I found this at https://dzone.com/articles/the-9-traits-of-highly-effective-leaders. I think Deming said it better: The aim of management is to help people and machines do a better job.
A New Style of Leadership
According to the Greenleaf Center
for Servant Leadership, “It is a philosophy and set of practices that
enriches the lives of individuals, builds better organizations, and
ultimately creates a more just and caring world.”
The founding principles include nine behaviors: serve first,
add value to others, build trust, listen to understand, think about your
thinking, increase your influence, demonstrate courage, live your
values, and live your transformation. What do these behaviors look like
in practice?
1. Serve First
Serving first is about approaching work with a collaborative
mindset. Instead of thinking, “How can I win?” leaders with a
serve-first mentality look to make situations a win-win for all
participants. These leaders go beyond simply giving a job description to
an employee and sending them off to tackle the day. Instead, they care
about the whole individual, including personal and professional growth
of each person.
2. Add Value to Others
This differs from “serve first” because it’s about what you as a leader can add to help others grow. What are your strengths? What are the unique skills that you can use to help improve other people’s projects, ideas, and careers?
3. Build Trust
When trust is high, cost is low and speed goes up. To achieve these benefits, high-trust leaders choose to delegate and not micromanage, meet deadlines and give actionable feedback, and they’re accountable for decisions and outcomes.
4. Listen to Understand
It’s not about listening to decide when to chime in with
your own opinion, it’s about listening to ACTUALLY understand. Leaders
should practice active listening,
and make sure they’re not interrupting people during meetings or 1:1s.
Try these two questions to listen to understand: “Tell me more” and
“Help me understand.” These questions open the door for others to share
their perspective, without feeling like they’re being undermined or
doubted.
5. Think About Your Thinking
Servant leaders evaluate how they think about messages, situations, behaviors that they experience. Is input or feedback received in a negative way or as a positive opportunity for improvement? The trick is to differentiate between useful thoughts and non-useful thoughts, and re-frame negative beliefs. For example, don’t use absolutes like “always” and “never” when describing situations or behaviors.
6. Increase Your Influence
Typical leaders think about grabbing more power when they
look to increase their influence, but the servant-leader aspires to
share what they know and what they’ve learned over the years to enable
other people to learn from and utilize that knowledge. It means more
people possess the information and ability to make decisions and
innovate, and ensures the leader is not a bottleneck to progress.
7. Demonstrate Courage
People often mistake servant leadership as being “nice,” but sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to have the hard conversations with people, deal with conflict, make the tough decisions, and hold people accountable. Demonstrating courage is about encouraging people to move forward and get results.
8. Live Your Values
As many tasks become automated and competition for talent
increases, employees look for more alignment between their personal
values and company values. Leaders who live company values aligned with
the principles of servant leadership foster a more inclusive and
productive environment for their teams.
9. Live Your Transformation
Becoming a servant-leader is not a one-time action or
seminar, it’s a lifelong pursuit. The principles become part of the
leader. They live them day in and day out, and take them into the
business and their community.
Impact of Servant Leadership
In addition to boosting team morale and professional growth,
servant leadership yields strong business results. For example, a 2015
study conducted by KRW International found that CEOs whose employees
gave them high marks for character delivered an average return on assets
of 9.35% over a two-year period. That’s five times as much as CEOs with
lower marks for character, with an average return on assets of only
1.93%.
Results have been measured for years, including a comparison
of “Good to Great” companies and “servant leadership” companies. In
their book, Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading by Serving,
James Sipe and Don Frick share that during the 10-year period they
studied, stocks from the 500 largest public companies (S&P 500)
averaged a 10.8% pre-tax portfolio return. Companies featured in Jim
Collins’ book Good to Great averaged a 17.5% return. However, the servant-led companies’ returns averaged 24.2%.
And researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago
saw measurable increases in key business metrics, including a 6%
increase in job performance, 8% increase in customer service, and 50%
increase in employee retention.
The results are clear: servant leadership is not only good for the soul, it’s good for the spreadsheet.
It’s tempting to hoard information, approach colleagues as
competitors, and attempt to win at all costs as the world moves faster
and faster. But it turns out that collaboration and a servant mindset
increase your chances of success, not only as a leader, but as a
business.
