Become a Servant Leader
“The servant-leader is a servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.” –Robert K. Greenleaf
Why do we use the word Servant Leadership? What kind of leadership style is this? First let me tell you that it is commonly thought that a servant is always at the lower end of any hierarchy, that is not true, the truth is that some leaders transformed the positive qualities of servitude into strong leadership qualities. The test of leadership is, that there are two categories of leaders, “Leader First” and “Servant First”. The “Leader first” is the person who is focusing on achieving his personal goals with his power and position. And “Servant first” is the person who put people first. Ultimately a servant leader surrenders most of his or her authority. It’s a completely selfless type of leadership that focuses on improving people at their core and organization. Servant leadership is a philosophy of leadership based on the concept that the most effective leaders seek to serve others rather than gain power or control. Customers, partners, co-workers, and the general public are examples of the aforementioned others. A servant leader even works on developing the community surrounding the team and the organization. The real question is do you leave things better than you found them. Are all your team members are growing in their careers? Because they have spent some time with you, did they learn and grow as a result of your influence, is your team ready when they leave your home? Will they be effective leaders, neighbours, coaches, spouses and teachers have you done your job effectively? Leadership is an influence, nothing more nothing less, the mark we leave on other people and the mark we leave on the organizations we involve ourselves with. The real question is, will people be glad you were there. What is the servant? Being the servant is simply the business of identifying and meeting the legitimate needs of the people entrusted to your care, meeting their needs, not their wants, being their servant not their slave and what they need may not be what they want or what your employees and team may need will probably look a bit different from what they want. So, if you are in a leadership position you need to make a list of what people need and if you get stuck just ask yourself a simple question, what do I need? That will get you going again, remember the golden rule with the difference between a want and need, a want is a wish or desire without regard to the consequences or where the choice will lead, but the leaders always are concerned with where the behaviour is leading. So, a need is a legitimate physical or psychological requirement for the well-being of an individual. What do people really need, food, water, clothes, and shelter these are basic needs, but people also have higher-level needs like they need to be appreciated, respected, valued, communicated with, encouraged, and listen to, they also need accountability including healthy boundaries, rules consistency and honesty about their performance, feedback is a colossal human need, there lies a secret of leadership, when you identify and meet the needs of others, you will build influence with them. There is a lot of difference between knowing about something and knowing it. You can learn about leadership by reading books and attending seminars but you will never know leadership doing those things. Think of the qualities of great leader humility, respect, self-control, honesty, commitment determination, gratitude, and communication skills. Does anybody really believe you develop those qualities of character by reading books going to seminars or watching videos? Leadership development and character development are one, leadership is not about style or personality if you doubt it just check great leaders in history who had very different styles like Abraham Lincoln, and Ronal Regan, had completely different styles but both were effective leaders. Leadership has very little to do with your personality and everything to do with your character. Ninety-nine per cent of leadership failures are because of the failure of character.
Warran Bennies of USC one of America’s leadership gurus for decades declares leadership is a character in action. What is character? Character is those doing the right thing and winning those battles in your heart and mind between what you want to do and what you should do. Character is having the moral maturity to do the right thing even if costs you something. Leadership is doing the right thing.
Conceptualizing: This involves the leader utilizing his or her experience and the resources provided by the organization to help solve problems. According to Robert Greenleaf, conceptualization is a key characteristic of Servant Leadership. It is the ability to create a future-oriented concept that provides vision and mission. Servant leaders invite ownership to help shape the vision. In order to do that, servant leaders approach relationships on a long-term basis. Ture servant leaders do not use others to meet personal goals. Rather they equip others to realize common goals and vision.
Emotional Healing: The servant-leader is supportive of followers and sensitive to their feelings and ideas. The goal is to be available and listen to followers and their concerns. A servant leader with behaviour characteristics such as empathy, compassion, altruism and healing builds not only a mentally and emotionally healthy workforce but also inculcates a sense of cohesiveness, collaboration, and sustainable relationships among the followers by understanding and addressing their feelings and emotions. That cohesiveness and collaboration in a servant-leaders organization increase pro-social and altruistic behaviour among followers that improve organizational performance and overall team effectiveness. The significance of understanding and addressing the feelings and emotions of followers and ensuring their well-being becomes evident from the heal findings. Servant leaders understand, empathize with, and address the emotional turmoil of their employees.
