Serving versus leading might be the difference between good and great

How a heart to serve can create goodwill and wellbeing at work, and throughout your community

What does true leadership truly look like? There’s been quite a lot written and even more said over the years on this question – and with good reason. Leaders set the vision and culture of organisations and so have an enormous influence over identity, perception, accomplishments and satisfaction.

I would like to focus on what the result of true leadership might look like because working back from that vision or objective delivers some unique and revealing characteristics. Again, many of the characteristics shared and exhibited by effective leaders have been talked and written about in great detail across a number of platforms, but there’s one that may not get as much airtime as the others.

A serving heart.

It’s one thing to know and understand that helping your people and setting them up for success is a key to organisational and/or commercial success but the serving or servant heart may raise some eyebrows. I believe that in many cases, we leaders, can be guilty of occasionally ticking the “serving our people box” because we are busy and we’ve already:

• Set the vision (either for a department or the whole organisation)
• Provided the tools to help people succeed
• Checked in to ensure that progress is being made and issues are being addressed

But there’s more to it than that.

The benefit of going beyond the need

Serving others in your organisation without having an agenda or setting your eyes on a particular benefit (commercial or otherwise) might seem like a luxury that time simply does not afford us. Being busier than ever in working environments that demand more of each and everyone of us, just so we can keep pace with the world, means that we often need to bypass opportunities to ask:

o??What do they need?

o??What might really help them here?

o??What might change the rhythm of their day here for the better?

o??What might brighten their outlook?

o??What can I do for them in this space?

As a mother, a wife, a friend, I think about the people in my life and care deeply about what they need and how I can be of service to them, to care for them. I am certain I’m not alone in this. Like almost everyone else, I act on the needs of people close to me, not because there might be a benefit to be extracted, but because of the good it can do in their lives. Again, I know I’m not alone in this space. My question is, can we make time to do the same at work?

In recent years, the emphasis on environment, social and governance or ESG has been sharpened because it has been recognised that creating benefits for: stakeholders (employees) within your organisation; those aligned or working with your organisation (partners, suppliers); people outside your immediate sphere of interaction (community groups, social advocates) multiplies goodwill which in itself creates an ecosphere of shared and amplified benefits for all concerned. In other words, good begets good and the intentional act of serving others simply for the sake of being of service, creates a lasting benefit that is felt across organisations, business sectors and communities.

If we could harness that thinking, that heart, in all facets of our lives, what would the world we live in look like? I know I’ve raised more questions than answers, but experience has taught me that this is a wonderful way to uncover and develop solutions. And if enough people adopt this thinking and curiosity, I believe the world will better for it.

We, as leaders, would be better for it too.