WALTER F. THIESSEN SR. ON LEADERSHIP

Lessons from a Life of Service | By PJ Thiessen, Founder

The highest form of love is service to mankind and stewardship to the planet.
True leadership dwells not in a title, but in the heart that bears it.

My father, Walter F. Thiessen Sr., offered a similar vision in the late seventies while interviewing to lead General Electric’s Elfun Society. He defined leadership as stewardship and service to one another, which included adapting to the inevitability of change. He won the job. CEO Jack Welch was struck by this vision. Dad’s clarity planted a seed; years later, Welch himself would espouse that leadership is service to employees—a profound shift from his earlier, more rigid, results-driven management.

There is one important Truth that must go hand-in-hand with service and must never separate:
SERVICE AND COMPASSION!

A Lesson in Listening

At our family dinners, Dad shared stories from his new role. He described his first year visiting every Elfun chapter across the U.S. and Canada. In each meeting, he would ask the local leaders, “What do your members want from this organization?”

Invariably, they detailed their own personal visions. Dad would gently interrupt: “I didn’t ask what you want. I asked what your membership wants.”

The question was often met with silence. They didn’t know.

So, he would adjourn the meeting. His instruction was simple: “Go ask them. Then report back.” Of course, this produced some grumbles as it prompted change. However, this act—this insistence on listening to the community—always sparked the most meaningful and transformative projects.

The Lesson of the Feast

Dad often told a parable from China often used in American churches. A man arrives at the afterlife and sees two doors: one to heaven, one to hell. Behind each, people sit at a magnificent feast, their arms strapped to chopsticks that were too long to reach their mouths to feed themselves. In hell, they starved in misery. In heaven, joy abounds. The difference? In heaven, they fed the person across from them.

Leadership is Service

This is the core of his belief: true leadership serves the world and its communities with compassion. It rejects hoarding power to force a personal will—a hierarchy of greed that destroys. It builds by first listening, by genuinely caring about what the community needs.

A community is not a hierarchy. It is a collective. It thrives when diverse skills unite behind a common vision to tackle shared challenges and make necessary changes.

Religions around the world acknowledge this. Even Jesus, which most religions recognize was the greatest spiritual Master so far to ever walk the Earth, taught that true leadership is defined by serving others with compassion, not by exercising authority, unlike worldly rulers who oppress, even in his time.  He stated that the greatest must be a servant to all, as humble as a child, and that positions of honor are prepared by his Father, not given by him. Even he said, “I am among you as One who serves.”

Jesus made no distinction between the inherent value of different nations, races or ethnicity. He explicitly challenged the prejudices of his time by pointing out Samaritans—a group typically despised by his Jewish audience—as the hero of a story to define who a “neighbor” is. Showing favoritism or treating one group as inferior is considered a sin in the biblical framework. The “Father’s Kingdom” is not dominated by one race. It is a “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language.”   The union of all ethnic or racial divisions results in “Oneness”—or “in Christ.”

The Vision Continues

This principle directly inspired The Humanitarian Players. We create the venue where community gathers—to learn about local businesses, charities, and needs—while encouraging more compassionate service and adapting to change. Our projects foster shared education and fellowship. We believe in teaching, feeding, and caring for one another, and in building a space where we don’t just survive, but thrive.

It is the enduring lesson of my father Walter F. Thiessen, Sr.’s life that we lead by serving with compassion, and we succeed by lifting each other up.