Servant Leadership Transforms People at TDIndustries

Patricia Martin says she’s a better person today for having worked at TDIndustries, the largest mechanical construction company in the southern United States.

She credits her transformation to the company’s decades-long commitment to servant leadership, the basic tenet of which is that the best leaders consider the needs of others first.

“I know for a fact that I’m a better person today than when I walked through the doors of TDIndustries,” says Martin, who has been with the company for 13 years.

“I’ve become a person who better understands how to serve others, and that flows out into my personal life at home, at church, in the grocery store, wherever I go.”

She points to both the company leaders and her co-workers, or partners as they’re called at TDIndustries, as providing that life-changing influence.

As an example of how she’s been affected, Martin recalls a meeting with former CEO Jack Lowe Jr. and others in which she was asked about her role with the company.

An assistant to Lowe at the time, Martin replied that she wasn’t in any sort of leadership position.

“(Lowe) leaned over and said to me, ‘Well, you are a person of influence, though.’

“I never forgot that,” says Martin. “Even if you’re not in a supervisory role, every person is a person of influence, wherever they’re placed, at work, at home or in the grocery store, we can be people of influence.”

A generalist in the company’s people department now, Martin says she plans to finish her career with TDIndustries, where she has found not only satisfaction but a fertile environment for continuous growth and learning.

Her experience could be considered a sign of the company’s success in practicing servant leadership, according to the original proponent of the approach, Robert K. Greenleaf, who said the best test of servant leadership is whether those served are growing as persons and becoming healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous and more likely themselves to become servants.

Servant leadership has generated significant outcomes for the company, according to Martin and others with TDIndustries, who link those successes directly to the enhanced employee skills, engagement and productivity stemming from this approach.

For instance, today the 1,500-person firm has annual revenues of about $300 million. In 2009, when other organizations were shutting their doors, its stock price increased 11 per cent in value.

Also noteworthy is that the firm was recently named to Fortune’s 100 Best Companies To Work For list, for the 13th consecutive year.

“I think we’re a phenomenon,” says Martin. “This company has hit on basic human needs and values that can be applied in every day business life and have happy employees and make a profit.

“That’s trust, and that gives credibility to the whole concept of servant leadership.”

Read an upcoming article on how TDIndustries ensures servant leadership is an ongoing practice.

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