I am reading Synchonicity by Joseph Jaworski as it was recommended to me by a colleague. Initially I was unimpressed by the book. It feels a bit like the Celestine Prophecy, a little bit new agey. Just now though I read a chapter which introduced the idea of "The Servant as Leader". This really resonated with me. The best leaders I have worked with are the ones who are serving the group rather than leading it. Similarly, the best coaches are those that serve the learning of those they are coaching. The best coaches also happen to be into learning in a big way themselves. (By the way, I have upgraded Synchronicity from as "Sell" to a "Buy"> Never let it be said that I don't admit to my mistakes)
A quick request to the Google God and it appears there is a "Servant as Leader" website.
Robert Greenleaf, the man who coined the phrase, described servant-leadership in this way.
“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. He or she is sharply different from the person who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such it will be a later choice to serve – after leadership is established. The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.
The difference manifest itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other 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, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, will they not be further deprived?”
Taken from the Servant As Leader published by Robert Greenleaf in 1970.
Posted by chrismatts at May 31, 2004 6:58 PMMore from Jesus on servant leaders:
Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. --Mark 10:43-44
Posted by: Dave Hoover at June 4, 2004 3:11 PMGreenleaf's Servant as Leader is a great concept, but for a business executive, manager or supervisor, there are some things which I believe need to be added. Greenleaf said it should be looked at as an inverted pyramid with the boss at the bottom supporting all his people. For me, this is serving but also leading. Let me explain.
Managing people is all about leadership simply because leadership is the only way to manage people. Any other way fails to bring out their full brainpower, in other words their creativity, productivity, motivation and commitment. If you fail to appreciate this fact or fail to develop a superior leadership strategy, your employees might just decide to "leave their brain at the door" as they enter your workplace.
A superior leadership strategy inspires people to do more, dream more and learn more. We all know that people are our most important asset and that the best ones are self-motivated self-starters. Unfortunately, only 5% or so are naturally that way. A superior leadership strategy is capable of making the vast majority of employees self-motivated self-starters who are highly committed and highly productive, up to 300% more so than if poorly motivated. So what is this strategy?
Values are the centerpiece of this strategy because employees respect actions which reflect high standards of all the good values, values like industry, fairness, forthrightness, compassion, honesty, etc, while they disrespect actions reflecting low or negative standards. Actions (thru the boss' support functions such as training, discipline, tools, direction, information, technical advice, etc) reflecting high standards strongly influence employees toward emulating those standards, but the same emulation occurs for actions reflecting low standards. This is called following. Fortunately, self-motivated self-starters don't follow and thus their performance does not go up and down because of following the latest leadership. For this reason, the strategy is designed to create these “non-followers”.
Listening is the most important leadership skill of this strategy because people cannot be motivated or committed to something if they can't "put in their own two cents", when they want and how they want, or if they can't understand and be in on the decision process for things which affect them. Of such things is TRUST built.
So what should bosses do?? It starts with providing employees regular opportunities, one-on-one and in groups, to express their complaints, suggestions and questions. These must be answered fully and in a timely fashion, no hipshooting please. All of the boss' actions in so doing, including any fix, must meet the highest standards of common values like honesty, respect, fairness, forthrightness, industriousness, admission of error, knowledge, quality, and the like. As the boss corrects the complaints (people generally only complain about things which reflect standards lower than their own), the boss' leadership improves and as followers use these higher standards work performance improves. Turning low standards into high standards constitutes superior leadership.
These actions will have many effects on employees. As their complaints are respectfully addressed, they will begin to believe that their bosses care about them. They will start to believe that they are valued team members. They will learn how to fix things using the highest standards for all values. They will learn how best to treat their customers, each other and their work. They will start to use their own brain to solve workplace problems, to innovate and to work more effectively. Productivity will rise and keep rising. Creativity, motivation and commitment will do likewise, but only so long as their complaints, suggestions and questions continue to be addressed regularly, respectfully and completely. Why even make a complaint or a suggestion if no action will be taken? Why not just "leave your brain at the door"?
There is more to a superior leadership strategy (including how specifically to create self-motivated self-starters) because there are many other ways in which employees react to leadership messages in the workplace. Each of these ways must be taken into consideration in effecting a superior leadership strategy. You can discover all of this on your own if you take the time to analyze how you react to bosses and carefully listen to your employees. Once you understand these reactions, designing the leadership strategy is straightforward.
So providing high quality support to your troops is providing high quality leadership to them, not servant first and then leader per Greenleaf.
Best regards, Ben Simonton
http:/www.bensimonton.com