Servant Leaders, Psychological Safety and Inclusion: Part ONE: Servant Leaders and Bummer Lambs (Part I of 3)

Transformational Leaders as Servants

We have been observing or reflecting on leader behaviors for long, long time. Leadership theorists and researchers have been attempting to describe or explain what the best leadership is and isnt.

The prevailing thought for a major portion of human history was that leaders

are born with certain innate traits. Is it traits that we are born with that

that makes leaders successful? There are libraries full of articles on how

leaders are born, and how only innate characteristics define great leaders, but

fortunately, that era has passed. We know differently have seen great leaders

developed and nurtured.

Warren Benis, organizational expert, and author, once said, “The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born—that there is a genetic factor to leadership.” Leaders are made rather than born (Bennis et al, 2008). They are developed.

If leaders are developed, what behaviors do we need to develop, task do the

perform, or education do they need to engage in to become great leaders that

transform the organizations and the people they lead? (Goldsmith, 2007).

In Leadership That Matters (2003), Marshall Sashkin and Molly Sashkin, share that transformational leaders lead in a way that improves not only organizational productivity and performance. They also positively impact the lives of organizational members. Transformational leaders create empowering, supportive cultures that nurture resiliency, change and self-reliance. They “grow people.” Robert Greenleaf in his 1970 seminal work,?The Servant as Leader,?identified a type of transformational leader he referred to as a “servant leader.” But this was not the first mention of the characteristics of the type of transformational leadership we think of as Servant Leadership. Elements of Servant Leadership can be traced back thousands of years - Lao Tzu, Moses, Jesus, and others from a number of traditions and in many different cultures. Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies, elements of servant-leadership dimensions are present in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Taoism.

In ancient China, Lao Tzu provided descriptions of leadership declaring that “A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done and his aim fulfilled, followers will say: we did it ourselves.” Lao Tzu described great leaders as ones who walked beside or behind followers (supporting them), who motivated and rewarded followers (giving them credit and not taking credit for their work), and who developed followers’ confidence (developing them to be better). This leader elevates those that follow and rewards them for their service.

In the New Testament, Matthew, Luke, and Paul document Jesus teaching his followers how to lead and how this approach was different from contemporary and historical leaders. “But whoever would be great among you must be a servant, and whoever would be first among you must be a slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25-28).

?So, leadership is about sacrifice? "Ransom?" How many leaders do you know that are this committed? Many want "Sevant Leader" printed on the card or listed in the corporate but... Is it really about giving up EVERYTHING to serve others? Servant Leadership plays well into the model Jesus offers as a leader who engaged followers in a different way AND charged them to engage their followers in a different way. As Ken Blanchard’s writes in Lead Like Jesus (2016) “Leadership is not about power. It’s not about control; it’s about helping people live according to the vision.”

Whether interpreted through Benis, Lao Tzu, Sashkin, Greenleaf, or Blanchard, or in The Gospel of Mathew, leadership approaches that are described as Servant Leadership places emphasis on how followers are engaged, more than any specific trait, behavior, or edict offered by leaders. And Servant Leadership isn’t just a spiritual phenomenon only embraced by the religious on a philosophical journey. ?It is a very practical approach used by modern US military. Officers and senior enlisted personnel are taught to “take care” of and develop subordinates and those they lead. Nurture them. Grow them. Motivate and Love them. This is reinforced regularly in routines as mundane serving food in chow lines to modeling combat fighting skills to leading difficult missions, not from the rear, but from the front. Servant Leaders must engage followers, be present, develop others and create environments where people are free to explore, grow, and take risk.

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Leading Culture and Finding Lost Sheep

As all culture experts have learned from the work of Edgar Schein (2013), leaders drive culture and are responsible for 'shared basic assumptions learned by a group." Culture is key of many organization effectiveness variables and outcomes. It certainly eats “strategy for breakfast” (Moore & Rose, 2000) or “lunch” as repeated by renown management expert Peter Drucker (2011). Profitability, team cohesiveness, employee engagement, and leadership success will be positively impacted if leadership create and sustain a culture where employees understand the rules of engagement and supported by their leaders. Risk-taking, resiliency, and innovation, energy, and purpose alignment increase when Servant Leaders create cultures where employees feel safe and open to sharing their views without fear of ridicule or retribution.

During the past few decades, Psychological Safety has been part of the safe culture conversation. As Marc Effron (2023) reminds us, Carl Rogers addressed elements of safe culture as early as 1954. Even the process improvement and quality guru Edwards Deming (1943) addressed similar topics in his quality approach advocating that everyone had “to feel safe to take risk and ask questions and to get to the heart of improving systems.” It was, however, Amy Edmondson (1999) who codified many of the principles we discuss as psychological safety today. Dr. Edmonson defined this phenomenon as “the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, and that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking.” In the workplace there is the ability to foster a culture empowering individual to express ideas, raise concerns, ask questions, challenge processes, and offer divergent views. She quite honestly changed the way we think about culture, and leadership’s role in creating safe cultures.

The role of the leader, informal or formal, Servant Leader or not, is key to creating a safe culture and creating workplaces and environments that are psychologically safe (Nembhard, 2019). Servant Leaders create environments that pull people into conversations, INCLUSION at its best. These leaders must be willing to do whatever it takes to create this environment. Even engaging those that bully, foster incivility, or demean others as a way of stifling dissent or taking power. While any employee can make others feel unsafe – peer employee, supervisor, professor, physician, receptionist, HR manager, etc. – it is up the Sevant Leader to set expectations that promote psychological safety.

