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Servant Leadership: How To Put Your People Before Yourself
Ways to establish a culture of servant leadership
- Let others see you serve and encourage them to join you.
- Make sure they know that you care. Being knowledgeable does not make you a good leader - being caring does.
- Invest your time in your people. Regularly connect with them.
- Don’t place restrictions on your willingness to serve.
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Tips to make a good impression
- Be curious about the other person.
- Your smile and will go a long way toward a positive first impression.
- Listen, then show you were listening.
- Talk about your business in a casual, non-salesy way.
- Research attendees and come prepared with questions.
- Introduce yourself with an anecdote that resonates.
- Learn how you can help each new connection.
- Go in without a strict agenda and try to make a new friend. This takes the pressure off.
Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy built on the belief that the most effective leaders strive to serve others, rather than accrue power or take control. The aforementioned others can include customers, partners, fellow employees and the community at large. The term was coined by management expert Robert K.
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Servant leadership
Is a leadership philosophy that is built on the belief that the most effective leaders strive to serve others, rather than accrue power or take control.
Servant leadership vs. other leadership styles
The authoritarian leadership style:
- The authoritarian style of leadership requires leaders to have total decision-making power and absolute control over their subordinates. Servant leadership upends the top-down power structure.
Similar leadership styles:
- Ethical leadership urges leaders to show respect for the values and dignity of their subordinates. Servant leadership's emphasis on taking responsibility for the needs and desires of others.
- Participative leadership style requires leaders to involve subordinates in setting goals, building teams and solving problems but keep the final decision-making in their own hands. Servant leadership includes some of these elements.
Attributes of a servant leader
- Listening. A servant leader seeks to identify the will of a group and helps to clarify that will.
- Empathy. A servant leader assumes the good intentions of co-workers and does not reject them as people.
- Healing. Understand part of their leadership responsibility is to help make whole employees whose sense of self is precarious.
- Awareness.
- Persuasion. Servant leaders rely on persuasion not positional authority or coercion, to convince others.
- Conceptualization. Balancing between thinking big and managing everyday reality.
- Foresight. The ability to understand the past and see the present clearly to predict how the future will unfold.
- Stewardship. CEOs, staffs and trustees all have a responsibility to hold the institution "in trust" for the greater good of society.
- Commitment to the growth of people. Feel a responsibility to nurture the growth of employees.
- Building community. Find ways to build community in their institutions.
This leadership style has a rich history in ancient texts of wisdom from Tao Te Ching, one of the founding texts of Taoism, written by fifth-century Chinese philosopher and poet Lao-Tzu to Arthashastra, a Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, economic policy and military strategy to The Book of Mark in The Bible.
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The servant-leader
Servant leadership is a very social leadership style.
While traditional leadership is about the accumulating, hoarding and exercising (which often degenerates into abusing) of power by the one at the “top of the pyramid,”servant leadership is about sharing power with your team, identifying, prioritising and meeting of others and helping people develop and perform as highly as possible.
Servant leadership as a powerful management style
Research consistently reveals:
- Servant leadership has a significant effect on employee commitment to a supervisor.
- Servant leadership and employee satisfaction are strongly correlated.
10 traits of servant leaders
- Self-awareness. It helps to view situations from a holistic position rather than being self-centred.
- Empathy. People need to be accepted for their special one-of-a-kind spirits.
- Listening and reflecting upon what your team says is essential to the growth of the servant-leader.
- Healing. Many people walk around with a variety of hurts. Good servant-leaders endeavour to support those with whom they come in contact.
- Foresight. Seeks to understand the lessons from the past, the realities of the present, and the possible outcome of a decision for the future.
- Conceptualisation. Visualising the big picture and thinking beyond day-to-day realities.
- Relying on persuasion rather than hierarchical dominance.
- Stewardship. It requires a commitment to serving the needs of others first and taking responsibility for the actions and results of your team.
- Team growth. Commitment to the personal growth of every individual.
- Community building. Human beings have an innate need to belong to a “tribe” of some kind.