Servant Leadership — For IT Leaders

Servant Leadership — For IT Leaders

Picture the scene in your mind’s eye…

You have a talented employee. A diamond in the rough who excels at their job and is a prime candidate for continued growth within your organization. The first couple years on the job, they were a dynamo. They knocked every project out of the park. They were enthused and you could always count on them to deliver great work. You provided minimal supervision and guidance to them. In fact, you hardly spent much time interacting with them at all. You just met with them every couple weeks to check on progress and give them their next assignment. They completed their projects on time and budget. They made you look great.

But lately, they have become less engaged with their job. Their enthusiasm has dipped significantly. The quality of their work has slipped and they are not making you look as good as they used to.You have no idea of what is going on with them. You cross your fingers and hope they will snap out of whatever funk they are in and get back to being the dynamo they used to be. 

Today, they walk in your office and give their two week notice. They say they enjoyed working for you but have found another opportunity that will give them more rewarding work, challenge them, and help them meet their personal goals.

Personal goals? They never told you they had any personal goals! Rewarding work? How do you know what is rewarding for them if they never told you? They should have spoken up more, they should have been more vocal. They should have told you what was important to them.

Maybe not…

Maybe you should have asked more questions. Maybe you should have spent more time with them to learn what was important to them. Maybe you should have listened.

Maybe you need to turn your thinking around. Maybe you need to start serving your employees instead of expecting them to serve you.

Maybe you need to start practicing Servant Leadership?

What is Servant Leadership?

What exactly is Servant Leadership? A great definition is provided on the Center For Servant Leadership’s website:

“A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid,” servant leadership is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.” 

The idea of choosing to serve others is a concept that has been in existence for centuries. However, the phrase “Servant Leadership” was first coined by Robert Greenleaf in his 1970 essay “The Servant As Leader.”

Basically, a Servant Leader is one who put’s the needs of other’s before their own and chooses to serve instead of seeking to be served. This approach can apply to any facet of one’e life: as a parent, as a friend, as a significant other, as a member of a community. Here, we will focus on how Servant Leadership pertains to professional life, particularly to the professional life of an IT Leader.

How IT Leaders Can Start Practicing Servant Leadership

So, Servant Leadership sounds great. But how can you actually start practicing Servant Leadership principles in the day to day management of your team? Below are a handful of suggestions to put Servant Leadership principles into play in your management style.

• Make sure your team members understand WHO they are helping and HOW they are helping them. Make sure your team understands who benefits from the work they do. Make sure they understand how their work benefits others to bring more meaning to their jobs. By painting the picture of WHO and HOW they are helping, you help turn their jobs from a “daily grind”, to a meaningful mission.
• Take a vested interest in your employees success. An employee’s relationship with their direct manager is the most important determinant to employee satisfaction. You should be meeting with your employees at least once a month. And the focus of the conversation should be about what you are doing together to continue their development.
• Take time to know your employees. Take time to understand what is important to them, what their goals are, their interests, what motivates them. Taking interest builds trust and lays the foundation for a solid relationship. Take a moment to ask your employees what is going on in their personal lives. Not to pry, but to get to know them better and what is important to them.
• Provide your employees with training. One of my favorite quotes comes from Richard Branson: “Train people well enough so they can leave. But treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” Make sure your employees know you are invested in their continued development. Once you know their professional goals, you can provide them with training to help them get there.
• Make sure your employees have clear, fair, and objective measures for success. Your most talented employees do not want their success to be measured subjectively. They need a clear understanding of what defines success and how they can achieve it. Provide clear goals and measures of success that are easy to report and understand. Then your top performers have clear targets of what they are shooting for and if they hit the mark.
• Create a great working environment. Your team will spend half of their waking hours in the environment you help to create as leader. Why not create a great one? 
• Be more concerned with needs than wants. Sometimes Servant Leadership is about practicing tough love. If you are a parent you understand the concept. You child may want cookies or chips for a snack. But what their bodies need is proper nutrition to help them grow, so you give them an apple or carrot sticks instead. The same goes for your employees. Some may want a manager who is a buddy and goes easy on them when what they need is someone who pushes them and holds them accountable. 
• Listen more than you speak. Do you dominate conversations with your employees? Do you try to find any brief gap in a conversation to spit out what you want to say? Or worse yet, do you talk right over your employees while they are trying to make a point? If the answers are yes, yes, or yes, then it is time to improve your listening skills. Listening is one of the most trust building skills we can develop. A little mantra I use to try to improve my listening skills is: “Listen, Breathe, Speak”. Taking a breath before I speak helps make sure that I am taking my time and giving the other person time to finish their point.
• Practice Authority, Not Power. Power is about coercing people to do your will because of your position. Authority is about getting people to willingly do what you request because of the trust and influence you have gained. If you put these suggestions into practice to become a better Servant Leader, you will gain the trust of your employees because they will know you have their best interest at heart. Then you will gain authority.

