OLS-57900 Week 11 - Servant Leadership Theory
Key Takeaway 1: If a high-performing team is your goal, you need to be firm in your standards for everyone who works within it (Anderson, 2023).
Key Takeaway 2: People make choices based more on how the information is worded than the information itself so it's critical you pre-frame your conversation and close it out with a recap as seen in Exhibit 1 (Anderson, 2023).
Key Takeaway 3: Servant Leadership is a paradox where you want to both serve and influence. 10 characteristics of servant leaders: (1) listening; (2) empathy; (3) healing; (4) awareness; (5) persuasion; (6) conceptualization; (7) foresight; (8) stewardship; (9) commitment to grow people; and (10) build community (Northouse, 2012).
Exhibit 1: The Conversation Roadmap
Analysis: Difficult conversations are... difficult. I like the approach of pre-framing the conversation to orient the member on the benefits of the conversation then recapping it at the end to remind them of the why and eventual benefit of taking the actions discussed. This approach can be used for setting the standards for your high performing team; to client meetings; to conversations with your friends and family.
While there are competing perspectives on Servant Leadership being a trait or actual Leadership style, at its core is authenticity and strong Leader-Member Exchange (LMX). By authentically serving, you show your team member that you care and that care builds a strong LMX where they allow themselves to be vulnerable creating the authentic bond discussed in Week 9. This creates trust, which allows you to influence their actions by framing the actions as beneficial to the member, hitting their motivators and optimizing their output as well as their career growth and impact.
Application: Servant Leadership is one of my strength areas so from this week, I think my focus is on better framing hard discussions. I have had to let staff go. Some of them ended in tears. Some of them ended in anger. Some of them ended in mutual understanding. In some cases, the decision was too early and in other cases it wasn't fast enough. I believe I need to better communicate expectations to my team and be firm and consistent in enforcing those expectations. I also need be comfortable in the hard conversations so I can give team members authentic feedback in a way that motivates them to improve so I don't need to get to a point where I am letting them go. Finally, when it is time to let them go, I need to speak more from emotion and more from authority. I do well with this, but sometimes I do find myself reflecting on a team member's actions that were more subjective than objective. At times, I also find myself asking for feedback when feedback should not be a part of the conversation as the conversation is to inform them of a decision. If I do everything right, I should have already received their feedback through consistent conversations and engagements prior to the final conversation of letting them go.
References
Anderson, R. M. (2023). Leadership Mindset 2.0. Columbia: Executive Joy! https://rmichaelanderson.com/leadership-mindset-2-0/
Northouse, P. G. (2012). Leadership: Theory and Practice 6th Edition. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.