Put Followers First: Leaders don’t force people to follow, they invite them on a journey. A leader is a great follower first. Leaders always trust followers and care for them and help them grow, identify their qualities, potential and vision. They encourage them to achieve their dreams and goal. Leaders create momentum in the team, and on achieving success, they give credit to the team. A great leader would never sacrifice the people to save the numbers. They will sacrifice their numbers to save people. Bob Chapman, runs a large manufacturing company in the Midwest called Barry-Wehmiller. His company got hit very hard in 2008 by the recession, and they lost thirty per cent of orders, overnight. This is a big deal for this large manufacturing company and they could no longer afford their labour cost. They needed to save 10 million dollars, the board members got together and discussed layoffs and Bob refused. Bob didn’t believe in head counts; he believed in heart counts and it was much more difficult to reduce the heart count. They came up with one solution, every employee from secretary to CEO, was required to take four weeks of unpaid vacation. They could take it anytime they wanted and they did not have to take it consecutively. But it was Bob who announced the program that mattered so much. He said, it’s better that we should all suffer a little than any of us should have to suffer a lot, and morale went up. They saved 20 million dollars. Great leaders protect their people. If Bob agreed to lay off to save $10 million, he would have lost the trust of his followers and would not have gained $20 million.
Helping Followers Grow and Succeed: Few leaders positively influence others. They help each team member grow; they know that when team members grow, their team impact also grows. They realised that with the support of a great leader, people grow much faster. When they achieve the organizational goal, they won’t keep it themselves they will distribute it to the team. When you have an interest in helping people grow, you will find optimal ways to make it happen and stretch opportunities for team members. These opportunities give team members a chance to try something new. If the team member succeeds, the entire team get benefits from the outcome of their experience. Leaders who invest in their team members’ growth will long be remembered not only who benefit from the team’s outputs, but also by the team members who grow.
Behaving Ethically: Caring about others first, and doing the right thing are critical to servant leadership. Ethical people are courageous they are willing to say what is honest, even when it isn’t popular or comfortable, rather than lie or lie by omission. In fact, sometimes what they impart as leaders is painful for them to say and for others to hear, but ethical behaviour requires honesty and courage. Effective leaders have a passion to serve, often inspiring themselves and others with their willingness to be accountable for results with a value-driven approach.
The values of ethical leaders focus on serving first and then asking others to serve as well. Leaders who demonstrate ethical behaviour offer congruent integrity by expecting employees to demonstrate loyalty, and honest and consistent ethical behaviour as well. Respect is embedded in ethical behaviour and that, too, must be congruent between leaders and their team members. Often, issues arise in power dynamics, and servant leadership is a great lens to apply to those situations, as reframing situations from the perspective of serving while leading is a great way to keep unhealthy power dynamics from occurring. The approach of servant leadership, as described by Robert Greenleaf as the founder of the modern servant leadership movement, creates a work environment with consistent behaviours across the entire workforce, supporting an environment that values good listening skills and consensus-building as a positive extension of using persuasion as the ethical construct for fair power.
Empowering: It is through the process of empowering followers that the servant leader builds followers’ leadership capacity. Empowerment is a key predictor of engagement. Empowerment is key to building high-performance teams, empowered employees accomplish more than the average person and are more efficient and will generate solutions to improve productivity. Empowerment is about trust, responsibility, and action. Let’s look at a few ways where we can empower ourselves and others. Give team members permission to take action or make decisions, and place trust in your team members that they will make decisions with the best interests of the organization in mind. Provide clear policy and best practices to ensure team members understand boundaries and feel supported and offer a word of encouragement to the team and to yourself through self-talk. Be generous with others without expecting anything in return, say thank you, take interest in others and be kind when nobody is watching, encourage others to engage in projects and contribute to team success and don’t forget to give credit, share achievements and success with everyone. Regular communication on success helps everyone identify how their contribution makes a difference. Share your knowledge, sharing knowledge empowers through learning and positive feedback it also empowers the facilitator by validating their knowledge and skills. Mentoring, coaching or even writing an article for the team or organization, nurture the talent in others most people have a hidden strength that is underutilized, make the effort to find talent and encourage people to develop their strengths.
Creating Value for the Community: The leader rather than focusing on the outcomes for the leader and the followers, the servant leader is concerned about having a positive impact on the larger community the organization, the sector, and the nation. By putting others above yourself and in essence, the community needs above yourself, the servant leader draws attention to those needs and gains support from followers to also help. An example of Mother Teresa and how she dedicated her life to those in need and how those actions lead to a sustained greater society. She recognized the need, gained support, took action and in the end has been recognized for her efforts because of the things she did to create a better community. While recognition is not what is sought after by a servant leader, sometimes it is impossible to hide behind the curtains when extraordinary accomplishments are made.
This learning is taken from the book “The Ultimate Leadership in You” by Sreekanth Ganeshi. This book is available in Amazon https://amzn.eu/d/bKrWjqG
