I was surprised to find that the word ‘Lowerarchy’ is in the dictionary. I’ll let you look it up if you are interested!

I belong to a fantastic organisation called Toastmasters International which is nothing at all to do with people wearing red jackets and being masters of ceremony at weddings, and everything to do with helping people to develop their communication and leadership skills in a mutually supportive environment. If that sounds like a fairytale, well it’s certainly been a dream come true for me these past seven years. I can honestly say that I wouldn’t have the word ‘Speaker’ on my business card, if it wasn’t for the development I have enjoyed at Toastmasters.

Toastmasters is run on a ‘Lowerarchy’ principle. That means that the newest member becomes the most important person within the organisation and the rest us are there to support each other. There is an International President, who changes every year, and is usually, but not always, American – Toastmasters started in the U.S.A. in the 1920’s. There is a board of Directors, and each country is known as a District. There are over 80 Districts in the world, and the U.K. and Ireland is District 71. We have a District Governor, who changes every year, and I am currently one of eight Division Governors in the U.K. I look after six Areas and support six Area Governors, who look after between four and six clubs each.

I have learned a tremendous amount about leadership since I started taking support roles within Toastmasters. It have had the opportunity to put my ideas into practice in a voluntary role and it has been hugely enjoyable. At the beginning of my year as Division Governor, I set out what I thought our goals should be as a Division for the year, and asked the team for their thoughts and ideas. They pretty much agreed with me, so I asked them to get together and come up with what they needed from me if they were going to achieve those goals. They gave me a short list of requirements, and I have tried to deliver what they asked for.

That is what I believe the word ‘Lowerarchy’ to mean. It’s another way of describing ‘servant leadership’ and it’s something I have been a big fan of ever since I worked for Christopher Garnett at GNER in the 1990’s. He was the sort of Chief Executive who had a fantastic relationship with his people at ground level and realised that they were as important as anyone else in the organisation. He never got on a train without asking the staff if they needed help, and he was often to be seen pouring coffee or clearing rubbish off tables. He was the embodiment of my favourite quote: ‘The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality, and the last is to say thank you – in between, the leader becomes a servant’ (Max duPree).

What organisations do you know, or are you part of, where people talk about ‘support functions’ but then go around acting as if they are more important than the people they are supporting? I recently heard of a company where there were fifty people in the Finance team, and none of them had any front line experience whatsoever. Yet, they were making decisions on a daily basis that affected their customer-facing staff throughout the U.K., Europe and the Middle East. That same company had five people in the Learning and Development function, to cover the same area. Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

I know that the customer service that was delivered on GNER during Christopher Garnett’s period at the helm was second to none on the railway in the U.K. at the time. I regularly saw senior managers out on the trains helping with luggage and service disruption, and I passionately believe that that sort of behaviour from managers and senior people helps enormously with creating a customer service culture.