#Lead for Good: Be human, please
Mohamad Cholid, Certified Executive and Leadership Coach
“In a political moral way, most of us are butlers.” – Kazuo Ishiguro.
If you had a mansion consisting of tens of rooms on one hectare of land, or even more, you would need a butler — head of household staff. In English aristocratic tradition, and perhaps also within the tradition of our predecessors, butlers are a necessity.
What makes the butlers in England — and among the super-rich American households — special is that other than coordinating culinary staffs, housekeeping team, gardener, they must also be adept at directing dinner events, selecting, and pouring wine with remarkable etiquette. In the US, a butler is also called a household manager, with wages up to more than USD 200,000 per year.
In Indonesia, a butler usually coordinates the gardener, driver, security personnel, cooking staff, and doing monthly electricity payment — rarely involved in dinner parties. Even if there is a cup – bearer, they usually belong to a catering team, not an employee of the house.
Butlers also exist in the hospitality business, mostly available for VIP and VVIP guests only.
We may respect the profession of butlers – as you might agree – supposing that their mindset and behavior is unlike that of Mr. Stevens the butler.
Stevens serves (to be in the service of) Lord Darlington, an English aristocrat, near Oxford, as a butler in the Darlington House. More than thirty years in his profession, Mr. Stevens (his formal title as a butler) has buried any form of feelings toward people — even in matters such as expressing love or respecting his parents as human beings.
According to Mr. Stevens, the great butlers are great by virtue of their ability to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the upmost; they will not be shaken by external events, however surprising, alarming or vexing. It is a matter of “dignity”.
When his father is dying in his room, Stevens chooses to occupy himself by serving M. Dupont, one of Lord Darlington’s esteemed guests, who is complaining about his blisters. When Lord Darlington’s guests who are holding a secret meeting (for the interest of Nazis) and staying in the mansion have all gone, Stevens congratulates himself for completing his professional duty tremendously in those situations.
Meanwhile his father, a former butler in Loughborough House (owned by the late Mr. John Silver) and an under-butler staff in Darlington Hall, dies in solitude within the confines of his small quarters within the large mansion.