How Can Servant Leadership Specifically Benefit IT Leaders

Why take the time to learn Servant leadership and put its principles into effect in your management style? Practicing Servant Leadership has many benefits.

• Employee Retention – These days, it is extremely hard to attract and retain talented IT Professionals. They are in high demand and they will often leave their current position for the next, higher paying opportunity. However, if you practice Servant Leadership, it is going to be immensely more difficult for an employee to leave your team when they know you understand and are invested in them. 
• Increased Productivity – Employees who have a positive relationship with their manager have higher morale. The higher their morale, the more productive they will be at their job. Employees who have managers that practice Servant Leadership know why they are doing what they are doing. They know their goals and they know they have the support to achieve them with clear cut measures to gauge their success buy. This is a great formula to create an environment where employees are highly productive.
• Happier Customers – I have another favorite Richard Branson quote: “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees they will take care of the client.” Employees who are taken care of will be more engaged and will take better care of your customers. 
• Make Your Job More Joyful. Servant Leadership frees your from the chains of self-absorption. Thinking too much about yourself and being too absorbed on your own wants and needs only leads to suffering. Thinking of others and truly serving them takes you out of your own head. It leads to more inner satisfaction, and it is far more rewarding to put the needs of your team ahead of your own and to hep make their job more meaningful for them. It adds color to your day. Instead of just going through a hum-drum day, checking items off your list, you can help others accomplish their goals. In the long run, that is far more satisfying and joyful.

A Servant Leadership Reading List

Interested in learning more about Servant Leadership? Below is a list of books that will help you understand more about the principles of Servant Leadership and how you can put them into play. Read a few, or all of them, and you will be well on your way to being a more effective Servant Leader.

• “The Servant as Leader”–Robert Greenleaf – Short and sweet. The perfect introduction to Servant Leadership straight from the man who first introduced the concept in this essay.
• The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership–James C. Hunter – Continue your Servant Leadership journey with this “business fable.” This book reads as a story and touches on all the concepts of Servant Leadership. 
• The World’s Most Powerful Leadership Principle: How to Become a Servant Leader — James C. Hunter – This is Hunter’s follow up book to “The Servant.” It is a more straight forward book on the principles of Servant Lleadership. If you are not into the “business fable” genre, you may want to skip The Servant and read this instead.
• Leaders Open Doors: A Radically Simple Leadershiphttps://amzn.to/2k8OExPApproach to Lift People, Profits, and Performance — Bill Treasurer – A great little book on how true leaders “open doors” and create opportunities for others.
• The Truth About Employee Engagement — Patrick Lencioni – I was introduced to Lencioni through a book club at work. All of his books read as “bushiness fables” and tend to be quick, easy reads with valuable content. The same holds true for this book where Lencioni tackles what makes people miserable on their jobs, and how leaders can help create better working environments through Servant Leadership principles.

Conclusion

IT Leaders are in a wonderful position to serve: serve their staff, serve their co-workers, serve their customers. Approaching your job with a Servant Leadership mindset makes it so much more rewarding. If you look back on your career and think of the best boss or manager you ever had, that person probably practiced some degree of Servant Leadership. They probably took a deep interest in you and your development. They probably cared about you and your family. They probably helped you get a promotion you deserved. They probably challenged you and believed in you. You can be that boss too. You can be the leader who cares about their team and looks upon their job as an opportunity to serve. 

James Allen says: “The ultimate test of leadership is this: Are the people better off when they leave than when they got there?” Well? Are the people you are leading better off for having spent time with you? 

We have all heard the saying “people quit on their managers, not on their companies.” You can choose to not be the manager that your people want to quit on. 

You can choose to be a Servant Leader.

“All managers can-and really should-view their work as a ministry. A service to others. By helping people find engagement in their work, and helping them to succeed in whatever they’re doing, a manager can have a profound impact on the emotional, financial, physical, and spiritual health of workers and their families.” — Patrick Lencioni