Latest / Unspoken Career Truths / Balancing Support and Strategy in Servant Leadership

Transcript

Balancing Support and Strategy in Servant Leadership · Unspoken Career Truths

• 0:00
  Welcome to unspoken career truths.
• 0:02
  I'm Cara Wood. And I'm Lauren Levac Gilbert.
• 0:05
  And we're here to be the coworkers you can trust.
• 0:09
  Today we're going to talk about leadership, specifically servant
• 0:12
  leadership. There's so many different types
• 0:15
  of leadership styles, but this is one that I was introduced to
• 0:17
  early in my career and it really resonated with me.
• 0:21
  Cara was that it's. Funny, servant leadership was
• 0:24
  the first style of leadership that anyone told me about.
• 0:28
  Me too. That's funny.
• 0:30
  Yeah, same here. So let's define it because if
• 0:32
  you don't know what it is, what is servant leadership?
• 0:34
  It is a philosophy that was actually coined by Robert K
• 0:37
  Greenleaf, where a leader's primary goal is to serve
• 0:41
  employees and prioritize their needs, growth, and well-being.
• 0:44
  Servant leaders share power, they foster trust, they remove
• 0:48
  obstacles, ultimately aiming to empower individuals to reach
• 0:52
  their highest potential. Is that how you understand it,
• 0:55
  Cara? Yeah, the prioritizing
• 0:57
  well-being sticks out to me. I've always just acquainted
• 1:01
  servant leadership with a very specific you're getting
• 1:05
  roadblocks out of people's way and you are there to help them
• 1:08
  grow. But I love that idea of
• 1:11
  prioritizing well-being and fostering trust.
• 1:13
  I feel like really aligns with a lot of the best workplaces right
• 1:17
  now. And focusing on the whole human,
• 1:20
  I think, is really important, right?
• 1:21
  Because we have so many elements of things that happen outside
• 1:23
  and inside the workplace. And so it's really important to
• 1:27
  think about that. Yeah.
• 1:28
  Early in my career, I was aspiring to be a servant leader.
• 1:32
  And then about I think maybe 10 years and I had this pivot
• 1:37
  because I was exposed to another kind of leadership that is
• 1:40
  called authentic leadership. And you're still doing a lot of
• 1:43
  this stuff where you're thinking about well-being, but instead of
• 1:48
  always prioritizing the people that are on your team, you're
• 1:52
  prioritizing truth and betterment.
• 1:55
  And that isn't necessarily always what the individual
• 1:59
  needs. It might be what's best for the
• 2:01
  larger team, and it also needs to be authentic to you and.
• 2:05
  I think it's important to state like this doesn't have to be a,
• 2:08
  I'm only a servant leader, I'm only an authentic leader, right?
• 2:11
  These are just different types of styles and it's kind of like
• 2:13
  a menu of options, like pick the pieces of it that you like and
• 2:17
  how you want to employ them for your team.
• 2:19
  It doesn't mean you have to kind of stay in a bucket.
• 2:21
  Yeah, we talked last week about how leadership's a journey, and
• 2:24
  so it's really important for you to just understand the different
• 2:26
  styles. I've got some good good stats
• 2:28
  about servant leadership. Managers are the biggest and
• 2:31
  engagement. It's super important to be
• 2:33
  connected to your manager, to feel like have your back.
• 2:35
  Gallup says managers account for 70% of the variance in team
• 2:39
  engagement, which makes leadership style a major
• 2:42
  business variable. I read another study the other
• 2:45
  day that said that having a good manager was the number one
• 2:49
  indicator of success at work. Oh yeah.
• 2:52
  I mean, what do they say? That people don't leave bad
• 2:55
  jobs, they leave bad bosses. This person is responsible a lot
• 2:59
  of the time for your workload and for just the environment in
• 3:02
  which you work. Speaking of environment, Gallup
• 3:04
  also found that when employees strongly agree they've had
• 3:07
  opportunities to provide honest feedback about their
• 3:10
  organization, they're 7.4 times as likely to have confidence in
• 3:14
  their leaders at managing new challenges that pop up.
• 3:17
  And that's a really important thing because things are
• 3:19
  changing and you want your team members to feel like you're able
• 3:23
  to help them navigate and help them and their careers.
• 3:27
  That speaks to the strength of the servant leadership type.
