Servant Leadership: How you can help others realize their full potential
My approach to mentoring and managing others have always been aligned with the principles of servant leadership.
For the uninitiated, a servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid,” servant leadership is different.
The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.
The difference manifests itself in making sure that the people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous… are they happy?
To be an effective servant leader, you need awareness, foresight and listening. You also need to value people not only for their potential, but what they can teach you about yourself.
Unfortunately, most workplaces don’t value employees as much as they should. Top-down leadership styles tend to be coercive, manipulative, and persuasive by nature. They’ve hired you to get a job done, and anything else is on your time. Growth opportunities usually occur when you job-hop to your next promotion at another company.
When employers give lip service to career aspirations while only rewarding workers for what they produce, you’re going to have a bad time.
If a person can’t grow with a company, they’ll usually grow away from it. Professionals with high potential usually need continuous learning and fresh challenges to stay motivated. It’s folly to assume the system they work in will provide that be default. Each of them has a unique learning curve requiring support and pro-active planning.
And that learning curve is where I’ve put my focus as a servant leader.
My approach is quite simple; I look at people and their professional aspirations as long term investments.
If I sense that there’s enormous potential in someone, I find a way to meet with them and have a candid discussion. Where are they now? Where have they gone in the past, and where do they want to go now? Is there anything holding them back? Do they need my help, and can I help at all?
Getting Started
If our conversations are constructive and we’re interested in moving forward, we start to work on a game plan. Here’s what that typically looks like:
First, we document what they currently do, and where they’re looking to go. We explore their strengths, goals and where they want to spend their time. I capture their professional brand, what skills they want to learn and what they feel they’ve mastered already. Long story short, I gather a lot of relevant data.
Next, I start looking for trends. What starts becoming apparent? Is this person at the top of their learning curve, in the middle on one, or just starting out? Is there an emphasis towards learning soft skills, tools or processes? How do their strengths align with the professional brand they want to market for themselves? Do these trends add up to outcomes this person wants? Are there better ones to consider?
Finally, I access my own contributions and involvement. What can I do with my time to make a real impact? How can I make a real difference? What would they appreciate the most? What would I learn by endeavoring on this person’s professional journey?
When we’re done, it’s time to execute.
How we get there
There are several tools, processes and techniques I’ve used to set the stage for servant leadership. Some of these are of my own creation, while others are utilized based on need and interest. Feel free to adopt and modify any of them for your own use.
Goal Mapping (3 months/6 months)
The very first thing we do is map out goals for the short and medium term. Occasionally they already have a system in place, and we just leverage what they have. For everything else, this comes in handy.
Using this process, we identify a goal, two activities they would do if they had achieved that goal, and the steps needed to learn/achieve their chosen activity. Finally, we set a focus (orange square) to put their available time towards for the following week.
Impact Mapping
Similar to Goal Mapping, this exercise explores making an impact, no matter what role or skill level someone’s at. Interested in learning the business? Want to own a new project involving design education? Care to facilitate and lead a Design Sprint? This process mapped a plan and how to get there.
Activity Schedules
It’s always important to plan for upcoming projects and their demands… especially when they compete for time with your goals. Inspired by Scott Belsky’s book ‘Making Ideas Happen’, I used this framework to forecast overall activity and energy. From there, we worked to balance the needs of their business or project with their professional development.
Mastery Tracker
A practitioner can be at all different levels of mastery with their application of design, technical and soft skills. How do they assess that for themselves? How do they compare with others?
To try and answer that, I created a process to generate aptitude benchmarks. These showed the level of perceived progress against their own expectations in comparison to others who were at the top of their game.
The Tracker also provided opportunities for mentoring, new work assignments and defining stretch goals.
Skill Development
Every person I’ve worked with had a skill or two they wanted to improve. We used a simple spreadsheet to determine what they wanted to learn, how they wanted to learn it, and what kind of priority they wanted to give each subject.
