Let’s Talk About Servant Leadership

What is Servant leadership?

Servant leadership is a leadership style that entails interactions between a leader and his managers or employees to achieve authority rather than power. Servant leaders typically take the traditional power leadership model and turn it completely upside down. They also hold a serve-first mindset.

Servant leaders are serving instead of commanding, showing humility instead of brandishing authority, and always looking to enhance the development of their staff members in ways that unlock potential, creativity, and sense of purpose; Tarallo (2018), SHRM.

At Synergetic, leaders have come to embrace this style of leadership that has been instrumental in encouraging teamwork, breaking silos, and improving communication. That way, we can forge forward together as a team, building one another and the company at large.

In line with this, is our culture of empathy which will enable us to treat each other with kindness within the organization, while staying firm altogether.

Importance of servant leadership

a)???Synergizing Relationships

This form of leadership enables leaders to move from controlling their managers and employees to bringing them together and strengthening relationships. They encourage collaboration within the workplace by guiding the processes and allowing all team members to express their ideas.

As you might be familiar with micromanaging, it never works well. It often raises feelings of mistrust among employees making them uncomfortable. Hence, it’s important for leaders to only guide the processes while they trust their Managers and employees to do their best. It is very unlikely for you to perform lowly if your superior trusts you with a certain duty. You feel motivated to do your best. ?

b)???Promoting Innovation

Servant leaders promote innovation within their companies by bringing together efforts and brilliant ideas from all team members. They lead by heart and appreciate the efforts of their employees who to them; form a very important part of their organizations. At synergetic, we often work in teams and have recently formed cross-functional teams to serve different purposes within the organization. This brings together different expertise, ideas, and strengths, all to serve a common goal.

c)???Role-Modelling the Desired Company Culture

Servant leaders role-model the behaviors and practices they would like to see within the organization. Unlike leaders who practice dictatorship, servant leaders are key players in defining and role-modeling the desired organizational culture; which is then cascaded to the wider organization through working with the various teams.

That way, it becomes easier for the employees to copy what they see in their leaders and apply it in their work and peer-to-peer interactions.

At Synergetic, the leadership team (which I’m part of) reiterates the mantra; ‘practice what you preach’. As such, we always strive to do our best knowing that the Managers and employees closely observe us even without our knowledge. And for sure, I wouldn’t ever ask anyone below me to take water while I take wine.

d)???Employee Well-being, Happiness, Satisfaction, & Loyalty

More crucially, servant leaders have their employees' interests and well-being at heart. They empower their employees across all levels; by nurturing their talents; mentoring and coaching them to go as far as their potential could take them.?They prioritize the employees’ well-being because it enhances their overall productivity, happiness, satisfaction, and ultimately; employee loyalty and retention.

e)???Breaking Silos

Often, you will find servant leaders sharing important information and reading materials with their managers and employees to increase their knowledge, and ensure the organization operates at the same level. This helps to break the silos within the organization causing better collaboration.

f)????Employee Leadership Empowerment

Aside from that, servant leaders aim to develop leadership qualities from their employees as they believe in growth. For instance, through delegation of authority with proper guidance in certain circumstances.

Principles of a servant leader

For you to be a servant leader, you must uphold the following principles:?