Leadership with a Servant's Heart

As Founder and Chief Executive of The Johnson Leadership Group LLC, Kevin Wayne Johnson provides organizations, and the people who work within them, with the tools to forge effective personnel and interpersonal communication. He delivers training on the elements of dynamic relationships, to equip teams with the attitudes and attributes needed to develop individuals into leaders. He does so through motivating workshops, seminars, insightful keynote speeches and compassionate coaching, all to encourage personal and professional growth. He is a Maxwell Certified Leadership Team trainer, coach, mentor and speaker. Kevin enjoyed a 34-year career (retired) in government and private industry as a senior level leader. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he earned a B.S. in Business Administration and Management from Virginia Commonwealth University. Kevin is an ordained minister by the Church of God Ministries, Incorporated, Anderson, IN, and has held multiple leadership positions at the local, regional, national and international levels, including Senior Pastor.

Kevin's Message:

It's important for us to take the steps to know better, then do better, and ultimately lead better. I walk them through the how and why.

More about Kevin's Work: https://thejohnsonleadershipgroup.com/

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou

This is The Nonprofit Exchange, and I'm Hugh Ballou, and I want to welcome you to this episode. As host of The Nonprofit Exchange, I get to talk to wonderful people, and I've had over 600 interviews with people over the years. Today, I'm pleased to welcome Kevin Wayne Johnson, founder of the Johnson Leadership Group. Kevin is a best-selling author, we'll talk about his book in a minute, leadership coach, and nationally recognized expert in servant leadership. His work focuses on equipping leaders of all ages and sectors to lead with influence, humility, and purpose. In this episode, we explore the transforming power of leadership that begins with serving others. Our conversation will help nonprofit leaders strengthen their teams, elevate performance, and build a culture where people thrive. Kevin, welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange. Your work centers on servant leadership. How do you define servant leadership for today's leaders?

Kevin Wayne Johnson

Well, thank you, Hugh, for the invitation. It's an absolute pleasure to be here with you. Servant leadership is a concept that was introduced into the marketplace back in 1970, but I take it a little step further in that I focus on both the heart as well as the mind and help leaders to understand the importance of aligning the two. So servant leadership is in essence the same term that I use, leadership with a servant's heart. I emphasize the heart because it's from the heart, where we really understand what it means to help what it means to listen, what it means to have respect for care value and honor even compassion and empathy, while at the same time in our minds as leaders. We bring forth intelligence and acumen as it relates to what we're leading people on and being that subject matter expert that can provide guidance and oversight. and give instruction. So I take servant leadership as a term that was introduced into the marketplace back in 1970, a step further and helping leaders to understand that if we can align what's in the heart with what's in the mind, then we are well on our way to being leaders with a servant's heart.

Hugh Ballou

And it really reframes leadership from the power position of authority to the position of influence, doesn't it? And talk about that, if you will.

Kevin Wayne Johnson

Yeah, because that word authority to me is always interesting because people already know that when you're in a leadership position, they already know that you're in authority, that you have the power, that you have the say. And so you don't have to echo that. You don't have to repeat it because they already know. But what's more important is the influence. And the influence from our position as a leader has everything to do with getting people to show up, getting people to now participate now that they've shown up and getting them to contribute, that is add value. What is their giftedness? What is their expertise? They are free and open to use their ingenuity and their creativity to not only be the best of themselves, but also to make the team better and make the organization better as well. So that's kind of how I differentiate the two. The authority comes with the position. It comes with the role as a leader and the job at hand. But more importantly is the influence that you and I use to get people to move from A to Z. It's not an easy thing, but it's definitely doable.

Hugh Ballou

Oh, it's definitely doable. I've been working in the nonprofit sector for 35 plus years. So, you know, there's a lot of misconceptions in, especially the sector, it's all over, but we'll stay to this one right now. Misconceptions that we're not running a business for, and you've got a business background, we are running a business as Texas M. There's misconceptions about just what you talked about, but about servant leadership in general. Can you talk about the misconception and why that's important for people who serve others to be a servant leader?

