I was researching the term “servant leader” today and ran across a few quotes from Robert Greenleaf, the man credited with coining that phrase. The quote that stood out (and funnily enough has little to do with servant leadership) was found on Viterbo University’s Servant Leadership Blog and is quoted below (from the December 13 post titled “The veritable babel of communication“):

We live in a veritable babel of communication, much of it originated by hucksters in pursuit of a fast buck rather than by those who carefully weigh what is important to say. Far too much of it is put forth by plausible, intelligent, and articulate people who are both entertaining and titillating, but whose words do not leave an impact of pithy*, significant ideas.

The quote got me to thinking about the blogosphere and the many millions of people who are blogging (myself included) and how much real information is really being disseminated through those blogs. There are a few blogs that I read on a regular basis that provide significant value to me by making me think about new things, challenging my views/opinions and/or providing new information that I hadn’t previously considered. There are also a lot of blogs that I occasionally read but don’t provide a lot of value and/or information to me (or to other readers?) and I wonder what the real purpose of those blogs are. I wonder which camp my blog falls into (hopefully the one that provides information to readers)?

In the same blog post on the Servant Leadership Blog, the question is asked:

Do we carefully weigh what is important to say? Do our words leave an impact of pithy*, significant ideas? If not, then why are we speaking?

This is a powerful question for a person (blogger or not) to ask themselves when communicating with others and one that I will be asking myself continuously going forward.

* Note: I assume that ‘pithy’ is being used to mean “Precisely meaningful; forceful and brief” – Definition from Answers.com – http://www.answers.com/topic/pithy

[tags] Servant Leader, Communication [/tags]