At your service, not your servant.

An interpretation of Servant Leadership and some perspectives on the importance of considering other leadership traits, cultural objectives, and the organisation design to make it a reality.

‘We are moving to an Agile operating model and our leaders will become Servant Leaders!’ Yes, I am paraphrasing, however, it’s a statement made in some shape or form by many an organisation across the world, especially the many that have either tried to or implemented an organisational agility transformation. There is lots to like about the Servant Leadership trait and, if implemented correctly, the performance measures of businesses may improve significantly.

One of my leaders used to define business success in a simple formula, Engaged People + Happy Customers = A Successful Business. To target the engaged people section of the formula, as that’s where it all starts, if we have engaged people in our organisation, it is more likely that they will obsess and focus on the happiness of customers. Servant Leadership is a trait that may drive employee engagement when it is properly considered in line with other leadership traits and along with business and cultural objectives of the organisation.

Recognising that Servant Leadership is not the silver bullet to all our leadership and transformation challenges, I believe it works best in conjunction with other attributes; In my view the toolkit/mindset needs to include 3 other elements, alongside higher levels of learning agility and comfort with uncertainty.

First is Strategic leadership, being very clear on the direction we are looking to take, the key problems we are trying to solve, without being prescriptive about the solutions we may consider, and the results we are trying to achieve including the rewards we reap if we get there- in harmony with servant leadership, becomes very powerful.

Next, an organisational design attribute of an Agile transformation is the adoption of a cross functional operating model, especially when you recognise that emerging organisational structures and accountabilities are less about functions, spans of control and the number of direct reports being a corporate status symbol: its more about cross-functional and collaborative outcomes. The role of Network leadership, in harmony with Servant leadership becomes a big attribute- Influencing and leading across a network, in many cases on the other ‘patch’, in fact the concept of your ‘patch’ vs another ‘patch’ pretty much disappears, this is very important.

Finally, the concept of Player Coach leadership, provides another dimension and belief to the teams you lead, in that you are acknowledged at being able to play the game of the team you are leading, yes you may not be qualified or capable to be a professional at the game, but you do know enough about it, which means you are also able to see things from their perspective, you are better able to be flex your curiosity and seeking to understand, through asking questions and raising challenges.

Servant leadership should not be an excuse for being lazy, in thinking that it’s about just letting the team get on with stuff, it’s even more work at a leadership level, its good work, focused on addressing strategy, working with networks, and learning as opposed to directive, solutioning and firefighting.?

What would be the challenges in adoption of Servant Leadership? well, Firstly, it may seem obvious, but we need to accept that it’s not something that can change overnight- it’s not easy to change people’s mindsets. If leaders have been ‘wired’ to be motivated by accountability, span of control and recognised as having all the answers/solutions, it takes a big shift to change and un-learn. In my view, it also doesn’t work if the other attributes including Network and Strategy leadership are also not followed- particularly at a more universal level. For example, if we have two leaders working with a cross-functional team where one prescribes and stays true to these attributes and the other does not, the team become confused, and any form of collaboration/outcomes focus diminishes. This can be best summarised in one of our cultural features of playing more together and in Patrick Lencioni’s famous text, a long-time favourite of mine, The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, trust underpins everything positive about leadership and building effective teams; if you don’t prescribe to a similar set of values collectively, then the dynamics and necessary trust throughout the team is compromised or significantly impacted.?

?Get it right, even within pockets of the organisation and the results can be significant. I never cease to be amazed by what a small, focused team with a clear problem to address and the ‘space’ to come up with the solution can achieve. Through empowerment, collaboration and being safe in the knowledge they have the support of leadership to remove roadblocks, our teams thrive and deliver amazing outcomes. I personally worked with a team where, over a 3-year journey, the employee engagement score lifted from a low point compared to industry to arrive at the most recent outcome of an upper quartile score, considerably higher than the industry average. It is important to acknowledge that our ‘Energise’ flexible working program adopted at EnergyAustralia at the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic has played a big part in contributing to this engagement uplift, however, the constant rise also says more about our teams trust in leadership, confidence in the way we collaborate across functions and the acknowledgement of there being open, two-way communication across all parts of the organisation. As a result of the people engagement uplift, we are starting to see the flow on results in our business performance metrics, including a significant improvement in our Net promoter score through our Digital channels, meaning, our customers are telling us they are happier than ever.

Get Servant Leadership right, across the whole organisation, and you are well on your way to making your business very successful.