Leadership - An Alternate View

If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates,' then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny. ~Dee Hock


One of the reasons I started a blog was to share my thoughts on leadership. Leadership development, in myself and those around me, is one of my passions. I spend a significant amount of my reading time reading about Leadership - leadership development and the lives of great leaders. I also attend a two day Global Leadership conference sponsored by my church. The teachings include both practical and inspirational talks from people in church and industry. For my money, it is the best leadership training to which I have been exposed. Until now, I have not really blogged about this passion of mine.

I have been a manager, either a project manager or a people manager, for most of my business career. This, for me, is quite the strange twist from how I envisaged my life as an Engineer tucked safely away in the corner working on things safely away from people. I spent 14 years as a soccer coach doing my best to lead youngsters into life brimming with the confidence that comes from success built on a solid foundation of hard work. I spent 4 years leading a Sunday school group of kids ranging from 2 through 5 years of age. For most of my leadership roles, I have lead people as a Servant Leader, a phrase coined by Robert Greenleaf and epitomized by the life of Jesus Christ.

Leader as Servant is quite the opposite of how society tends to view leaders which is typically someone in a command control role. It's the opposite of my temperament growing up where I, a first born male, generally viewed situations as being either my way or the wrong way. It took some major growth on my part to be able to lead by serving.

The most important part of being a Servant Leader is that you seek to server other's first. The Servant Leader mindset includes; sacrificing self-interest for the benefit of the team, putting people first and valuing them more than your own success, desiring to serve and care for others, leading by meeting the needs of the team.

If you think this is the opposite of how leadership is viewed by most, you are correct. This is leadership with an other-centric view. This is a difficult mindset and one that can't be faked. People are smart and will discover very quickly if you are not authentic in your desire to serve. Unauthentic servant leadership, I believe, is worse than being a dictatorial leader. Once people feel you have deceived them, betrayed their trust, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to win them back.

I have heard people describe Servant Leadership as a weak person's leadership style. They believe the servant leader is; subservient to the people being led and/or an exercise of abdicating authority to those being led. Neither could be further from the truth.

Servant leaders must upend the management pyramid to a mindset where they are on the bottom of the pyramid supporting their teams. Servant leaders must raise the bar of expectation by being highly selective in the choice of team members and by establishing high standards of performance. These two actions build a culture of performance throughout the team. The Servant Leader must also set a grand vision for the team because small visions to not cause a persons heart to beat fast. The servant leader must continue to espouse that vision when times get tough. Each of those actions is tough, taken together they require a very strong person.

How do you know if you have become a servant leader? With a simple, three question test:

1. Do those served grow as persons?
2. Do those served become wiser, freer, more autonomous?
3. Are those served becoming servants?

I would like to say that I have achieved my goal of being a Servant Leadership but I can't. I am definitely moving more and more in that direction but I still need to fight back my selfish desire, I still need to keep my ego in check, I still need to work on putting other's needs ahead of my own.

I am a work in process and that's not bad.All great human growth comes though a continuous, arduous  development process, a journey from here to there, where here is always the now and there is an ideal, a shining star on the horizon the guides our way. After all, the real joy is in the journey not the destination.