Servant Leadership - A Buzz Word Or A Must?

As we go deeper in building the Emotional Intelligence Trainer for team leaders as part of our Psychological Safety Works product, we spend a lot of time researching the elements that make a good leader whether part of the traditional definition or as it fits into the new ways of being at work. 

Irrespective at what level of the organization we are today, we’ve all bosses for the majority of our adult lives. Our relationship with authority at work is as interesting and complex as any other area of our panoply of human interactions but oftentimes, if we examine it, it’s fraught with frustration and laced with fear and we often subconsciously model the same behaviors that have caused that down the line. 

By enlarge, we collectively believe management is paid in nebulous P&L connected bonuses. By how we’ve been treated we wouldn’t be surprised if they are paid by how mean they manage to be - a reign of terror KPI.

Is it any wonder we freeze at any mention of “what can I help you with?” and assume it to be the beginning of a negative review?

Do we ever really believe that a leader asks “What can I do for you?” in an open-ended way in which they are truly and honestly trying to remove the blockers that stop us from doing the job we want to do? Unlikely. 

To a degree, it’s why so many people are quick to fall in love with Scrum as a scrum master is such an immediate evident example of a person who is meant not to manage but to help. 

That same concept, of course, is behind the idea of “servant leadership”. A turn of focus from control to enablement. 

Leaders should have always been around to help not to oversee and hinder. 

Somewhere in the life of organizations though, a dramatic shift has happened where leaders have become the villain in lieu of the hero of the story and more dramatically still, they have bought into that stance themselves. It’s now an expected demeanor of “management” to be unattainable, busy, frosty and mostly exasperated. 

External Impetus

In a world where tasks had to be imagined far into the future and assigned by a select few to be executed in a sequential fashion by the many, there was no space for dissent or even basic dialogue. Orders and demands were dispensed and heads had to roll should they not be executed so leaders are to be feared to be efficient. 

But what if we reimagined how leaders “make their coin”? 

What if became the case that they couldn’t retire before everyone under them is happy? What if they couldn’t make the bonus if anyone was left with a problem they would have had an answer for? What if they were rewarded for every time they truly helped? Would we believe them then?

Would we be able to shake the eternal “us vs. them” and “buy it” that they are really invested in serving us?

Internal Impetus

Definitions of “servant leadership” say it “inverts the norm” - How is this even the case? Why is that “the norm”?  

To some of us leadership comes as second nature. Others - likely “most” have to work at it. Those who are just born to be leaders are intrinsically also born to be helpful servants. They know that being truly of service is valuable and do it without prompt or because they apply a certain methodology or other. Everyone else went to “management schools” and is doing being a leader “by numbers” so none of the compassion, empathy and emotional investment of a real leader comes easily. 

But irrespective if we are a natural leader or not we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that being a servant leader is the decent thing to do. We know it to be the moral, right way to be with others. Aiding, assisting, being human. So if we can now be assured that the business is not better off by us going against our decency and instincts but will indeed benefit from us being servants to our teams, that should justify our humanity when it comes to leadership at long last. 

This to me is yet another way in which Agile brings us closer to our humanity - by demanding that we are leaders who serve not leaders who crack whips. 

One of the best voices you’ll find on this topic is Karen Ferris’ and her amazing body of work in affecting practical change by transforming how we think when we are a leader. Find her and others who do the good work of preaching this and have them help "change the norm" as the so-called norm will hurt you in the long run if left unexamined.

Most importantly make it a practice to routinely look around you and question: are we, as leaders truly serving our people? Are we positive, open, fostering, empathic? Are we jumping at the chance to remove any impediments? Are we risking our own comfort to focus on the team’s well being? Are we forever working hard to clear the ice in front of the puck?

If not, how do we expect them to win? And if they won't, how would we?