Introduction

In his seminal essay “The Servant as Leader,” Robert K. Greenleaf (1970) posited that the role of a servant leader is to foster autonomy in those he/she leads, an autonomy that creates better, more adept future leaders. In the 55 years since he published his work, servant leadership has become a viable, mainstream approach to business that incorporates elements of the transformational, democratic, and laissez-faire leadership philosophies. Despite this half-century of growth (and in part because of it) achieving a culture of increasing autonomy requires a few traits that not all servant leaders have readily and a few challenges not all servant leaders are prepared to face. In part one of this two-part blog, I address a few critical skills that all servant leaders should develop. Part two will focus on how servant leaders might handle uncomfortable and unwanted growth scenarios.

Critical Skills:

Every servant leader has innate skills and tendencies that drive him or her to first serve and then lead. Three skills that will benefit every servant leader are the ability to seek, form, and listen to the guidance of a solid counsel of advisors; the ability to calm the noise, focus our attention, and be aware in the silence; and knowing when our leadership is no longer productive or wanted. While not an all-inclusive list, these three skills will empower the servant to become a true leader, one who gathers followers naturally, and one who avoids situations that could damage his/her reputation or personal or professional growth. It all starts with good counsel.

Seeking Good Counsel

As servant leaders, we espouse listening to those under our charge as a critical aspect of serving them. We also propose making thoughtful, data-driven, solid business decisions that account for various emotional biases but don’t fall victim to them. Considering the glut of not-so-helpful information in today’s multi-media-driven society, and the modern-day rise of misinformation and disinformation, it follows that we should seek good counsel when making decisions that could have significant impact on ourselves or those in our charge.

But trust is hard to earn and easy to lose despite being necessary for good counsel. As servant leaders, we often hold an unqualified optimistic opinion of people from the outset. This trust first mentality comes from our propensity to project our own beliefs onto others before we truly know them. As a tool for gathering followers, it’s powerful, and when it works out, collaboration can be empowering for everyone.

Unfortunately, trusting first carries with it the risk that we overlook clues telling us to be cautious, less trusting. We “write off” bad behavior or seek to explain it away by saying, “you don’t know what is going on in their life” and “nobody’s perfect.” We continue to engage in hope that our influence will tip the scale and prove that our trust was ultimately well placed. Sometimes it works. Usually, it doesn’t.

When seeking good counsel, servant leaders must practice what we preach. We must step back and observe our potential counselor’s body of work. How do they make decisions when they are faced with challenges? Do they follow the data, make measured decisions after a period of thoughtful reflection, and occasionally seek counsel of their own, or are they driven by emotion, frequently jump headlong into the problem seeking to solve if before understanding it? How do their staff or group of friends respond to their leadership? Are their decisions respected, followed, and improved upon, or are they marginalized, taken with a grain of salt – or worse, disrespected?

Knowing how to build an effective counsel, then follow its guidance, is critical to successful servant leadership, or, as Luke said, we could be seen as the person who started a building and couldn’t afford to finish it.

Silence and Awareness

Part of being a servant leader is leading, right? So, why would I include silence in this essay?

Because silence is a powerful motivator.

How often has a meeting ground to a halt because the president or general manager sat stoically, unmoving, silent? Silence can be uncomfortable – especially if you are the one who asked the question or are the target of the answer. It can also be empowering. Why? Because, as Greenleaf said, it is in silence that we find awareness.

Greenleaf describes awareness as wide-open doors to a greater array of sensory input than we normally experience. Awareness is difficult to master and nearly impossible to optimize in normal settings. It requires the servant leader to ignore lower priority, “normal” signals in deference to targeted inputs. Instead of just hearing the words someone speaks, we focus on the inflections of their voice, the way their body interacts with the story, their passion or lack thereof regarding the topic, and the level of interest they show in your response. This is where silence fits in.

Silence is where we listen.

Skilled servant leaders can juggle everyday input with focused awareness. But most of us cannot. At least not optimally. We need to deliberately segregate different inputs to free up mental bandwidth to focus on the subliminal, non-verbal, and environmental clues that can better inform us. Every day of our lives, we live in and absorb ninety-five percent of the available information. We use our five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) to aggregate clues about every situation. By being quick to listen and slow to speak we empower ourselves to discover the remaining five percent, and that is where the servant leader makes an impact.

Know When to Walk Away

There is a long list of memorable quotes made by the 45th and 47th President of the United States. One such quote highlights a difficulty all servant leaders face.

By our very nature, servant leaders love those under our charge and by extension those charged with our care. After all, the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves, and those under our care are so much closer than our neighbor.

The flaw here, though, is that we become too invested in our staff or students. I’m not talking about being inappropriate (Latin – Eros); rather, I refer to the Biblical brotherly love or close friendship (Latin – Philia), or unconditional, sacrificial love (Latin – Agape). Our investment begins when we assign positive traits and unwarranted trust during those early interactions and continues through our people’s professional growth. Servant leaders rejoice impassionedly with our staff’s successes and feel their failures deeply. We may even go to extremes and gauge our own worth by their successes and failures. This investment becomes an emotional attachment with spiritual implications. Frequently it causes us to ignore the law of diminishing returns and accept or ignore unhealthy personal and cultural changes.

As a result of our deeply rooted investment, friction can arise when a culture, environment, or relationship turns sour. If we aren’t practicing awareness or if we’ve turned the corner from data-driven decision-making to emotional attachment, we may miss clues that indicate an employee or supervisor is distancing themselves from us. Worse, we may see the clues and deliberately double down, convincing ourselves that we can resolve the situation through greater empathy and effort. This rarely works.

As President Trump so eloquently stated, sometimes it is in our best interest to just walk away. Regardless of the logical reasons to stay, (e.g., If I leave, who will protect my people from the growing resentment? If I leave, who will finish the training I’ve started? If I leave before my work is finished, the whole thing will collapse, and that will be on me!) sometimes servant leaders need to recognize that our proverbial pearls of effort are missing their mark and falling to the floor to be trampled by the swine. (Matt 7:6)

Leaving can be hard, but it’s better than overstaying your welcome and tarnishing your reputation in a situation where you cannot succeed. Be aware of the clues, walk away, and engage in something that can be productive. And if you don’t want to cite President Trump’s quote, cite Jesus’.