I took responsibility for the logistics from that point forward; Arranging classes, seminars, coaching sessions and webinars to support their skill development.
Emotional Intelligence
For those looking for soft skills improvement, we explored Emotional Intelligence. We covered a specific topic of interest, explored different situations and tracked expected behaviors versus what happened in real time. Seeing this historical narrative play out and improve over time was extremely beneficial for nearly everyone I worked with.
Professional Branding
Many designers I worked with had a particular perception of themselves, but lacked clarity on how others saw them in the workplace. What were they known for, versus what they wanted to be known for?
We used bi-annual professional branding exercises to address this, calibrating perception and understanding between the individual and their immediate and expanded network. These branding statements were very useful for presentation introduction slides and supplementing LinkedIn profiles.
CliftonStrengths
I’ve used the CliftonStrengths assessment to recognize the dominant strengths of others and how to develop them. With the help of a coach well versed in CliftonStrengths, I’ve done hundreds of individual consulting sessions to map effective engagements at work.
I’m a big believer of the method, but take a practical approach to its application and purpose. It’s a single data point amongst other sources of information, but it’s helped me tremendously.
CoreClarity
If you want to take CliftonStrengths a step further, CoreClarity’s approach is excellent for team dynamics. They illustrate how different individuals with similar strength sets can collaborate and work together better, using CoreClarity’s own interpretation of the CliftonStrengths system.
When I tested their pairings at my last job, I was stunned. Almost all of my top performers were defined as a ‘Force of Nature’. They collaborated so well together that they even spent time outside of work to get to know one another. I have yet to run into someone I work with where their CoreClarity profile wasn’t close to the mark.
Table-4-Eight
I started Table-4-Eight way back in 2006 when I was forming the first UXPA (then UPA) Chapter in Puget Sound. I knew next to no one, and needed a way to network with other practitioners.
So I started posting offers to meet with influential leaders in the Puget Sound (Arnie Lund, Dennis Wixon, Judy Ramey and others), offering special guests a free dinner at a local restaurant in return for their time. We limited the guest list to six people, and held the event every month from February to November.
While this may seem outside of the realm of servant leadership, it isn’t. In fact, it’s proof positive of the philosophy in the public realm. Table-4-Eight’s are a wonderful way to connect others I coached and mentored with real design and research leaders.
What Can You Do?
Any given job you have in your career has a beginning and an end. It’s finite in nature. You’re going to have a limited window to get what you want out of the engagement, whether that’s adding to your portfolio, getting a promotion, or expanding your network.
During this time, you’ll encounter pivotal moments where your advice or perspective means a lot to someone else. Maybe they report to you, or work closely with you on your projects. They might be preparing for an important presentation, and need some help with defending their designs. Perhaps they’re having issues with co-workers and need some perspective.
Some of those discussions can get serious, sometimes unexpectedly.
The person you’re talking to might be feeling ‘stuck’, where they don’t see a way out of their situation. Maybe they’re exploring new career opportunities and really need your perspective. They could be losing confidence in themselves due to constant criticism and doubt. They might be mired in the worst depression possible, and just want someone to listen to what they have to say.
If others are gracious enough to bestow their faith and trust in you, honor them with a strong sense of humility and responsibility.
If you encounter these moments, are you someone that can help others move forward? Would you advocate for them on their behalf, even at the risk of your own position? How serious are you when it comes to giving support, even when there’s absolutely nothing to gain from it?
I’ve adopted the philosophy of servant leadership after decades of helping others find their way. I didn’t have a name for it at first, but it’s now part of what I do every day. It’s incredibly rewarding to see others I’ve partnered with celebrate their victories. It’s an absolute joy to see others professionally evolve over time.
You get the world you see. The world itself is neutral. Any two people can see the exact same thing. But, if you think positively about yourself and other people, you’ll be surprised at how your view changes. The same goes with considering the potential in others.
When you follow servant leadership, you start to see people not only for who they are, but who they can become.
Lean into that, and you’ll never be the same.
