Why Servant Leadership Fails… And What to do About it

You’ve trained your team in servant leadership.?So...

Why aren’t you seeing more servant leadership behaviors??

In 1973, social psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson published the results of a fascinating study they conducted (Darley & Batson, 1973).?In this study, they sought to understand better what drives some people to help others in distress.?

Their study asked 67 seminary students to individually present a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan, a Biblical story portraying the importance of helping those in need.?Darley and Bates randomly divided the students into two groups.?The students were instructed on the parable and the importance of helping others and then asked to deliver their sermons to a group in a building on the other side of campus.?

Each student walked alone to the building.?During their walk, they would pass an individual slumped over, moaning and coughing, clearly needing help.

Students in the first group were put into a hurried condition. ?They were told, “Oh, you’re late!?They were expecting you a few minutes ago.?You’d better get moving!”

Students in the second group were put into an unhurried condition.?They were told, “It’ll be a few minutes before they’re ready for you, but you might as well head on over.”

Darley and Batson observed from a distance to see which students would emulate the helping behaviors of the Good Samaritan.?

Keep in mind that all of these students had just been trained on the importance of helping others.?The importance of servant leadership qualities.?And they were all seminary students who were devout believers in these principles.

Surprisingly, only 10% of seminary students, in a hurried condition, stopped to help the individual in need, despite their training. ?In contrast, a majority of the students in the unhurried condition stopped to help.

Here’s the point...?Behavior is not driven by training alone.?If the conditions aren’t right, the desired behavior is unlikely to happen, despite training.?

We encourage managers to exhibit servant leadership behaviors, but if they’re buried in administrative tasks, they won’t have time to dedicate any attention to serving their staff.?We encourage staff to exhibit exceptional customer service behaviors, but if they’re overburdened by a lengthy daily to-do list, they won’t have time to dedicate any attention to serving customers.?

Imagine a hospital floor that’s understaffed with nurses and suffering from poor patient satisfaction because patients feel neglected.?Lecturing the nurses about focusing more on improving patient satisfaction will not change behavior.?Even if you fire all the nurses and hire an entirely new team, the same behaviors will come right back.?However, lowering the patient-to-nurse ratio by hiring more nurses will give nurses more time to serve patients, thus improving patient satisfaction.?

Common behaviors are driven by shared systems.?If you create conditions that make the desired behavior, the easy behavior, you’ll get the desired behavior almost every time.

Don’t just encourage ideal behaviors...?

Create the conditions necessary for ideal behaviors to thrive!

Learn how to create the conditions necessary for high-functioning enterprise here .

Resources:

Darley, J.M., & Batson, C.D. (1973).?“From Jerusalem to Jericho”: A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behaviors.?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27(1), 100.

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