The Challenges of Servant Leadership
Servant Leadership is making a difference through a humble and serving perspective. Servant leaders often attract criticism, but their motivation to do what is right and help their team and organisation cannot be questioned.
A Servant Leader is humble, not arrogant. He does not seek personal recognition and gets a great deal of satisfaction from seeing others succeed with his help. Servant leaders will push in all directions, resolutely insisting on significant change that helps their people achieve great results. They are brave and not afraid to express opinions and surface dysfunctions that are uncomfortable to confront.
To actually pinpoint what leadership itself is, is difficult. So much is written about it, yet there is no single description of what a leader is or does. It comes in many forms and you know it when you see it because change is happening. According to Peter Drucker, the world’s most renowned management thought leader:
The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.
By this definition, a Leader is someone who garners a following. This is done by earning respect, empowering others and using this as a basis for turning an idea into a reality. Some traits of servant leaders are:
- Careful Listening — Understand every player’s goals and problems.
- Empathy — Understand others and don’t force people into unsuitable activities
- Awareness of self and others
- Persuasion — Engagement and growing willingness
- Ideation — Ensuring the right goals and correct action in pursuit of them
- Foresight — Wisdom and experience
- Commitment to their people’s success, growth and development
- Ability to build a community, or start a movement.
Servant leaders work towards minimising or removing systemic dysfunctions through selflessly helping. This sound admirable, and it’s also very difficult to do and requires the leader to have exceptional people skills at all levels. Putting yourself out there for the greater good is the sign of a servant leader. Taking the pain away from the team, taking the flak when things go wrong, winning a following and helping the team to find great ways to excel.
Servant Leadership is hardly new. In fact, Lao Tsu in c550 BC made the following observation of leadership, which holds true today:
Go to the people. Live amongst them. Start with what they have. Build on what they know. And when the deed is done — the Mission accomplished, Of the best leaders, The people will say,
“We have done it ourselves”
No Ivory Towers, or diktats from the leaders. The focus is on building strengths and capabilities to enable the team to fulfil a mission. By building on what the team already know, and dealing with ineffectiveness that manifests itself through dysfunctional personal interactions.
In the classic business book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, these are identified as follows:
- Absence of trust — unwilling to be seen to be vulnerable
- Fear of conflict — promoting artificial harmony over constructive heartfelt debate
- Lack of commitment — lack of or feigned buy-in for group decisions creates ambiguity throughout the organisation
- Avoidance of accountability — Not willing to point out and discuss counterproductive behaviour which produces low standards.
- Inattention to results — focusing on personal success, status and ego before team success
There are several challenges that Servant Leaders must overcome. Servant Leadership is not for the faint of heart, despite some people’s perception that it is ‘soft’ and ‘indirect’. It takes a real strength of character and solid support network for the Servant Leader to deliver results.
A summary of Servant Leadership criticisms and realities follows:
Criticism: It’s a false premise. Managers serve the primary purpose of representing the interests of owners and top management, not employees.
Reality: Servant leaders are in themselves followers of the next higher agenda in the company’s strategy. They identify gaps that hinder fulfilment and compel their teams to address them, helping and supporting in any way that they can. Servant Leaders do serve the primary purpose of owners and top management but deal with the practicalities around the specific piece they have been charged with by putting the needs of the team first and addressing them.
Criticism: Lack of Authority. Minimization of the authority of the subject manager and the overall management function in the business. When employees see their manager catering to their needs in an extreme manner, they are less likely to view him as an authoritative figure.
Reality: A good servant leader is not afraid to be authoritative. The servant leader is notably a leader first, but one who uses a serving approach to getting a result. The servant leader will work hard to assess the current challenges, promote a vision of the future, engage the team, other managers and superiors.
Criticism: It Demotivates. Constantly stepping into to fix things or to do the work, trains the team to sit back and exert less effort in producing quality and put less thought into resolving issues or conflicts.
Reality: This assessment is correct, but as this post argues, good servant leadership isn’t about swooping in and constantly fighting fires. It’s putting the team and their needs before your own. Notably, if you aren’t motivated by your assigned mission, you cannot lead a team well and will be unable to capture the benefits of this style of leadership.
Criticism: Limits Vision. Leaders are distinct from regular employees by their role in developing a vision and providing direction. A manager needs to have some level of detachment from his employees so he can explore new opportunities, brainstorm ideas, resolve problems and formulate a picture on where his department, store or business is headed. Only by having this separation from employees can managers focus on vision and then step in to articulate the vision by providing direction to employees.
Reality: The Servant leader has a laser sharp focus on the vision. He will work to understand the teams’ ability to execute that vision, then develop the skills needed to close the gap. This is, in contrast, to top-down demands for teams to ‘do better’. A leader of any type must know what better looks like and how to get there. Detachment from the team is detachment from execution, and this is never a good thing. Direction is provided constantly in Servant Leadership, otherwise, it is merely wandering around looking for fires to put out.
In Stephen Karpman’s Drama Triangle, criticism or as, it’s called in the model, the Persecutor is one of the several behaviours that manifest in dysfunctional environments. The other roles, Victim, and Rescuer are also prevalent. When dysfunction exists people adopt one of these roles. One of the biggest pitfalls of Servant Leadership is blindly serving in Rescuer mode without challenging the team. This is indeed a fast way to disempower the team, reduce results and dilute accountability.
Solving problems too often keeps a person or a team in the Victim corner. A Servant Leader must serve by identifying and taking the correct course of action to get a sustainable result over time. Action may include, making introductions, finding and sharing useful information, facilitation, coaching, and when required a kick in the bum.
Servant leaders must reduce conflict and minimise dysfunction, but not at all costs. Keeping everyone happy, means letting people exist in their comfort zone. Keeping people happy is a widely presented criticism of Servant Leadership, and is entirely inaccurate. A good servant leader will find ways to challenge and develop the team, building on strengths and bolstering weaknesses. At times what is good for the team isn’t pleasant to hear, and the challenge for the Servant Leader is to keep teams motivated whilst ensuring honesty about performance.
Servant Leadership is REAL leadership. It is hard and requires self-belief, tenacity and self-direction. It’s about being a contrarian, sometimes a troublemaker, and doing thing differently to what is accepted. You may be criticised by people who have established beliefs about leadership, have the wrong impression of Servant Leadership, or don’t consider helping people to be a worthy pursuit. It’s not about being ‘soft’, as is an often cited perception. It requires resilience, strength and firmness with peers, as a soft reputation may be detrimental when dealing with peers at the same level, or ‘big personalities’ in the upper management echelons.
Like any management style, it depends on the personal traits of the leader. A good leader knows their own strengths and weaknesses, is self-aware and uses the appropriate approach to get the best result in a given context. Servant leadership is a long-term approach that builds movements and motivates teams. Don’t adopt a style which is not right for you, but do make efforts to support your team and build momentum through Servant Leadership.
Servant Leadership is a powerful addition to your leadership mix. Blend authoritative leadership, with the right amount of democracy and coaching and underpin it all using humble, Servant Leadership.
Take the crap when it comes, and it will. Lead by example and motivate people, in a way that elevates and inspires your team and others. Be humble, and build your following and then lead it!