My mentor had sent me an article about the topic of Servant leadership which in my business classes I have already learned a little bit about already. This article however did a good job relating it to the military's service based leadership which is extremely similar. The major idea to these two leaderships styles are putting the people below you first and showing that your teams success is more important then your own. The article talks about the necessary barriers to overcome to be a successful servant leader. This first part is Awareness which is focusing on knowing your employees well and also showing compassion towards them. You as a leader need to know their goals, strengths and what motivates them. With out doing this there is no personal connection between the two and they employee will just feel like they are not important. The key is to make everyone important below you. The second part is Time which relates well to the first point of awareness. This is simply making sure that in your busy schedule as a manager you are still able to dedicate even a few hours a week to promote the awareness towards your employees. Any manager could know they need to work on it but this step makes sure they act on this thought. The last aspect was Unhealthy competition. Many managers are too focused one who contributes the most and incentive's for this process. When managers do this it no longer creates a team environment but now a competitive environment. To have overall success to an organization you must promote a team environment that focus on working towards a common goal, instead of which individuals can work towards a goal by themselves. This will generate better ideas and also more efficiency. Some additional points were making sure that the front line workers are treated well and that the manager is not above working at there level with them. A quote from this is " Being of service to your employees is a process, not an event." which says that you cant create this by doing these things every now and then to try to work as a team, but instead it needs to be committed ongoing work to build your employees up and encourage team work for an over all goal.
Below is this article.
https://hbr.org/2017/02/how-the-u-s-marines-encourage-service-based-leadership
I like the last quote you mention about process not event.
ReplyDeleteAlmost every senior leader I talk to tells me that they believe in servant leadership. I worry sometimes that it's just words. But I know that the leaders I most respect and respected do in fact embrace that approach. They focus on how they can help you, not how far you can help them go. I recently interviewed a 2-start general whom I had never worked with, but whom I had heard about. He has a reputation of being a genuine servant leader, and it was clear from our interview that he is in fact that kind of leader. Not everyone in the military is, including some of the generals, in my experience. Unfortunately, the military does not always weed out the people who want to be leaders for their own ego and nothing else. But that's hardly unique.
I have the book if you want to consider doing Servant Leadership for your "many" contribution.