Kevin Wayne Johnson

Yeah, so here's the misconception, Hugh, in terms of how I see it. Because we are servants, we put others ahead of ourselves. In other words, we put their interests ahead of our own because that's part of the serving. And because we have to get things done, because we're running a business, we're running an operation, we're running a team, We're running an organization. We have to get things done. We have to satisfy the customer and the stakeholders. I get it. But at the same time, having some care and some thought that goes into leading people, sharing information, providing resources, sometimes, in some circles, we can be viewed as being weak. Our kindness can be viewed as being weak. And now that's a whole nother can of worms that we have to deal with. Kindness is not weakness, but oftentimes because of human behavior, it's interpreted that way. And that's a challenge that leaders have to deal with when it comes to servant leadership or leading with a servant's heart. So a couple of thoughts on that. Number one is that if there is a person or a group of people in any given audience that misinterpret kindness as a weakness, that's really a good time just to have a conversation. And having the conversation and helping them to understand why we lead the way that we do. And then secondly, use it as a teaching moment. There's so much data, Hugh, that dispels this notion that you can't treat people well, you can't offer a helping hand, you can't be there to kind of put your hands around the shoulders of others. We're dealing with people. And people show up with different issues and circumstances and unresolved matters. And oftentimes they just need someone to talk to and just to show some kindness. And again, it's not a weakness, but it's just another step that we share with leaders to get people to move from A to Z because it's our influence that is the ultimate measure of how well that we're leading or not.

Hugh Ballou

Oh, so well put. Folks, if you're listening to this and you can't write all this down, don't worry. There'll be a transcript on the web page for this interview. So don't worry. Make notes about what you're going to do about what you're hearing. Don't try to capture all the notes about what he's saying. So Kevin, leadership isn't a vest you put on when you go to work and take it off at home. One of my favorite quotes is by Franciscan Father Richard Rohr. And he says, how we do anything is how we do everything. So talk about leadership. It's basically a lifestyle, isn't it?

Kevin Wayne Johnson

I love that quote by father. I'm hoping I can use it. Hopefully it's not copyrighted or trademarked. Here's my quote, Hugh. Wherever you go, there you are.

Hugh Ballou

I think that's Buckaroo Banzai, isn't it?

Kevin Wayne Johnson

Unknown. So like anything else in life, the more you practice, the more it becomes a habit. And the message that we give when we communicate, anytime we talk about leadership as a profession, as a habit, as a gift, is just make it part of who we are. Make it part of our lexicon, make it part of our DNA, make it core to who we are. And what I always share is always remember how you felt in the presence of someone who led you well, and always remember how you felt being in the presence of someone who didn't really give a care that you even showed up. And be that type of leader. Be the type of leader that made you feel, you know what, I can tap into my potential. I can be the best that I can be. Somebody has faith in me. They believe in me. They have confidence in me. I don't want to let them down. They're providing good information for me. They're sharing resources. They're giving me opportunities. That's the difference maker that really people are looking for. So I always tell people all the time, and it's something for them to think about, but it's sinking wherever you go. There you are in your family, right at home, in your neighborhood, when people see you and you just say hello for a couple of seconds and your social and civic organizations at work. in your church, just be consistent, be the same person. And over time, it'll just become a habit. It'll be part of who you are. So I'm the same guy here at home, raising my three sons, they're young men now, as I am at work, as I am at my church. As I am when I go out and I meet and greet with my neighbors, you know, wherever I am, but it's over a number of decades of putting it to practice. And so that's a very, very simple and simplistic way of saying it, but it does really become a habit if you put it to practice.

Hugh Ballou

Well, and it's fundamentally authenticity. You are fundamentally who God created you. You're Kevin. So anyway, you talked about earlier the heart. So being a musician, a conductor, we have right, left brain skills that we have to use all the time. That's not common everywhere, but we want to get off in the one emotional state or the thinking state. So the balance of all the dynamics of who we are, the complexity of who we are, and us showing up as influencers. Talk a minute about mind-heart alignment. So aligning the head and the heart, how can leaders balance the competence and compassion?

Kevin Wayne Johnson

Well, again, I have us in terms of our mind, just think about three things. So this is where our intelligence resides and our acumen, basically synonyms, and our subject matter expertise. Because as a leader, you gain credibility from those that you're leading. When they know you know your stuff, you know the work role, every word in your job description, you understand it, and you're walking the walk and you're talking the talk. They have a lot of confidence in you because you know. Now, that's a line, the fact that we know what we're doing with what's in the heart. Do you care that your people even showed up today? Do you listen to people without cutting them off and changing the subject? Do you share information equitably across the team? Do you provide opportunities for development? Are you preparing your people for the next level of responsibility? Is there some compassion and empathy when things get tough? Do we beat people up or do we give them grace when they make a mistake? Because nobody ever achieves success without making a mistake. These are the things that people are really looking for in their leader. And it's a matter of the heart. You have to have the right heart to understand the heartbeat of other people. And it starts with us. I think you mentioned a little bit earlier around emotional intelligence. Well, that first of the four quadrants is self-awareness. We have to be very much aware of ourselves in order to be effective to lead others. So that's what I mean when I say the alignment. It's a match with the fact that we know our stuff, but knowing our stuff is not enough. We have to help other people get to that point. And how do we do that? By demonstrating that we care, pouring into them, coaching and mentoring them, providing information. And this is really something that needs to be taught because not every person in a leadership position has been taught how to lead people. And that's where teams and that's where organizations get in trouble.

