Monday reflection: Servant leadership

 

When we think of strong leaders, we often picture in our minds’ certain characteristics such as assertiveness, ruthlessness, decisiveness, confidence, and charisma. But the strength of servant leadership comes from a completely different direction. 

Servant leaders lead from the perspective that the organisational strategy is ‘not just about me.’ Servant leaders do not want to be flying solo as leaders that want to promote ‘us not me,’ they want to enable others to share aspects of leadership, roles within leadership. They want to promote working environments driven by collaborative leadership. 

Their strengths are in supporting, facilitating, mentoring, coaching, and promoting to deliver excellence through others stepping up to give of their best. Their strengths lie in strategic and creative thinking, in listening and encouraging, in empathy and humility, and their thinking and strategic approach can lead to significant and long lasting transformation in any organisation.  

Servant leadership can be recognised through specific attitudes and behaviours, through self-leadership and promoting shared leadership.. 

• It’s listening before speaking 
• It’s opening up conversations not closing them down 
• It’s removing obstacles and creating space so others can excel 
• It’s being creative not blinkered 
• It’s checking in and allowing others to step up 
• It’s building trust and a shared sense of purpose 

Think about those times when you have seen servant leadership in action. What worked? What were the barriers to success? 

Servant leadership may appear weak to some people, but it requires significant abilities and capabilities to deliver in practice. It requires leaders to coach others to deliver rather than step in and solve problems; to be collaborative in often very competitive environments and to develop others to shoulder the responsibilities rather than to take all the responsibility and ‘the glory’ themselves. Think about the leaders who’ve impacted you most. Were they the loudest voice in the room? Did they listen more than they spoke? Were they the ones who demonstrated that they believed in you, supported you, and space and opportunity for you to grow? That’s the legacy servant leaders leave, they support effective management and leadership succession, they facilitate people growing within the organisation. They are relationship rather than process driven. 

If you want to lead with the quiet strength of a servant leader, start small: 

• Ask your team the right questions and really listen to their replies. 
• Let others own the strategies and meetings and guide not dictate. 
• Encourage others to own their work and their decisions and to celebrate their successes 

Servant leadership is calm, consistent, connected and collaborative and enables collective ownership of discussions, decisions and direction. It enables rather than stifles; opens up rather than shuts down.