Let’s say a team member makes a mistake, offends a customer, and doesn’t take any steps to make it right. As a result of the employee’s poor service, the customer, previously a loyal rewards member, vows never to darken the door of your car wash again.
There’s not a manager in the world who wouldn’t want to fire the employee, or at the very least issue a long lecture about customer service and the power of an apology. But with the rise of servant leadership principles in today’s business climate, more managers are learning that there are ways to turn an ugly situation into an opportunity to enhance an employee’s buy-in and strengthen a customer’s loyalty.
Let’s say, then, that instead of raking the employee over the coals — or giving him his walking papers — you sit your employee down and review what happened, then pull out a piece of paper and help the employee write an apology. Together, you and your team member deliver the apology to the customer, and offer compensation. In all likelihood, the customer will change their mind about using a different wash.
And even more likely, the team member will go forth with more motivation and empowerment to enhance his own job performance.Robert K. Greenleaf originally published his highly influential essay, “The Servant as Leader,” in 1970, after studying leadership at AT&T over the course of forty years, but only in the past few years has the servant leadership movement come into its own.
Some high-performing servant-led companies are Chick-fil-A, Home Depot, UPS, Whole Foods, and Starbucks. Of Fortune magazine’s “Top Companies to Work For,” the majority report high employee trust and engagement and low turnover — all of which result from tactics used by servant leaders.
At its core, servant leadership is about decentralizing organizational structures and focusing on employee empowerment and innovation, which means upper management shares key decisions with team members. The primary characteristics of a servant leader are close listening and receptivity to all employees and stakeholders, shared and transparent decision-making, empathetic and open-minded treatment of all customers and colleagues.
Servant leaders, too, are holistically minded. They encourage learning inside and outside of the office, and they offer constructive feedback to both high- and underperforming team members on a consistent basis. Servant leaders are committed to the development and growth of their employees, and they are committed to coaching, not controlling. They are self-aware and considerate of how their behavior and leadership style affects others.
Most importantly, they are radical listeners, which means that they listen to everyone, all the time, and turn off their internal responses systems while they do so.
Once upon a time, the shared assumption among business leaders was that the only driver of leadership was the bottom line, and team members were expected to either hit their numbers or take a hike. The stakeholders and shareholders were the only important voices, and employees were expected to fall in line, and do so quietly. This command-and-control style is steadily giving way to servant leadership’s more compassionate and holistic style.
Cheryl Bachelder, former CEO of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen and a well-known servant leader, says that there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what servant leadership is, and what it’s not.
“I’ve come to think that our thinking around the word humility trips us up,” she said in an interview at the Servant Leadership Summit. “Most of us think a humble leader is soft spoken with no opinion or ambition, someone who just goes around giving everyone hugs. That’s not the definition of servant leadership.”
Are You a Servant Leader?
In his seminal essay, Greenleaf offered a way to assess servant leadership. He wrote, “The best test [of a servant-leader], and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived?”
Bachelder has her own, simplified version of a “best test” of servant leadership. She asks herself: Are people better because of my leadership? If not, what’s in the way?
But that’s easier said than done. “If I’m in a room with angry franchisees,” she said, “my first response is to get angry right back. But I catch myself and ask them to tell me more, and ask them how can we do a better job. Listen first, seek to understand, before reacting.”
Five years after deciding to focus on the franchisees, Popeyes’ average restaurant sales increased from $1 million per restaurant to $1.2 million per restaurant, up 20 percent, said Bachelder on her blog.
Servant leadership turns old-school assumptions on their heads. “Servant leadership seems counterintuitive, but really it’s not. When you care about people and meet their needs, they show up with their best selves,” said leadership expert Marcel Schwantes.
Meeting The Needs of Millenials
With the Millennial generation positioned to make up 50 percent of the workforce by the year 2020, business leaders are laying the foundations now for leadership they must promise for tomorrow. And many are finding that servant leadership is the best fit.
The millennial generation is known for being adaptable, collaborative, innovative, and diverse, with a strong sense of ethical engagement with social and environmental issues and a low tolerance for grunt work. They also crave feedback, both for a job well done and one with room for improvement. All of this means they’re receptive to a model of leadership that prioritizes listening, collaborative decision-making, and constructive feedback.
“Servant leaders put the focus on the employee,” Bachelder said in an interview with 15Five, a performance management consultancy. “The best leaders put the spotlight on their employees and take it off of themselves. How they do that is by focusing on growing and developing their people.”
Servant leaders not only treat mistakes as learning opportunities, but they also give their employees a voice. Unlike top-down hierarchies, wherein a leader pushes employees to carry out his vision, a servant leadership culture entices team members to express themselves as co-creators of a shared vision.
Listen First — and Second, and Third
The corollary to giving team members a voice is the promise to listen. As Greenleaf wrote in his essay, “Only a true natural servant automatically responds to any problem by listening first.”
Active listening isn’t just about nodding along — it’s about silencing all internal judge and jury, which doesn’t come naturally.
In their Harvard Business Review article, “Leadership is a Conversation,” experts Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind wrote, “Leaders who take organizational conversation seriously know when to stop talking and start listening. Few behaviors enhance conversational intimacy as much as attending to what people say. True attentiveness signals respect for people of all ranks and roles, a sense of curiosity, and even a degree of humility.”
Schwantes took this notion of radical listening even further. “If you’re not parking your thoughts, you’re not listening. You have to have no need for rebuttal. If you are just waiting for the other person to stop talking to chime in with what you think is a better idea, that’s not listening. That may not even be hearing.”