Hugh Ballou

I just left a moment of silence just to see if they're really listening. That was huge. If you could replay that on the podcast, if you listened to it on the video, run that one over and then look at the transcript. That's a textbook. By the way, you've got a book.

Kevin Wayne Johnson

 Absolutely.

Hugh Ballou

You happen to have it in your hand. I do. Look at that. What's it called?

Kevin Wayne Johnson

This is leadership with a servant's heart. This is a series of books. The one that I'm holding up now is book three in the series. This one was just released over the Labor Day weekend this past September, but each one has a different subtitle. And the subtitle for this one is your role as a leader in your family. And this book, Hugh, really emphasizes the importance of the family in terms of molding and preparing our children and our teenagers to be leaders when they go out into the marketplace. And so this is a series of nonfiction books. First one was 2019 before the pandemic. The second one was 2022 after the pandemic. And then book three here was just released 2025 Labor Day weekend. And it's all about, again, helping everyone as a leader to understand that cross section, if you would, that alignment between what's in the mind and what's in the heart.

Hugh Ballou

The family piece is important. Psychiatrist Murray Bowen, who wrote Bowen Family Systems Theory, we show up in any group like we showed up in our family of origin. And so there's such an overlap here in the principles that Murray Bowen, the leadership principles that he formed and what you just articulated. So, you know, we could talk forever. We're going to run out of time, but we're going to cover some real good things. Talk about communications for a minute. Building trust, you know, informal, formal communications, part of it's talking, part of it's listening. So how does communications play into relationship building and trust?

Kevin Wayne Johnson

Yeah, so that's a really, really loaded question. One of the most important questions in the leadership journey. So a couple of things I want all of us to think about and take away. The reason that communication is so key is a couple of things. Number one, we speak at a rate on average per minute that's much slower than we listen. So typically within the first five to seven seconds when someone's making a point, whether it's short or whether it's long, we've already determined whether or not it's interesting, is it applicable or is it relatable? And if it's not, we are already tuning people out. So that's how a lot of miscommunication happens because we speak at a rate that's much, much slower on average per minute then we're listening almost twice as fast as we're talking. So that's number one. But what's really, really important is that it takes practice to not interrupt people and not change the subject when people are trying to make their point. It's hard because we don't get much training. And so what happens is when you don't hear somebody out we forget about the fact that what they're saying to them is extremely important. And when we cut them off and change the subject before they're done, we leave them feeling very, very disillusioned and very, very frustrated. If we do the opposite, and if we hear people out and we don't change the subject, we send a subliminal message that what they just said is very, very important. Even if we don't agree, even if we don't find it interesting, but because we did not cut them off and we did not change the subject, we sent a message that what they said was very important. And as a leader, we can't always implement or execute everybody's idea or opinion, but we can hear them out. And that's why miscommunication is so rampant in our homes, on the job, just about everywhere we go, we try our best. The other thing, Hugh, about communication, and we spend so much time on it, is because very often, not all the time, but very often, no matter how well intended the message, inevitably it will be received in the manner it was not intended. Happens all the time. So it's a matter now of kind of going back to clarify, repeat. Oftentimes we have to go over it again, make sure there's an understanding because there's a difference between somebody saying, I hear you, and somebody saying, I understand you. Two different things. Because we say it all the time, I hear you, But that doesn't mean I understand you. And so that's a really loaded question. And it takes a lot of thought and really unpacking to kind of get to the bottom of it. But on the surface, that's what's happening. And that's why communication is so key and so important.

Hugh Ballou

Yeah. I love the quote. The mystery of communication is that people think it actually happened.

Kevin Wayne Johnson

I know. Yeah. And listen, it's the T-H-I-N-K part. that's capitalized, bold, and underlined, because we do think, because we're so close to and really knowledgeable about what we're talking about. And so we communicate the message, and we just assume everybody gets it. But they don't. You might be the expert on the topic, but that doesn't mean that I know what you're talking about. You have to repeat it maybe three or four times for me to get it. And if you don't, then you send people away not having the clarity on your direction or your guidance. And then they come back with a deliverable that's not satisfactory. And now you have to wash, rinse and repeat when you could have handled it right up front by making sure they understand the message, not just hear the message.

Hugh Ballou

And that is a very clear example of how leaders set up problems, isn't it?

Kevin Wayne Johnson

Absolutely. See, it's not, it's not always the people. Oftentimes it's us. It's the delivery, right? But we don't look in the mirror quite enough.

Hugh Ballou

Oh, yeah. That's what a conductor does. If you don't get the results you want, look in the mirror, because guess what? They're responding to you.

