Servant leadership and dynamic corporate governance
The nature of the workplace has changed and continues to change every day. Leaders must move with the wave of that change. This need for change has forced leaders and management experts to explore and experiment with different leadership styles with a view to coming up with the most appropriate leadership style that conforms to the mutable business environment.
Traditional corporate leadership based on autocracy and top-bottom model which has worked over the years and through which leaders gain authority simply from the fact that they are the boss is now outdated. Today, more than ever, leaders are beginning to realize that they perform through their teams. The better their teams are, the better they are. Your performance as a leader is therefore pegged on how well you select your team and how well you harness the potential of firstly, the individuals in the team and secondly, the team as a whole to bring the best out of them. I believe this is what has jolted this ‘reversal of roles’ where the leader should ‘work’ for the follower rather than the other way round.
And this has given rise to the theory of servant leadership. It is a concept that advocates for a ‘serve-first’ mindset, a state in which leaders empower and uplift those working for them, enhancing their development with a view to unlocking their potential, creativity and sense of purpose.
In this part of our world, the idea of ‘a servant leader’ might appear to some conservative leaders, a little bit far-fetched. Taken literally, the noun, ‘servant’ has a rather belittling connotation; it could mean different things to most rigid and unyielding leaders: lowly, minion, footman or even slavish. “Am I now being told to descend from my high pedestal of authority and kowtow to my ‘followers’ whims?”-could be the gnawing question from the leaders who harbor the idea of leadership as an opportunity to lord over their ‘followers’.
Conversely, the ‘followers’, oblivious of the real implications of servant leadership, might misconstrue it as a ‘corporate coupe de tat’ in which the conventional leadership, as they know it, has finally, and happily, been turned on its head, and lo and behold, they are now at the helm, hooray!
To assuage the perceptions of fear from the ‘middle-of-the-road’ leaders and enlighten the ‘naïve’ ‘followers’, proponents of servant leadership aver that the theory is driven by a search for a win-win situation where the leader focusses on creating an enabling environment for the ‘followers’ to succeed while the ‘followers’ focus on using that enabling environment to perform at their best thus enabling growth for themselves and success for the leader. Actually, leaders that are able to ‘let go’ as they create that enabling environment often find that they are actually more in control because they will have harnessed the resources and talents of their staff which collectively can guide operations more effectively than one person can. In any case, leaders are enablers, not individual performers.
There are four key traits that define a servant leader from other types of leaders. The first of these is that servant leaders are those that encourage diversity of thought. The thought of ‘diversity of thought’ sends shivers down the spines of autocratic leaders. “How is it that I can accept any ideas other than my own? Is anyone else qualified enough to have better ideas than I have?”. These are the thoughts that run through their minds when challenged. Diversity of thought though, when you think about it, leads to a wealth of ideas which even the autocratic leader can benefit from.
Secondly servant leaders create a culture of trust amongst their ‘followers’. Without trust you cannot have diversity of thought. The ‘followers’ need to know that their ideas will be welcome without fear of retribution. Similarly, the leader needs to trust that the ‘freedom to succeed’ that he has granted his ‘followers’ will not be used against him. Trust is therefore a two away street in this regard, as it is in most.
Next the leader must have an unselfish mindset. He must think for the team and not for himself. Success is a result of team effort rather than the effort of the leader himself. Celebrating successes with the team and making them aware that they, and not him were the drivers of that success is a very important attribute of servant leaders. The team must feel that their efforts are appreciated and that they will be the better for their hard work.
And finally, if one of the key aspects of good leadership is to grow others, servant leaders take it a step further. Development and growth of their ‘followers’ is key on their agenda. They are proud to have ‘followers’ below them who are ready to succeed them because they have enabled them to get there. Fostering leadership in others is one of the ways in which they gauge how successful their leadership is. This though is an impossible trait to develop if you have a selfish mindset.
All this does not mean that servant leadership is not geared towards results. On the contrary, most organizations that are able to adapt and practice servant leadership say that the ‘performance goes through the roof’ and, ‘magic happens’ with servant leadership. They attribute this to the wide belief that when ‘followers’ are given a free-hand, they get “healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous and are also driven to serve”, thus maximizing delivery.
So there you are. Go out and practice servant leadership.
