Servant Leadership
You've probably seen this term kicked around. If you looked at my LinkedIn profile, you saw it there. (It feels a little weird, sort of like nominating oneself for a prize for humility. Doesn't that automatically disqualify you?) One of my Millennial friends prefers the term "service leadership." What does it mean? Robert Greenleaf wrote the definitive work on the subject. (It's a tome: if you're not ready for that, consider the curiously-titled but compact and excellent Communicate Like a True Leader, Schultze). My working definition at the moment is something like "leading with other-centered humility."
Where does it come from? For me, the answer is two-fold. First, one of my core beliefs is that I am obligated to treat every person, just by virtue of being a person, with a basic level of dignity and respect, regardless of his or her present station in life. Like Dr. Suess's Horton, I believe that "a person's a person, no matter how small." Do I do that perfectly? Not even close. Just drive with me in traffic sometime, and you'll learn how much work I have left to do! In order to be consistent with that belief, I have to find a way to lead that fits. Thankfully, a servant leadership model fits that view very well.
Second, servant leadership is extremely effective in terms of helping an organization achieve its objectives. In Good to Great, author Jim Collins observed, "Level 5 leaders display a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will. They're incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the cause, for the organization and its purpose, not themselves. While Level 5 leaders can come in many personality packages, they are often self-effacing, quiet, reserved, and even shy. Every good-to-great transition in our research began with a Level 5 leader who motivated the enterprise more with inspired standards than inspiring personality." If you've read Extreme Ownership or listened to Jocko podcasts, you've encountered his view that humility is the most important trait of a leader. Surely if that's the case with Navy SEALs, it must have broader application. A practical example known by every veteran is that soldiers eat first, before officers.
If we work together, you have or will someday hear me say that ordering people around is the lowest form of management, and it doesn't qualify as a form of leadership at all. It's an excellent tool if someone needs the AED, but that's about it.
What does it look like? Do I do everything myself, not delegating anything? Of course not. In large part, it means that I delegate in a manner that is mindful of the delegee. Giving the delegee's needs or interests more weight than my own.
What it's not. It's not "halocracy," an organizational fad where no one is in charge. It's not self-degrading or self-loathing, but more like "self-forgetful." Someone once said that "humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less." Not woe is me, but wow is you.
Servant leaders are not indecisive. But they use different decision-making approaches suited to the situation. If the building is on fire, she won't form a task force or set up a collaboration space in the cloud. Rather, she will see to it that her team evacuates quickly and safely, and puts her own safety last. But when an organizational structure is vexing its customers, he will likely seek input deep in the organization to surface the root causes and will solicit input from those closest to the issue, then lead his team to a consensus decision, weighing the options without prejudging them, and assumes his opinion is no more valid than any other. Because his goal is to solve the problem, not to leave his own mark. You know you're on the path to servant leadership when you get more satisfaction from the successes of your team than your personal successes.
You might wonder why I would stick my neck out and put that on LinkedIn or claim that philosophy here. It's because it is an aspiration, a goal, a direction for me and for all of us at Segment Risk. If I keep it a secret, no one can hold me accountable except my own conscience, and that's not enough. It's a form of "burning the boats." I would rather be occasionally embarrassed, even called out, for falling short of that standard than fail to pursue it.