Effective servant leadership requires leaders to do the following:
- Always think of those you lead first before yourself.
- Remind yourself that any leadership position is a gift and a privilege.
- Reject chasing material possessions ahead of resources your team needs to succeed.
- Do not care about accolades for yourself but do provide accolades to those you serve first.
- Ensure that members of the organization have the tools and resources to be successful.
I will expand on each of these:
Always think of those you lead first before yourself.
Investopedia defines servant leadership as someone who “intends to promote the well-being of those around him or her. Servant leadership involves the leader demonstrating the characteristics of empathy, listening, stewardship, and commitment to personal growth toward others.” I once received a note from a leader who had attended a Leadership Development Institute (LDI), a quarterly one-day leadership development program at the hospital where I served as the president and CEO, that read, “Thank you for speaking at our LDI and being our leader! Your support of our leadership team to be the very best they can be is evident by the enthusiasm and passion you bring to sessions.”
Sometimes all it takes to be an effective servant leader is to provide genuine, consistent, and enthusiastic support for those you lead. A leadership program often requires a significant investment of time and resources, which is a true labor of love. A servant leader is willing to sacrifice time and their own personal resources to support the development and success of those they lead. Those kinds of gestures and efforts can go a long way.
Reject chasing material possessions.
Chasing money can be a temptation for any leader. Leaders’ compensation often is based on a host of incentives, and that can lead to them chasing the results that trigger those incentives rather than the resources that your team actually needs to be successful. One that always drove me crazy is that I often was under pressure to generate a budgeted operating margin, and it was difficult sometimes to keep that from overshadowing other considerations in decisions. Keeping my focus from tightening too much on that looming metric was tough.
I will give you an example. There was a costly clinical service called endocrinology because of the general shortage of endocrinologists. They received a high salary because there was such high demand for them in the healthcare community, especially from primary care physicians. They also perform an essential service: treating people with diabetes and insulin issues. However, they do not generate a lot of revenue. Their work largely revolves around office visits and testing, not a hospital’s budget’s most lucrative revenue components. Ultimately, the practice cost the hospital a significant amount of money.
I found myself wondering about the wisdom of keeping the endocrinology practice onboard because of the cost to our operation. That operating margin was where my eyes went. However, my gaze did not stay there. Some passionate physicians and staff convinced me of the incredible service to the community that the practice served and of the crucial part it played in our overall healthcare system. Without it, they would not have anywhere to refer their patients with diabetes. They made it clear that keeping and supporting the practice was simply the right thing to do, regardless of its impact on the operating margin and the executive team’s incentives. That practice represented why we were in business in the first place.
I resisted simply because I fell into the money trap. However, ultimately, I was talked into a model that worked. We decided that we would be willing to absorb some financial losses because we listened to our primary care physicians and the concerns of our patients in the community and recognized that we should not eliminate a program that served the chronic care needs of the community.
Do not care about accolades for yourself but do provide accolades to those you serve first.
This is an easy thing to do unless you have insecurities that provide roadblocks. I loved being able to publicly recognize with accolades the people that I served, and I was never comfortable receiving any accolades before my team did. Part of this was recognizing that any accolades for me belonged to the entire team. It was important for me that they were recognized first because they did the work, and I wanted to make sure they knew they were appreciated.
Being the leader of a successful team should be all that you need. The way I saw it is that I just tried to provide the leadership, but they really did the hard work.
Some leaders care more about accolades for themselves because they are always looking to “move up.” Their current position is just the latest stepping stone to bigger and better positions. Their decisions are all driven by that short-term goal of strengthening their resumé and their bona fides to capture new accolades and use them to leap to something new and more prominent. That might work for them in the short term, but in the long term, it is an attitude that will come back to bite them. Their reputation for having a self-serving, self-centered attitude will grow and attach to them, following them everywhere they go.
Failing to recognize those you serve for the work that they do is a reliable way to torpedo your career.
Ensure that all members of the organization have the tools and resources to be successful.
They will appreciate this more than you can ever imagine, and it also is an absolute, nonnegotiable requirement of a servant leader. Your job is to help them do their jobs to the best of their abilities, and they cannot do that if you do not provide the necessary support. It can be too easy to lose sight of that. That means open, steady conversation to make sure you know what they need and do not fall out of touch. Their needs are always changing, which means you have to be consistently aware of them. You have to ask them questions and seek them out, not just passively expect the answers to come to you. Sometimes, they may not realize where they are missing the tools and resources they need. You can help them identify those needs with your involvement and attention.
It may seem like common sense, but leaders often forget that they will not be successful if their teams are not successful. It is the definition of a win-win for everyone.