On one occasion, I recall an administrative staff person for a senior leader who attempted to exert control and influence outcomes by engaging in demeaning behavior. She actually took some degree of pride in “controlling” the situation and “running the show.” This single employee perpetrated hostile rumors, created barriers to open dialogue, and was the definition of “gatekeeper.” Even though she had no formal power, her actions created a hostile work environment that prevented collaboration, openness, honest dialogue, and dissent. While she was not the leader, the leader did not correct her behavior and may have benefited from the environment the assistant facilitated. The senior leader desired to be "that servant leader" creating change and building culture. In essence, the administrative assistant was the change agent, and the executive was the leader who sponsored her allowed a culture to exist. Therefore, responsible for the lack of psychosocial safety and danger culture that resulted.

?One Lost Sheep (or employee) is One Too Many

Leaders can learn a lot from a good story. Stories and parables are tools that have been used to shape conversations and build kingdoms. The Story of the Bummer Lamb (1998) created by Embracing Brokenness Ministries is such a story. I used it often in discussing leaders’ roles in creating psychological safety since I heard Larry Knighton , a professor at Anderson University (SC) discuss it. The story goes that occasionally, a mother sheep will reject a lamb. She will refuse to nurse it or nurture it. In fact, the ewe may physically push the “bummer lamb” out of the flock, even over a cliff. These bummer lambs that have been rejected by their mothers and the flock always perish without intervention. When a shepherd intervenes, she takes the lamb, comforts it, feeds it by hand, carries it in a sling so that it is close to her heart. The shepherd protects the lamb and uses her limited resources to nurture and love the lamb. The shepherd may go as far as sleeping with it close by so that lamb may know it is special, listening to her heart beating and staying warm. Once the lamb is healthier and able to survive on its own, it is returned to the flock as a full self-sustaining member of the herd. Later, when the shepherd calls to the flock to come from the field, bummer sheep are always the first to return (from The Bummer Lamb | Embracing Brokenness Ministries ).

As Ken Blanchard shares in Lead like Jesus, parables and storytelling have been used for greater learning and impact. Jesus used storytelling to shape expectations of how disciples and followers were supposed to act with others. There was a moral in each story, describing how followers were expected show compassion, empathy, love, and caring – that is how to "Creating Belonging." The Parable of the Lost Sheep?is lesson where Jesus tells of a shepherd who leaves his flock of 99 sheep to go in search of one lost sheep, perhaps a bummer lamb rejected, in the Gospels of Matthew ( Matthew 18:12–14) and Luke ( Luke 15:3–7). He told them this parable.

"Which of you men, if you had one hundred sheep, and lost one of them, wouldn't leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one that was lost, until he found it? When he has found it, he carries it on his shoulders, rejoicing. When he comes home, he calls together his friends, his family, and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!' I tell you that even so there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance."

— Luke 15:3–7,?World English Bible

?From the Christian perspective, this reminds us that we are all lost sheep searching for safety, waiting for our Shepard to come and save us from a hostile world, to nurture us, care for us and keep us from harm and rejection. The parable is designed to illustrate God’s love and compassion for ALL people. Like many parables, it informs readers to apply broader lessons in everyday life. The story or parapble can help us reflect upon a rejection we have had, a problem faced, or a situation where we felt lost. Imagine if a leader left what was known (his flock), the comfort of the routine, approval of others, “the accepted In-Crowd” perspective (the group norm) and came searching for us. Imagine rejoicing over finding us, accepting us, including us, nurturing and growing us, and hearing our voice in the workplace. That’s an employer to work for; knowing that not only are we accepted, but leaders are intentional in seeking us out, welcoming and including us. Creating Belonging.

For leaders, Christian or not, religious or not, this is a testament to how we must often leave what we know, and are comfortable with in order to engage others. How would it change our leadership style, if we were shepherds in search of the lost. Finding ways to create inclusivity and belonging for those that are lost, those on the outside, those that are rejected. The Shepherd in Jesus’s parable is seeking out one that is lost and needs to belong to the flock again. The Parable of the Lost Sheep and Story of the Bummer Lamb are critical parts of the foundation in the Christian faith. They also hold powerful lessons for servant leaders, again religious or not, about reaching out to employees who may be lost, rejected, or at least feel as though they do not belong.

Servant Leaders create a sense of belong by developing people, building trusting teams and connecting people, ALL people (employers, peers, community members and other stakeholders to mission and purpose. Joe Larocci, former ?CEO of the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant?Leadership, in Leadership In the Workplace shares that Servant Leaders serve first, are persuasive and empower others to act. In fact, they require others to act. They listen to employees and other stakeholders?and build, what some might call inclusive teams to act. There have been many who espouse the characteristics of Servant Leadership. Some have even attempted to take a competency approach identify ten to fourteen:

1.????Integrity

2.????Vulnerability

3.????Discernment

4.????Awareness of the Human Spirit

5.????Courage in Relationships

6.????Sense of Humor

7.????Intellectual Energy and Curiosity

8.????Respect for the Future

9.????Regard for the present

10.?Understanding of the Past

11.?Predictability

12.?Breadth

13.?Comfort with Ambiguity

14.?Presence

In future newsletters, we will dive deeper into these competencies and characteristics.

• Do any of these speak to you?
• Can you think of a great leader, whether defined as a Servant Leader or not, who exhibited any of these?
• Did any of your past leaders seek Bummer Lambs and lost sheep and create a sense of belonging.
• Did you observe them creating a culture of inclusion with any of the characteristics listed above?

Feel free to share leaders and “@” them, so we can all learn from them.

Next Doctor Workforce Newsletter will explore Servant Leadership and Safe Cultures.