Servant Leadership

"Servant leadership can also be viewed as a set of behaviours and actions exhibited by a leader in their interactions with others. These behaviours include active listening, empathy, stewardship, and empowerment. By empowering others and facilitating growth, servant leaders create a culture of service and excellence within their teams."

(Robert K Greenleaf)

Behaviour 2

Servant leadership is about positioning yourself as a leader. It marks the point that you can confidently stop focusing on the ‘self’ and begin to explore how best to behave towards your team. One key skill as a servant leader is the ability to ‘attend’ correctly. What I mean is the ability to seamlessly switch your focus from Assessing to Analysing to Preparing and ultimately Acting. This cycle requires you to be able to switch between broad and narrow internal and external foci and is indeed a skill that needs learning. It will allow you to monitor your team’s needs and performance and allow you to attune your support more appropriately.

Servant leadership is fundamentally about giving to others. Your aim, however, is not altruistic. You give the freedom of action and support where it is needed to those executing the plan. Your aim is to make sure that the right people with the right skill sets are doing the job as efficiently as possible. This could mean that they are doing it differently to the way you envisaged.

In allowing people this freedom to act, and to connect symbiotically according to the task you are reinforcing self-leadership behaviours and growing the individual ability of ‘Unleadership’. Your benchmark as a servant leader is to ensure that your people grow as a result of your service to them and in turn begin to develop their own servant leader behaviours. This is achieved through practicing your attentional focus. By observing the dynamic around you, you can quickly establish where support is needed and also witness how those around you become healthier, wiser, freer and more autonomous.