• 3:29
  This is already set up to be the kind of leader who's always
• 3:33
  asking for feedback and always making space for people to share
• 3:37
  what they're thinking and what's going on.
• 3:38
  Totally agree. So let's talk a bit about the
• 3:41
  key principles of servant leadership, emphasizing personal
• 3:45
  growth and well-being, focusing on the whole human things like
• 3:48
  active listening, empathy, self-awareness, making sure that
• 3:53
  you're understanding how your energy is impacting the broader
• 3:56
  team. Empowerment is another really
• 3:58
  big one. Fostering A collaborative
• 4:00
  environment, encouraging team members to participate, bringing
• 4:05
  them into the decision making stewardship, so taking
• 4:09
  responsibility for the team, acting as stewards to support
• 4:13
  the broader organization. I think of that as the business
• 4:17
  owner mindset. How can you make sure that what
• 4:20
  you're doing is also connected to the broader mission and
• 4:22
  focus? And some of the core values are
• 4:25
  really kind of humility, trust, high ethics, a lot of respect.
• 4:30
  Car. Did I miss anything?
• 4:31
  You know, I think this is great and I think it aligns, but I
• 4:33
  want to posit something which is, which is just that this
• 4:37
  sounds like an amazing manager to work for, but is it an
• 4:41
  amazing manager to manage? This behavior is fantastic when
• 4:46
  you're reporting up, when I think servant leadership
• 4:49
  neglects is all of the managing up that also has to take place.
• 4:52
  So I'm not saying that any of this is bad, but there's more
• 4:56
  skills. There's so much to leadership.
• 4:59
  I think that's a great point. And there's another element of
• 5:02
  it that this sounds like the manager is giving, right?
• 5:05
  Like a lot of giving of themselves.
• 5:07
  And that doesn't mean that you should get to burnout.
• 5:11
  Like empathy without boundaries leads to burnout.
• 5:15
  You can care deeply without having to carry everyone's
• 5:18
  emotions. You can still be compassionate
• 5:21
  and have boundaries. You can still be supportive, and
• 5:23
  you can say no. So this is also a delicate
• 5:25
  balance. And as we're talking about it, I
• 5:27
  want to make sure that that is very specifically called out.
• 5:30
  Yeah. And I think there's a lot of
• 5:31
  people out there who, and I, because I think this is
• 5:33
  increasingly happening where you're a manager of a team, but
• 5:37
  you're also an individual contributor.
• 5:38
  And so to your point about burnout, you have to decide or
• 5:42
  set boundaries around what kind of servant leader you can be.
• 5:46
  And this is also going to depend on which kind of organization
• 5:49
  you're in. Is everyone on the organization
• 5:51
  on board with servant leadership?
• 5:53
  That's going to be a different organization to work with than
• 5:56
  one that isn't. So let's talk about some
• 5:59
  examples of how you can act as a servant leader.
• 6:02
  One of my favorites is removing roadblocks.
• 6:06
  Take all of the organizational issues that are coming to you,
• 6:10
  provide a safety net and only provide the kind of necessary
• 6:14
  information and make sure that everyone feels comfortable with
• 6:17
  it and they're understanding how it's connected to the broader
• 6:20
  organization. Once I was in an elevator and I
• 6:25
  made an offhanded comment to another Co worker that a manager
• 6:29
  who was a skip manager. So 2 managers above me overheard
• 6:33
  and that person immediately said hey I want to talk to you
• 6:39
  because the comment was about being overwhelmed with the
• 6:42
  workload and that was happening at the company.
• 6:45
  They took me aside and walked me through the next six months of
• 6:49
  plans that would alleviate that. Was it very?
• 6:52
  Yeah, it was awesome 'cause they immediately recognized this
• 6:56
  signal of frustration that was very valid.
• 7:00
  And they were like, hey, I hear you, it's valid, here's what I'm
• 7:03
  doing. What is your input back to me?
• 7:05
  The prioritization of I see this and I know what it could mean
• 7:10
  and I want to address it right away.
• 7:12
  Was so powerful for me that as an example of servant leadership
• 7:16
  that you again are so attuned to what could be going on already,
• 7:21
  like anticipating what needs to be done.
• 7:23
  Hey I see your problem and here's what I'm doing to solve
• 7:26
  it. That validation element is so,
• 7:29
  so important. Like it makes such a difference.
