Servant Leaders VALUE People

I consider the term Human Resources as a misnomer. There!! I have said it and have created angst among many of my esteemed colleagues in the HR fraternity. Let us face it. What does the term “resource” remind us about? Raw materials used in production? Money used in procuring assets? Machines that convert raw materials into finished product? Do we want to be counted similar to those “resources”? Would you be happy if your organisation treated you as one of the “means” to get the results?  You get the drift. That is probably why many people are switching to the term Human Capital Management.

Anyway, I am not planning to get pedantic about the terminology. What I would like to highlight is the fact that this is one area where Servant Leaders are, and need to be different. Servant Leaders VALUE people. They value people beyond the “resource” that they are. They value Results and Relationships in a balanced way.

Let me explain this using VALUE as an acronym.

V is for Vision. Servant Leaders create and communicate a strong Vision for the employees. Servant Leaders also persuade followers to buy into the vision and make it their own.  Vision that a Servant Leader creates and communicates is one that I would like to call as Higher Purpose Vision. This gives the employees a greater purpose in life than mere profit. It gives them a cause. This connects them with the organisation in a much stronger way, than when they are a “resource”.

A is for Appreciation. Servant Leaders appreciate the value that each team member brings to the table, irrespective of their position or title or level in the organisation. As Ken Blanchard puts it, they “catch people doing the right things”. They recognize and reward people for their achievements. Even when there are failures, they are able to deal with it without devaluing the individual, appreciating their strengths rather than focusing on their limitations. Servant Leaders believe in the saying “It is not what you don’t have that matters most. What you do with what you have that matters most.”

L is for Love. Don’t beat me up on this. This is not mushy soft stuff. And yes, it is a verb. What has leadership got to do with Love; you ask? “Everything” is the answer of a Servant Leader. Servant Leaders love their people. And in a selfless way. It is not about what they can (or have) done for you, but is about what you can do for them.

U is for Uplifting. Servant Leaders truly lift their people up. To paraphrase Robert Greenleaf’s definition of a Servant Leader, “He/she is someone who invests in another person to the extend that the other person becomes better, wiser, richer, healthier, wealthier, more famous that yourselves”. I am reminded of an analogy that a friend of mine narrates to illustrate this. Imagine you have taken your child to a fair/fete. The place is crowded and you are enjoying the sights, there are lights everywhere, there are fireworks going off, people are cheering and smiling. You are enjoying the scene and hope that your child is having a great time. But then you realise that your child is not happy, she is constantly tugging at your hands, your trousers, and trying to get your attention. Finally when you feel pestered enough, you reluctantly lift the child up and put her on your shoulders. Suddenly the child’s face lights up. She starts enjoying the fete/fair as much as you do. Then you realise that when the child was down there, from her point of view,  all that she was able to see was a crowd of feet, dirty shoes, jeans, trousers, skirts, whatever came at her eye level. When you lift her up, you enable her to see the world from your point of view.  Servant Leaders lift other people up so that they can be better.

E is for Emotional Connect with people. Servant Leaders connect with people not just at a transactional level. They connect at an emotional level. They are empathetic. They can sense the feelings behind actions and words. They listen to the people for what is being said and what is not being said too. They can heal relationships by forgiving themselves as well as others for mistakes (intentional or otherwise). They have the courage to apologise for wrongs that they have committed.

So there you have it. Servant Leaders VALUE people. In organisations, this converts to solid employee engagement. Several organisations spent enormous efforts to measure and improve Employee Engagement. I offer Servant Leadership as the sure shot solution for this problem. My own research that I did for my Doctoral thesis establishes a very strong and significant positive correlation on the Organisational Commitment of employees when Leaders demonstrate Servant Leadership behaviour.

So , do join the Servant Leadership movement and enhance the Employee Engagement in your teams.