Word of the Week - Servant Leadership Continued
"Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant." Matthew 20:26
Servant Leadership – As I noted a few weeks ago, I am in a season of reflection and pruning whereby I believe the Lord is calling me to a new level of serving as a husband, father, friend, and leader in business and ministry. This is surely a process of dying to self and is counter to many of the typical mindsets of our world and culture. As part of this process, I am studying a book titled “Servant Leadership in Action – How you can achieve great relationships and results” by Ken Blanchard and Renee Broadwell. It is a great book that compiles principles in short chapters from over forty world class leaders who are leading organizations using the Servant Leadership model. It has been insightful for me to understand what it really looks like to be a Servant Leader and how to practically implement this at a new level into my life and business. The following is a short excerpt from one of the chapters that I found especially insightful and worthy of sharing.
Great leaders Serve – This chapter written by Mark Miller https://tmarkmiller.com/about/, who was an early employee at Chick-fil-a and served on their leadership team for over 40 years. Over twenty years ago, Mark and his team began a project to accelerate leadership development across the Chick-fil-a organization. One of the main goals of the project was to develop a common definition for leadership. They knew the stakes were high to get this right because it would drive countless hours of leadership development and millions of dollars of investment and would shape the caliber of their leaders and the organization for decades to come. Well, we all know what has transpired with Chick-fil-a over the past 20 years as they have become the “gold standard” in the fast casual food industry among other categories. They were just recognized as America’s favorite restaurant for the 8th year in a row by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). I would suggest that their success has been driven by the investment Mark and their leadership team defined and committed to over two decades ago. This process resulted in a book that Mark co-authored with leadership guru Ken Blanchard titled The Secret: What Great Leaders know and do.
The following is a quick overview of five strategic ways Great leaders SERVE from the book:
Great Leaders See and Shape the future – Leadership begins with a picture of the future and being able to paint a picture of a preferred future. When the vision is clear and compelling it will create life, energy and momentum. Our people want to know where they are going, what we are trying to accomplish, what we are trying to become and why it matters.
Great leaders engage and develop others – Engagement is about creating context for people to thrive. It is incumbent upon leaders to proactively develop team members to help them grow and realize their full potential. Our job as leaders is to engage our people in the process and aligning dreams and goals.
Value results and relationships – This is the tenet that generates the most angst for many leaders. Most leaders have a default bias towards one or the other. The best leaders value both!!! There is a tension here and our challenge as leaders is to manage the tension.
Embody the values – People always watch the leader – whether we want them to or not! They are trying to determine if the leader is trustworthy. If a leader says something is important, people expect that person to live like it is important. Leaders must do everything humanly possible to walk the talk!
Reinvent Continuously – If you do what you you’ve always done, you’ll get what you have always got. To make progress, to move forward, to accomplish bigger and better, something has to change. This includes Self: How are you reinventing yourself? Systems: Which work processes need to be changed to create better results? Structure: What structural changes could you make to better enable the accomplishment of your goal?
Are you ready to become a servant leader? It is not a strategy or shortcut to success. However, if we are willing to begin the long journey of adding value to others, putting their interests ahead of our own, helping others win, and mastering the five fundamentals we just reviewed, we will enjoy new levels of success, satisfaction and impact. Most importantly we will develop other Servant Leaders that will reproduce and multiply. This is not only the right thing to do but it is a huge opportunity to walk out the gospel in our day to day lives while adding and creating value for others.
Have a great week.
-Duane