Servant leadership, a key to shift the culture in your organisation.

Nowadays, everywhere we hear about digital and agile transformation and key message is: “it’s matter of changing people mindset. We need a cultural shift!”.

What does that actually mean and where do we start. In some cases, the culture change is driven by organisational changes and new roles introduced. Very often training and coaching are putting in place across the organisation to establish new practices and methodologies. quite commonly ending up to focus is on processes, tools, roles and accountability, rather than people behaviors. Precisely leaders’ behaviors.

In all companies I have worked for, one of the decisive success factor on the cultural shift was the presence of “servant” leaders. I would strongly advice to drive awareness in your organisation on the importance of those principles in a “modern” and growing business.

Servant leadership described on Wikipedia:
Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy. Traditional leadership generally involves the exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid.” By comparison, the servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible. Servant leadership turns the power pyramid upside down which puts the customer service associates at top of pyramid; instead of the people working to serve the leader, the leader exists to serve the people. When leaders shift their mindset and serve first, they unlock purpose and ingenuity in those around them, resulting in higher performance and engaged, fulfilled employees.

I believe the concept is pretty linear and simple to understand, however the application in the work environment can be not as simple as following the guidelines on paper.

Understood the principles behind, how to define a good servant leader?

Altruistic. A servant leader puts before the benefit of her/his Company and her/his team. By doing this she/he realises her/his objectives too; not at the expense of anybody. How many times do we notice frustration created by a decision, which have not been properly discussed and understood by the team. Worth remarking, be a servant leader doesn’t mean to lose the authority or the leadership in the organisation. It rather means to focus and value others; give them the opportunity to shine. If you are reducing visibility to individuals to protect your authority and decision making, I’m afraid to say you are not a strong leader!

People developer. Tight to the previous point is the quality of developing people, or better, develop leaders. A servant leader cares about teaching others how to lead and, demonstrating by example, give others the opportunity to lead. To focus on the individual development, you might need to step back from the work issues and look at what matters for the individual, what prevent her/him for being motivated and lead. In a growing organisation, it wouldn’t be sustainable to have just few leaders, few active drivers. Successful and empowered people make the organisation successful, in a virtuous circle.

Team player. Autocratic leaders have never really helped individuals to get empowered and motivated. The “we do”, instead of “you do” is a quote of the servant leader. And “we do” doesn’t mean the leader and the team to do the same job; both contribute to the best of their knowledge, capabilities and within their accountabilities. For a servant leader, “we do” means: I care about the work we are being doing; I support my team every day by removing the impediments they have; I help setting the right expectations to the Business to avoid my team having to work under constant stress. Being a good servant leader is also seeking opinions, listening and avoid dictating what to do.

Forward-looking. It’s a great-to-have quality for any leader. More precisely, a servant leader thinks to the future, thinks to the impact a such plan has long-term and brings this perspective on the table. She/he also balances the attitude of the team on resolving today’s issues, by giving more context and enlighten the conversations.

Influencer. As treated in my other article, a leader is not necessarily who decides, but is definitely who influences the decisions in the organisation. This point is more relevant looking at the servant leaders’ behaviors. You can argue the most critical part of a proposal is to approve it…well, it’s, however, the “science” is behind, it’s in the content of the proposal, on the recommended solution, in the actual work done to recommend the decision and the proposal to be brought for approval, not on the act of approving itself. The servant leader focuses on converging to high-standard and well-structured proposal, not just on mandating the document and the timeline.

I would like to conclude reminding ourselves a quote from Steve Jobs:

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people, so they can tell us what to do”

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