• 7:31
  If someone feels validated in how they feel, a lot of that is
• 7:34
  like mentorship, like coaching and mentoring and helping to
• 7:37
  understand how to develop their skills or think through
• 7:41
  problems. Mentorship is a really big part
• 7:44
  of servant leadership, and I've seen that a lot throughout my
• 7:48
  career. Yeah.
• 7:49
  The other thing about serving leadership is that there is a
• 7:51
  humility to it that recognizes that the people around you are
• 7:56
  also leaders or potential leaders.
• 7:58
  You're managing their performance so that they can
• 8:01
  reach their own personal goals and goals for the company.
• 8:03
  It's not about you at all. 100% And I think from a servant
• 8:09
  leadership perspective, you serve and you lead.
• 8:12
  I think that's an important distinction.
• 8:14
  You have to make sure that it's not just passive and you're not
• 8:17
  just receiving all of the emotions and the feelings and
• 8:19
  everything that's happening. And there's some good questions.
• 8:23
  I like that kind of help you think through being a servant
• 8:27
  leadership on your team. And one of them is what does my
• 8:30
  team need to do their best work or what do they need in order to
• 8:34
  do that? And that could be an environment
• 8:37
  change, that could be more information, that could be more
• 8:39
  flexibility. Yes, there was one time when I
• 8:43
  answered that question with Fudge.
• 8:46
  I. Love to just have fudge.
• 8:48
  It's Fridays. It was like, there's fudge and
• 8:51
  it's Friday and we're at the end of our week and I would get to
• 8:54
  collect all of the stories that had happened but also distribute
• 8:58
  fudge. But that's a great example
• 9:00
  because it can be simple. The other question I really like
• 9:02
  what obstacles can I remove? And as a servant leader, you
• 9:06
  want to focus on what are those things that I can get out of the
• 9:10
  way of my team so they can do their best work?
• 9:13
  Yeah, and I think one of the most the trickiest ones.
• 9:15
  Sometimes the answer is something you're doing,
• 9:18
  recognizing when it might be a process or a request or
• 9:23
  something that the team has grown out of that they don't
• 9:25
  need any more, and either recognizing that or being open
• 9:28
  enough to to hear it. Being open enough to hear it.
• 9:31
  That's a really excellent point. Another good question.
• 9:34
  I really like how do I create clarity, trust, and
• 9:36
  accountability? You can't just take everything
• 9:39
  on from everyone. There still needs to be
• 9:41
  accountability on the team. So how can you create that?
• 9:44
  And how can you empower your team to go and execute on the
• 9:48
  things that they need to? And you're there to help block
• 9:51
  barriers, you're there to coach, but you're not giving them the
• 9:55
  answers. Yeah, and honestly, who wants
• 9:58
  that out of a job? Do you want some pride in the
• 10:01
  job you're doing? You want ownership?
• 10:02
  So if you're the kind of person that's gravitating towards
• 10:05
  servant leadership cuz you're like I wanna do for other
• 10:07
  people, just remember part of doing for them is giving them
• 10:10
  the space to do their work and assign them things they can
• 10:14
  totally own. 100% servant leadership is very different
• 10:18
  from just avoiding hard conversations or doing the job
• 10:22
  for them, saying yes to everything or absorbing other
• 10:25
  people's stress. That's not what we're talking
• 10:27
  about here. And I think if you're early on
• 10:29
  in your career journey and you want to be a servant leader and
• 10:32
  you're thinking through this, some of those things can
• 10:34
  naturally just happen because you want to be a good leader.
• 10:37
  You want people to like you, you want your team to feel great.
• 10:40
  But it's important to take a step back, ask some of those
• 10:42
  questions and make sure you're separating a serving and
• 10:45
  leading. Yeah.
• 10:49
  So the best servant leaders really create more leaders, and
• 10:53
  the goal is not to be indispensable.
• 10:55
  I think that's another thing about leadership that's really
• 10:57
  hard. If your team is doing amazing
• 10:59
  work, you don't necessarily get the credit for it.
• 11:02
  You're spotlighting your team members.
• 11:04
  It's not as visible as recognition when you were maybe
• 11:08
  an individual contributor, and that can be a hard adjustment.
• 11:11
  Yeah, one of the best things, I think about it all the time.
• 11:14
  I had a team of three and for a year, two of them won awards.
• 11:18
  I didn't win any awards that year, but you know what?
