The Need for Servant Leadership in an Organization

 

Servant Leadership is a trait in Leaders by their Organizations in the new age of Digital Transformation and Agile. In Servant Leadership the leader serves the team instead of being served by people. The leader in Servant Leadership is Servant first and then a Leader.

• Serving is Servant Leadership goal
• The leader supports and empowers the team to succeed

A Servant Leader is one who:

• Resolves conflicts
• Is self-aware
• Acts as a coach
• Is humble
• Can be trusted
• Has integrity
• Is collaborative
• Is completely result-oriented
• Has intellectual authority
• Has a foresight
• Does not abuse authority
• Is a good listener

Servant Leadership is all about achieving the desired results by empowering people. A deep sense of community and belonging is developed in the workplace when the team members see that the leader is helping them. Team members tend to become more responsible and accountable once they see this.

• Helping others thrive is the ultimate goal of Servant Leaders.
• Servant Leaders happily keep their teams before themselves.
• They care about their people much more than what they do for themselves.
• Servant Leaders understand the fact that the best results are produced by building up people and not by top-down delegation.
• They understand that people require autonomy and psychological safety to be innovative and creative.

As Patrick Lencioni describes, Humility is one of the 3 main pillars for ideal team players. Humility is “the feeling or attitude that you have no special importance that makes you better than others”.

Behaviours of Humble Servant Leaders:

• They are observant
• They listen deeply
• Open towards new ideas from team members
• They appreciate the contributions and the strengths of the team members
• To overcome limitations and challenges, they seek help from their team members
• Coachable coaches i.e. they coach themselves as well as they coach others at the same time

Arrogance is Humanity’s foe.

In Robert Hogan’s terms, arrogance makes “the most destructive leaders” and “is the critical factor driving flawed decision-makers” who “create the slippery slope to organizational failure”.

Humanity in Practice

A study shows that company which are successful are successful because of their CEO’s humility. Such CEO’s share two sets of qualities which are opposite to each other. These are:

• On one hand, they are Shy, quiet, reserved and self-effacing while being modest and admitting their mistakes.
• On the con contrary, they are fiercely ambitious, tenacious and tremendously competitive with strong confidence and self-esteem

Benefits of a Servant Leader:

• Staff engagement is increased
• Improved empathy
• It increases the inclusiveness which serves as the basic foundation of trust
• The help in deepening awareness
• They help in strengthening the bond between the peers which works as the basis of well being

The above article has been sourced from GAVS Technologies, which provides Digital Transformation Solutions and Services and AIOps Digital Transformation Solutions in the USA.