, trust and transparency, as well as communication and collaboration.<\/p>\n
Achieving organizational excellence in any business is challenging and requires leadership and commitment from management. This reminds me of a book I read on the concept of servant leadership titled, The Servant<\/strong>, A Simple Story about the True Essence of Leadership<\/strong>, by James C. Hunter.<\/p>\n Twenty years ago, I took part in a leadership development workshop. Participants were required to read Mr. Hunter\u2019s book, which helped all of us set our sights on the same goal by focusing on the meaning of true leadership and recognizing that a true leader chooses authority over power to motivate others to do their jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cAuthority is about who you are as a person, your character and the influence you\u2019ve built with people,\u201d the author explains. True leadership is about humility and serving and giving. Such a leader treats employees with dignity and respect and acknowledges their contributions to the success of the organization.<\/p>\n The inspiring words Pope Francis shared during his visit last week to the United States underscored for me the difference between authority and power. To paraphrase what he said of power: To think that power confers upon leaders the freedom to impose upon others their point of view or their line of thinking is wrong.<\/p>\n If DGS employees are going to advance the goal of organizational excellence, then they must first share that goal and believe it is attainable. This is achieved through the exercise of authority \u2013 not power. The same is true for Governor Hogan\u2019s Administration. He has instilled in his frontline team not only the leadership principles necessary to change Maryland for the better but also the certainty that we can, and we will.<\/p>\n As public employees, we are all servants. A culture of service philosophy at DGS will get us to our goal of organizational excellence. I have encouraged my senior staff to read Mr. Hunter\u2019s book, embrace servant leadership and share lessons learned with their staffs, so we can effectively \u201cChange DGS for the Better.\u201d<\/p>\n In closing, I leave you with a few inspirational words that I strive to incorporate into my life and job every day:<\/p>\n \u201cBe honest, Work hard. Say \u2018thank you\u2019 and \u2018great job\u2019 to someone each day. Let your handshake mean more than pen and paper.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the goals I have for the Department of General Services is to achieve organizational excellence through a culture of service based on respect, trust and transparency, as well as communication and collaboration. Achieving organizational excellence in any business is challenging and requires leadership and commitment from management. This reminds me of a book Read the Rest…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-secretarys-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dgsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dgsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dgsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dgsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dgsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dgsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dgsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dgsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dgsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.maryland.gov\/dgsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}