• 11:20
  Two of the three people on my team did and I was like, this is
• 11:23
  a secret win for me. Obviously we celebrated them.
• 11:25
  It's a win for them, but I was like secret win for me.
• 11:28
  Yes, 100%. It's very, very natural.
• 11:31
  That's what it means to be a servant leader.
• 11:33
  It means you're doing the right thing and you're doing a good
• 11:34
  job. I have a question, Lauren, since
• 11:36
  we're talking about how amazing servant leaders are, how do you
• 11:40
  determine that you are about to join the team of a servant
• 11:43
  leader or that your boss might be 1?
• 11:45
  What's your tells of that? Someone might be a servant
• 11:48
  leader? That was an excellent question
• 11:52
  for me. It would be they ask about me as
• 11:54
  a human. They want to get to know me
• 11:57
  versus just like what I've done in my job and every servant
• 12:01
  leader I've ever had talked about me and my career and what
• 12:04
  I wanted and what I've learned. They were trying to understand
• 12:06
  me as a human. And they were the ones that
• 12:10
  helped me in my career and helped me get these roles that I
• 12:12
  never would have thought of. And it was something that when I
• 12:16
  was early in my career in those one on ones, I was like, this is
• 12:19
  kind of weird. Why aren't we talking about my
• 12:21
  projects? But.
• 12:22
  I am with you. That freaks me out so much.
• 12:24
  I still like second guess it, but you're absolutely right.
• 12:27
  It's like a perfect tell that someone actually cares about
• 12:30
  you. I think we're sort of trained to
• 12:32
  iguana. OK, let me prove myself or let's
• 12:35
  talk about all this business stuff.
• 12:37
  But you're right, that's a huge tell is when someone cares just
• 12:40
  about what's going on in your week.
• 12:42
  And as a manager, when you have that information, it actually
• 12:46
  helps so much. To understand.
• 12:48
  Where the person's coming from and what is going to really
• 12:51
  light them up. Do you have a different tell
• 12:53
  Cara? For me, whenever I hear someone
• 12:57
  telling a story of a project and they can reference the
• 13:01
  individual contributions of multiple people by name, just as
• 13:05
  soon as someone is sharing credit and really highlighting
• 13:08
  not just thanks to the whole team, but specifics and
• 13:12
  sometimes specific roadblocks. Like someone struggles with this
• 13:15
  and they put in this amount of hours and they got it solved.
• 13:19
  And whenever I hear someone tell a story like that, I I think
• 13:21
  that is a that's a servant leader who really recognizes the
• 13:24
  contribution of each individual. And then another one, just a
• 13:27
  trait, is often patience. When someone is that's a.
• 13:31
  Good one. Willing to just take another
• 13:34
  couple of beats on something that to me also indicates that
• 13:37
  the person is not necessarily, but often is a servant leader.
• 13:42
  Patience is something I definitely had to learn and it
• 13:46
  has been a journey for me, but it's definitely super impactful,
• 13:50
  yeah. It's a really tough one.
• 13:51
  I just was at an event this morning and everyone was talking
• 13:54
  about that drive for the results and how we can all just be so
• 13:58
  focused on that and miss out on nuance and build really genuine
• 14:03
  authenticity that comes when you're focused on one-on-one
• 14:07
  relationships. The person was talking about
• 14:09
  growing her small business and how actually understanding one
• 14:12
  client helped translate across multiple clients, but had to
• 14:16
  happen on that one client by one client moment.
• 14:19
  And that's slow. That feels slow when you're
• 14:21
  trying to grow. But it's a learning experience
• 14:23
  and everything's a journey, right Cara?
• 14:25
  Totally, that seems to be the theme of Leadership month if you
• 14:30
  are on a leadership journey. For your whole life, yeah.
• 14:35
  So to wrap it up, servant leadership is really about
• 14:37
  leading in a way that helps people thrive, help teams
• 14:40
  perform, help them grow, while still setting boundaries.
• 14:44
  You do not have to choose between being supportive and
• 14:46
  being ambitious. Servant leadership is really
• 14:49
  about empowering others, and the best leaders really make space
• 14:53
  for others to grow while owning their own value as well.
• 14:57
  That's a wrap. Thanks for joining us on
• 14:59
  Unspoken Career Truths. Don't forget to follow us on
• 15:02
  Spotify and Instagram. And if you like this episode,
• 15:05
  share it with a friend.