At Your Service

Stealing the spotlight, micromanagement, using intimidation tactics to get results, and ruthless quests to nab a corner office or bonus are just a few examples of behaviors exhibited by poor leaders that can have detrimental impacts on organizations: inadequate product and service quality, low employee morale and retention, unethical behavior and more.
Instead of treating employees like servants, leaders should lead as servants. 

The servant leader is at the bottom of the pyramid, not at the top. It turns a lot of notions about leadership upside down.

Servant leadership is a philosophy that emphasizes focusing first on others’ needs. Servant leaders are attentive to the growth and development of their stakeholders, including employees, customers, partners and the community. The approach enriches the lives of individuals, builds organizations that are more customer-focused and that it ultimately creates a more just and caring world (read "Leading by Serving").

While the ideas behind servant leadership are ancient, the phrase "servant leader" was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf who introduced the concept to the modern world after he retired from a 40-year career in the field of management research, development and education at AT&T. In his landmark 1970 essay "The Servant as Leader," Greenleaf said:2
"The servant leader is servant first … It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first; perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions … The leader first and the servant first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature."

This emphasis on the growth of people and social responsibility is echoed in what Greenleaf called the best test to measure servant leadership:3

"The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?"

Monroe and Iarocci said servant leadership can complement any management style the individual has adapted. Servant leaders do all things a good leader would do, they said. What distinguishes this philosophy are the following principles:

• Service first: Service to others is the prime motivator of the servant leader, and leadership becomes the way of providing that service.
• Community building: Servant leaders define their stakeholders broadly, focus on the common good and seek to build a trusting community.
• Persuasion not coercion: Servant leaders do not dictate or autocratically exercise power. Rather, they persuade others to agree and to act.
• Followers willingly follow: Followers of servant leaders choose to follow, voluntarily, because they trust the servant leader and own a shared purpose.
• Journey: Servant leadership is a journey—a process of continuous improvement and growth.

Continuous improvement of people
There are parallels between servant leadership and continuous quality improvement. The enrichment of people is at the heart of both concepts. And like continuous improvement, servant leadership is an unending journey.4

"Quality is always a journey of continuous improvement, and likewise, so is servant leadership," Monroe said. "There’s never a point where you can arrive and say, ‘Wow, we’ve reached absolute quality and we don’t have to worry about it anymore.’ Servant leadership is the continuous improvement of people."

Servant leadership can enhance an organization’s quality improvement program, they said, because the approach empowers employees, makes their growth and development paramount, and it encourages transparency and accountability.

"Any organization that embraces servant leadership will perform better on all measures because work is ultimately done by humans," Monroe said.

Contrary to the way it may sound, servant leadership is quite results-focused, Iarocci said. Organizations that practice servant leadership are routinely named to Fortune’s annual list of the best companies to work for, which recognizes organizations that consistently outperform their competition and rank highly among employees.5

"There seems to be something about these places that they are faster, better, cheaper and more efficient and flexible," Iarocci said.

Monroe and Iarocci cautioned that servant leadership isn’t "fairy dust," and that it’s normally not the only thing that will make an organization succeed. However, this approach to leadership seems to encourage people to rally around the organization’s mission and vision and foster greater commitment, they said.

Researchers are beginning to formally study the effects of servant leadership on organizational performance:

• A 2008 study found servant leadership was linked with variability in employee commitment to an organization, job performance and community citizenship behavior.6
• Another 2008 study found that servant leadership led to higher levels of psychological safety, which is associated with increased innovation.7
• A 2010 study of 815 employees across seven organizations in Kenya found servant leadership promoted organizational citizenship behaviors, self-efficacy and commitment to leadership.8
• A 2011 study of 315 financial employees in China found servant leadership was correlated with better team performance and goal comprehension.9
• A 2012 study found organizational performance, as measured by return on assets, was higher in companies led by servant leader CEOs.10

Be a servant leader

Monroe said most people are born with an innate impulse to first serve others and that the choice to lead is a conscious one. Bad leadership is learned, and the impulse to serve is often beat out of individuals by unfavorable workplace cultures, Iarocci added.

Just as quality improvement can come from anywhere in an organization, so can servant leadership.
"One can lead at any point in the organization chart," Iarocci said.

The Greenleaf Center often finds what it refers to as "bright spots" in organizations. These bright spots are typically departments that knowingly or unknowingly practice servant leadership. Organizational bright spots are marked by lower levels of absenteeism, greater customer satisfaction, and higher levels of productivity and performance, Iarocci and Monroe said.

The Greenleaf Center teaches that the best way to promote servant leadership in your life and work is to just start practicing it. While being a servant leader is more of a state of mind, anyone can incorporate a number of practices that can have a formative effect on the individual and everyone they interact with:
• Asking questions: A servant leader values the wisdom of others and therefore addresses any issue by asking questions.
• Listening: Servant leaders are experts in listening. Iarocci and Monroe said servant leaders automatically respond to any problem by listening first.
• Withdrawing and reorienting: Servant leaders are self-reflective and practice the art of withdrawing and reorienting to improve their perspective on the self and the work at hand.
• Exercising foresight: Servant leaders practice foresight by keeping up with current events, scanning the horizon for signals of change, listening actively and looking outside the boundaries of their own organizations.
• Growing others: Servant leaders relentlessly pursue the growth and development of others and create more servant leaders, not more followers.

"Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: ‘Everyone can be great because anyone can serve,’" Monroe said.

Many organizations with cultures that practice servant leadership were founded by people who possessed the philosophy in their hearts, Iarocci said. But any organization can create a more servant-minded workforce and reap its benefits. A few ways organizations can formalize servant leadership are by incorporating the philosophy into new employee onboarding, providing training and resources, using 360-degree feedback assessments, rewarding servant leadership behavior through employee recognition programs and reinforcing it in mission statements.

Servant leadership-oriented organizations attract top talent. Members of the generation entering the workforce are focused on finding purpose and meaning and want their professional lives to contribute to the greater good somehow, he said. He explained that today is a lot like the 1960s, which is believed to be when Greenleaf was contemplating this leadership philosophy amidst a society that had declining trust in leadership at organizational and governmental levels.
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References
1. "Give and Take," WTTW Chicago Tonight,http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2013/05/02/adam-grant.
2. "Servant leadership," Wikipedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/servant_leadership.
3. Ibid.
4. Mike Rosenthal, "Continuously Improving," The Lean Thinker blog, June 24, 2011, http://theleanthinker.com/2011/06/24/continuously-improving.
5. "Fortune’s Best Companies to Work for With Servant Leadership," Modern Servant Leader, http://modernservantleader.com/servant-leadership/fortunes-best-companies-to-work-for-with-servant-leadership.
6. "Scientific Research on Servant Leadership," Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership (Asia), www.greenleafasia.org/scientific-research-on-servant-leadership.html.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.

Reference: Quality Magazine