Here are four steps to becoming a better servant leader: Encourage diversity of thought, Create a culture of trust, Have an altruistic mindset, Encourage leadership in others. Diversity encompasses a myriad of traits. It is about more than gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, political and religious beliefs. Having a diverse team fosters an environment that people want to be a part of.
According to a study by Glassdoor, 67% of active job seekers said that a diverse workplace is important to them when considering job offers, and 57% of employers want to make a greater effort to prioritise diversity. Trust is one of the hardest things to regain once it is broken. How can a leader create a culture of trust? By communicating clearly to everyone in the company what the mission is, what values they are expected to live by and what the overall vision is. A global Gallup database reveals that only one in three employees agree that they trust the leadership of their organisation.
Let's take a closer look at what servant leadership is and the 10 characteristics that define a servant leader. What does it take to be a servant leader? Servant leaders share a common set of core characteristics. Follow these 10 principles to put servant leadership into practice with your team. Empathy has a lot to do with it, but when it comes to servant leadership, it basically comes down to knowing your team.
Find out what motivates them and know their strengths and weaknesses. In this way, you can let your team members shine and perhaps even help them turn their weaknesses into strengths. Servant leaders use persuasion to build consensus and get buy-in from their team. In this way, everyone feels they have a stake in the team's success.
Servant leadership is the opposite of power leadership, where leaders use authority for personal ends and to manipulate others. Servant leaders put service before leadership because they focus on the needs of others, as Greenleaf wrote. Service is an inherent desire in these people, and leadership is a choice that comes later. Outwardly focused, servant-leaders nevertheless grow in self-awareness by seeing how others react to their behavior, and then modify their behavior to benefit others more.
I believe that to be a good leader, you have to be a great listener. I also agree with the other 9 keys to Servant Leadership. Everyone has their strengths and it is a good leader who can bring a team together to achieve a GOAL. I have been in management positions before, but my lifelong leadership accomplishments were learned on the football field, four years as a college player, and 15 as a HS assistant coach.
I had the pleasure of coaching my son who went on to be a successful NFL player. You will serve people best when you are committed to listening to them carefully and understanding what they are saying. To improve your listening skills, give people your full attention, watch their body language, avoid interrupting them before they finish speaking, and give feedback on what they say. Self-awareness is the ability to look at yourself, think deeply about your emotions and behavior, and consider how they affect the people around you and align with your values.
Servant leaders use persuasion - rather than their authority - to encourage people to act. They also try to build consensus in groups, so that everyone supports decisions. Foresight is when you can predict what is likely to happen in the future by learning from past experience, identifying what is happening now and understanding the consequences of decisions. Management is about taking responsibility for the actions and performance of your team and being accountable for the role team members play in your organization.
Individual leaders can adopt a servant-leadership approach, but unless they are able to function consistently within an organization that is aligned with this approach, their success will be limited. A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of individuals and the communities to which they belong. Making the growth and development of others a central pillar of leadership is what servant leadership is all about. An effective servant-leader will be able to identify these issues and provide a solution to them by creating a positive and supportive work environment, and by ensuring that each person is valued and given the tools they need to succeed.
Effective servant leaders often do this by paying attention to the learning needs of each individual and providing or supporting appropriate professional development opportunities. The servant leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of other people and the communities to which they belong. Leaders in organizations of all types and sizes of companies often think carefully about the principles that guide their work. If there is a mismatch between their leadership ethos and the ethos of the organization they work for, their ability to be effective as a servant leader can be greatly diminished.
Ultimately, servant leaders must adopt this approach because they believe it is the right one, not because they have to or because they are told to. Servant leaders seek to identify ways to build social and task-oriented communities among those who work in their organisation. Servant leaders understand and appreciate that each individual on the team brings his or her own knowledge, experience and skills, and that the combined team will be better equipped to make a decision than the isolated leader. Cultivating servant leadership in your company will also often require a major change in individual employee attitudes and in the overall company culture.
Servant leadership does not eliminate the idea of a boss, but it does change the way the hierarchy works, explains Kent M.
