Servant Leadership in Agile Actors
By Nora Gkikopoulou -Head of People Development at Agile Actors
There is often a debate regarding Servant Leadership in the workplace. Is Servant Leadership an effective model? If yes, in which environments and cultures? And what is the difference and the added value compared to other models?
Practicing the Servant Leadership approach in Agile Actros I can say these concerns are valid. At the same time, I can also share some practical aspects of what Servant Leadership means to us in reality.
The basic difference between Servant Leadership and any other leadership model is that a Servant Leader starts with the genuine intention to help others grow; then he leads. Having this in mind we focus on this trait within AA, the intention of someone to support and help, even from the recruitment stage, and proceed to train and build the leadership skills. Moreover, we focus on roles and not on positions and strict job descriptions, thus creating an environment where each professional can take a lead role in several projects, with the scope to learn and practice on the one hand and to serve the team and the organisation, on the other.
Building Community is considered as the second distinguishing aspect in Servant Leadership. In AA we share our vision, our values and our knowledge within and outside our ecosystem, and constantly work on transforming groups to communities; we build communities through our Chapters, groups of people working on the same technologies and the coaching model. All of us, we belong to a coaching cell with a coach who supports and guides us. At the same time, we build a community within environments outside of our ecosystem, by organising and participating in meetups, Academies and Conferences, where we share ideas and best practices. Together we learn and Grow!
Through coaching we strengthen each professional, to find and pursue their purpose, by building self-awareness, knowledge and soft skills needed.
Co-work and teamwork are some of our focuses that are reflected in our values and in expected behaviours. We focus on collaboration, empathy, care, active listening, useful feedback, effective communication and peer accountability. We organise training for these topics, promote these behaviours through coaching and appraisals and embrace them in our everyday working life. To highlight even more the importance of teamwork in our ecosystem we have developed our Al Pacino training for building high performing teams by promoting these fundamentals values.
I believe that Servant Leadership is more of an approach and attitude than a model. It Provides to us with a frame and a direction which serves our vision, of what kind of organisation we want to be and what kind of culture we want to cultivate. It is the frame that reminds us of our uniqueness and helps us stay on track.
Challenges? Of course there are! :) stay tuned and read our next blog spot!
Do you want to be part of an inclusive culture? Check out our current openings here.
