Greatness is not a state you reach. It’s a verb.
The story of a Rust Belt kid who became a global HR executive — and the servant-leadership principle he built a life, and now a legacy, on: show up for the people in front of you.
By Keith Sodan (with Mike E. Brown)
You’ve built the title. Has it built the life you wanted?
You’ve climbed the ladder, led the team, hit the numbers — and somewhere along the way, “success” stopped feeling like the word for it. You suspect the leadership advice you were handed measured the wrong things: title over character, output over people, image over honesty.
Keith Sodan spent 40 years leading at the highest levels of global business, and came to a simple, harder-to-practice truth: greatness isn’t a rank you’re given. It’s a set of small, repeated choices — how you listen, how you forgive, how you show up.
A guide who has actually lived it
Keith Sodan spent more than 40 years turning the principles of servant leadership into results — developing executives and guiding elite decision-makers across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
But the credentials are only half the story. Keith grew up in a volatile household in working-class Binghamton, New York, found structure at the local Boys Club, and survived a near-fatal car accident in college. He built a career while learning, often the hard way, what it actually costs to lead people well — and what it costs when you don’t.
Greatness Is a Verb, written with co-author Mike E. Brown, is Keith’s account of that whole arc: the hard beginning, the boardrooms, the marriage his own ambition cost him, and the discipline of turning every one of life’s harder chapters into fuel for showing up better.
A simple way to bring this into your life or your organization
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Practice it
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Advance Review
“Forged by a violent childhood and near-fatal accidents, a former Boys Club worker rises to become a global corporate leader, relying on servant leadership, relentless discipline, and deep devotion to his family to turn life's greatest trials into a legacy of purpose.”
— Ted Olczak, Printed Word Reviews
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