Revisiting and Fine-Tuning the Idea of Servant Leadership
- Dave Todaro
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Image Credit: Fizkes/Shutterstock
Recently, I was asked to summarize what I see in the people who’ve best used their position of authority to enable and inspire their team members to achieve great results. I'm a big believer in "servant leadership." So that was going to be part of my answer.
But a concern surfaced – something that I think has gnawed at me for awhile. “Servant Leadership.” This phrase has become so popularized, it's almost cliche. It can be mistaken for a laissez-faire approach that de-emphasizes the leader’s responsibility to stretch their people in healthy ways, to keep them growing, learning, achieving. Or a "let me do that part for you" approach that results in a leader’s over-functioning; taking on more of the work than they should, motivated by the belief that servant-leadership means lightening everyone else’s load. Which, if you’ve ever led that way (I did, when I was much younger!) can lead to the leader’s burnout while those on their team stagnate due to insufficient opportunities and challenge.
Either approach gets in the way of team growth and continued, sustainable improvement.
Rather than abandoning servant leadership as a worthy concept, I thought about clarifying what healthy servant leadership might really involve.
I think the antidote is when leaders are honest with their people about the ways they need to grow in order to get where they're going. And that necessarily involves setting reasonable performance standards and insisting that they be met.There have been no better leaders and teachers in my life than the ones who made it obvious that they cared about my success and removed whatever barriers they could remove that were in my way, while at the same time pointing out which barriers to my success that only I could remove through my own commitment to grow, change, improve.
But as a prerequisite, “success” needed to be defined, and enforced as a standard.
The following example may be an oversimplification, but it serves: If I’m a widget-maker, let’s say the standards that have been set for me are 500 quality widgets per week, with less than 15 widgets rejected by Quality Control and less than $150 per week of wasted materials. My team leader should be keeping track of my contributions, asking me what kinds of problems I encountered when I didn’t hit my numbers, and supporting me in problem-solving. Sometimes the problem might be traced to something I need to get better at.
Servant leadership isn't just about being kind to people. It's also about a more senior person sharing their honest perspective with their team members on how they can get better. It can be done with kindness, and great leaders figure out how to do that. Those have been the leaders who've made the biggest positive impact on me.
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