The servant-leader

• Trust and respect. Treat everyone on your team as a whole person.
• Accountability. Hold yourself accountable knowing that no one is perfect.
• Listening. Actively solicit your team members’ participation, their ideas, and their feedback such that you can tailor your leadership approach to each one of them accordingly.
• Service to others. Encourage your team members, through your words and actions, to set aside self-serving behaviours in favour of serving others.
• Mentoring. Offer selfless mentorship.
• Persistence. Practise persistence with patience, realising that one or two conversations may not have the desired change in an employee’s assumptions or mindset.

• 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.

Research consistently reveals:

• Servant leadership has a significant effect on employee commitment to a supervisor.
• Servant leadership and employee satisfaction are strongly correlated.