Persuasion, Growth, and Jedi Masters

Robert Greenleaf, the father of Servant-leadership, taught about the fine differences between coercion, manipulation, and persuasion.

Greenleaf explains that Coercion is pressure.  Manipulation is guiding people into actions or beliefs that they don't fully understand and that may or may not be good for them.  "Persuasion involves arriving at a feeling of rightness about a brief or action through one's own intuitive sense.  One takes an intuitive step, from the closest approximation to certainty that can be reached by conscious logic (which is sometimes not very close) to the state in which one may say with conviction, 'this is where I stand!' The act of persuasion, thus defined, would help order the logic and favor the intuitive step.  But the person being persuaded must take that intuitive step alone, untrammeled by coercive or manipulative stratagems of any kind.  Persuasion, on a critical issue, is a difficult, time-consuming process.  It demands one of the most exacting of human skills" (p. 129).  Persuasion is the result of great leadership.  One who listens, asks good questions, is comfortable with silence, and leads with integrity is able to persuade others to do great things.  

Greenleaf goes on and quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, "Great men exist that there may be greater men...it is for man to tame the chaos; on every side, whilst he lives, to scatter the seeds of science and of song, that climate, corn animals, men, may be milder, and that the germs of love and benefit may be multiplied" (p. 129-130).  Greenleaf and Emerson are teaching us that we are meant to be great but, more importantly, we are to help persuade those around us to become greater.  

Don't make fun...but I'm a massive Star Wars nerd.  And Yoda (yes, the little green dude), eloquently speaks to this in the 2017 sequel film, The Last Jedi.  When speaking to a struggling Master Luke Skywalker, Yoda said, "The greatest teacher, failure is. Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters."  Greenleaf and Emerson and Yoda(!) are teaching us some valuable lessons, here.  That we are meant to be great but, more importantly, we are to help persuade those around us to become greater.  

References:  

Greenleaf, R. (1991). Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Paulist Press.

Johnson, R. (Director and Writer). (2017). The Last Jedi [Motion Picture].