Guided by Servant Leadership

The W.C. Bradley Co. is guided by the tenets of Servant Leadership. In The Learning of Love – A Journey Toward Servant Leadership, William “Bill” Turner, former Chairman and CEO of the W.C. Bradley Co. chronicles the journey that led him to embrace the concept of Servant Leadership. His Christian commitment, along with the models of leadership that he learned from his parents, D.A. and Elizabeth Turner, and his grandfather, W.C. Bradley, have been the values that have guided his life and which he explains in this memoir.

“Leadership is an opportunity for service, not an opportunity for power ... leadership must be grounded in a love that is a spiritual gift. And it must reach outside the organization in many ways to create a caring community and ultimately to build a better world,” states Turner in the book.

Turner is renowned in both the manufacturing and the financial services arenas. As Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the W.C. Bradley Co., he helped build Char-Broil into a leading marketer of outdoor grills. As Chairman of the Executive Committee of Synovus, he helped lead the company to become a multi-billion-dollar financial services company.

Turner’s journey began on his eighth birthday when his grandfather, industrialist W.C. Bradley, “anointed” him the future leader of two large corporations. In searching to add meaning to his life, he found that Servant Leadership was the path to personal fulfillment and the key to unleashing people’s caring and creativity in the workplace.

The Learning of Love – A Journey Toward Servant Leadership was written with Delane Chappell and published by Smyth & Helwys Publishing. More than 18,000 copies have been sold since it was unveiled at a gathering of friends and family at the W.C. Bradley Co. on December 14, 1999. To order a copy, contact Smyth & Helwys (www.helwys.com or call 1-800-747-3016). Royalties from the book benefit the Pastoral Institute, an organization which is an excellent example of Servant Leadership at work. The Pastoral Institute (www.pilink.org), based in Columbus, Georgia, is a nonprofit, faith-based, non-denominational counseling, consultation and educational center which serves individuals, families, businesses, and communities.

The scope of this book’s message was further expanded in December 2007 when The Learning of Love – A Journey Toward Servant Leadership was translated into Mandarin Chinese and published in China. It is now being sold in bookstores throughout China.