In The World’s Most Powerful Leadership Principle: How to Become a Servant Leader, management consultant James Hunter discusses the servant leader approach to leadership and management. Hunter restates the principle previously elaborated most notably by Robert Greenleaf which posits that true leadership derives from a sense of stewardship and responsibility marked by willing the good of those one leads. Hunter goes on to state that servant leadership can and should be more than just a high minded ideal, but is a practice that like any other habit must be cultivated. Highlights of Hunters exposition follow:
Good leadership is critical in creating an environment where people want to work. A Gallup poll showed that 2/3 of people who quit or resign from a job do so because of incompetent or ineffective management.
Good leadership is within any manager’s reach, but it requires more than head knowledge. It often requires a change in one’s attitude toward leadership, people, and relationships. It also requires the work and discipline involved in cultivating character.
Over 1/3 of the companies in Fortune’s 100 Most Admired Companies List are involved in some form of servant leadership or identify servant leadership as a core operating principle.
Hunter defines leadership as the skills of influencing people to enthusiastically work toward goals identified as being for the common good, with character that inspires confidence.
Management and leadership are not the same. Management relates to technical abilities and skills required to accomplish a task. Leadership is more about inspiring people to do a job well. It does not require that one be the boss. In effective organizations everyone in the organization takes on leadership responsibility for the success of the team.
Servant leadership begins by reflecting on the following: When we signed up to be the leader we assumed an awesome responsibility. Human beings have been entrusted to our care and much is at stake. Employees will generally spend half of their waking hours in the environment created by their manager. How the manager behaves influences people’s lives even outside of working hours.
The ultimate test of the effectiveness of a leader is “Are your people better off when they left than when they arrived? … Are your employees more employable, better people, and have they grown as a result of your influence and leadership?” The leader always leaves a mark. The question is what type of mark one leaves behind.
Servant leadership does not imply that the leader abdicates aspects of leadership responsibility like defining mission, values, standards, and accountability. Employees need to know what the standard is and receive feedback. People look to the leader to provide direction in these areas. But once this direction is established, the leader must become responsive to those being led by identifying and meeting their legitimate needs so they can become effective a meeting the stated mission.
Power and authority differ in that power will compel a desired behavior, but damages relationships in the process, whereas authority is about the character of the leader and the leader’s ability to inspire a desired behavior. Legitimate leadership must be built upon authority. And legitimate authority (influence) must be earned as it does not come from a job title.
Leadership is not about manipulating, persuading, or pressuring people for personal benefit. Leadership is influencing people for mutual benefit. It is the willingness to extend oneself and meet the needs of another human being regardless of the return that may or may not come one’s way as a result.
Building authority requires serving, sacrificing, and seeking the greatest good of those being led. It requires loving others where the word is defined as “The acts of extending yourself for others by identifying and meeting their legitimate needs and seeking their greatest good.” Sacrifice involves overcoming the two-year old with the “me first” attitude in us.
Building authority requires loving, which is characterized by being patient, kind, humble, respectful, selfless, forgiving, honest, and committed. Kindness and honesty translate into people skills and accountability. These are areas where managers often lose their balance. Empathetic listening is an important aspect of kindness on the job and an important step in becoming a servant leader. Trustworthiness is also a key element of good leadership. Once the troops buy into the leader, they’ll buy into whatever mission statement the leader’s got, but mission statements mean little where trust is lacking.
Leadership requires that we choose to do the right thing until it becomes a habit. When we serve and sacrifice for those entrusted to us we build authority (influence). Most employees will respond to such leadership but some never will, or even worse, will try to sabotage the leader. A functional question is how do we want to be treated by our leader? Be the leader you want your leader to be.
Borrowing from Allen Wheelis’ How People Change, Hunter posits that change and growth requires three stages: suffering (friction) moving us from our comfort zone, insight into what is damaging in one’s behavior, and willingness to take actions aligned with new intention, which results in incremental change born of new habits.
Hunter also proposes a process for continuous leadership improvement consisting of (1) setting the standard or foundation, (2) identifying gaps or feedback, and (3) eliminating gaps and measuring results or friction.
There are two types of behavioral motivation on the job: (1) satisfiers or maintenance factors, which are those things such as wages, benefits, and working conditions, that employees must receive before expending even a minimum effort on the job; and (2) motivators, such as recognition, praise, appreciation, opportunity for growth, challenge, meaningful work, and job satisfaction, which stimulate people to put out more energy, effort, and enthusiasm in doing their jobs.
The most successful organizations understand and work to meet deeper needs that human beings share, namely:
A need for great leadership
A need for meaning and purpose
A need to be appreciated, recognized, and respected
A need to be part of something excellent (special)
A need to be part of a caring community
Discussion Questions included the following:
1. Hunter argues that the technical skills that make it possible for people to rise to leadership positions do not serve them well in becoming effective leaders. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
2. Hunter argues that good leaders are made rather than born and that most people (barring those with serious mental or emotional deficiencies) can develop the skills of good leadership. How can we develop good leaders in our libraries?
Here some members felt that there are those who have exceptional leadership abilities though in general the skills can be taught.
3. Hunter and servant leadership proponents such as Robert Greenleaf put forth the following as the litmus test of effective leadership: Do those you serve grow as persons as a result of your influence and leadership? Is this a good test of leadership? Why or why not?
This point garnered much discussion. There was some concern that requiring that others grow as persons under one's leadership is a tall order, especially where the person's duties are limited to repetitive technical procedures. There was also some concern about becoming too personally involved with one's subordinates and the emotional vulnerability that might result. It was agreed that one needs to distinguish between being concerned for the overall welfare of one's subordinates and becoming emotionally involved with them in unhealthy ways.
4. Hunter states that the greatest leader is the greatest servant. What does this mean and does this make sense?
Most agreed that this makes sense in that a good leader who is service oriented and not self-centered is more likely to garner credibility from subordinates and hence be more effective.
5. Hunter argues that once compensation is perceived to be fair and the need is satisfied, its value as a motivator greatly diminishes. Daniel Pink makes the same argument in Drive. Does this ring true for libraries? If so, how can we use this principle to improve our libraries?
Most agreed with this observation, but quick to observe that pay can be relative and when a better paying opportunity becomes available it is likely to recieve consideration. The point was also made that librarians in general are motivated by service more than just money or they would likely be in another line of work.
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