Kevin Wayne Johnson

Oh, yeah.

Hugh Ballou

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Part of my coach training was learning to leave silence after somebody speaks, because coaching is fundamentally asking questions. And, you know, many times people can work out stuff just talking about it. And I love the quote, listening is so close to loving, you can hardly tell the difference. And so if we can't do the loving thing, like Wayne Dwyer said, you can be right, you can be kind. What's the use? So that's a very underutilized leadership skill. I appreciate you highlighting that. So we're going to take a visit to your website. We've seen your book, and then I'll come back. I got a closing question for you. But it's the Johnson Group. Is that your website?

Kevin Wayne Johnson

 https://thejohnsonleadershipgroup.com

Hugh Ballou

And so here it is. And there are people listening on the podcast. So describe what they'll see there when they go there.

Kevin Wayne Johnson

So the company, my firm, my business is the Johnson Leadership Group. And we focus primarily on leadership development, training, coaching, mentoring, and also executive coaching for the workforce, government, corporations, churches, nonprofits, and academia. So as you canvass through each of the various pages you'll get a good feel of who we are, why we exist, what is our mission, what is our vision, and then we have what I call five strategic goals right deliver best in class leadership development principles and strategies. strengthen organizational excellence, improve the client's communication channels, promote better informed decisions amongst our leadership team, and then, of course, we want to monitor and we want to measure any call to action. As always, we ask our customers and our clients to give us feedback. We're never afraid of feedback if it's favorable. We post it. If it's not, we go to work and make things better. And then we also have a list of all the various clients in the marketplace that we work with. You'll see the different logos there from the different industries throughout the marketplace that we've worked with. But you'll also see a calendar of events. You see how we do our best to set ourselves apart in the marketplace through our credentials. You'll see the team, myself and my team, you'll see us listed there with a little very, very short bio. And of course, a number of different photographs that capture the different moments and the different clients that we're working with. So we have a team that's based here in the US, and we also have a team that has some good experience internationally as well, as we look to do more work internationally. You'll see a little bit of information on the podcast. You'll see some of my other podcast interviews as a guest. And it's all about leadership and helping each and every one of you to be better in that journey, whether you're frontline, mid-level, or senior level there in your organizations.

Hugh Ballou

So, this is great. So, it's a big deal. You got a team, a big team. So, you're passionate about equipping the next generation of leaders, I think. What challenges do you see leaders are facing today that they need to equip themselves for the future?

Kevin Wayne Johnson

Well, the biggest challenge, quite frankly, is something that's inevitable, and it's change. The only thing constant is change. And when you think about where we are as a nation, but think about where we are across the globe, things are constantly changing. Primarily, it's being driven by technology. I mean, but there's social change, there's economic change, there's political change. There's all types of change that's always taking place. With every election, change comes. I'm talking about midterm, I'm talking about local, regional, and then of course, every four years with the national, there's always gonna be change. And I'm finding that because we have five generations of people in the workplace now at the same time, it makes it much more difficult because each generation has a slightly different view of the world. We all have our own worldview. We see the world through our own lens. And it makes it a little bit more complicated than it was probably 20 years ago, when there were just four generations in the workplace. But right now, there's five generations. And so it makes it a little bit tougher. The other thing that's challenging is because there's so much change. And there's a lot of movement with people, people are constantly moving, changing employers, What happens is is that men and women end up in leadership positions that they didn't apply for. It's kind of like by default because other people have left and guess what? They haven't been equipped. They haven't been prepared. They haven't been developed to really understand what it means to lead people. Being good at what you do day in and day out does not qualify you to now be a leader of people. That's a whole nother ballgame. You're dealing with personalities, you're dealing with differences in terms of work experience, education levels, where people may live to work geographically around the country. I always use the example that somebody who grew up in the northeast portion of the United States is much different than somebody who grew up in San Diego, California. Somebody who lived in Montana for all of their lives, and then they come to a big city, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., it's a culture shock. And it takes a while to get used to that. So all of these different dynamics are taking place, and it makes it challenging. But over time, we can work with them and make things a little bit easier.

Hugh Ballou

Kevin, thank you for sharing your wisdom and your heart with us today. Your message reminds me, and I hope all of us, that leadership begins with service. It grows through influence and endures through intentional action. For our listeners, remember that leadership is not about the title you hold, it's about the lives you impact. Be sure to visit the Johnson Leadership Group online to learn more about Kevin's work and resources. And as always, keep tuning into the Nonprofit Exchange as we continue equipping leaders like you to create meaningful, lasting impact in your communities. Kevin, I'm grateful. Thank you.

Kevin Wayne Johnson

Thank you.