Something fascinating has happened in the labor force over the last year with COVID.
In the past, people used to grin and bear it, but with COVID a switch flicked and workers are no longer putting up with nonsense.
Retaining people is becoming increasingly difficult; in fact, it’s been coined “The Great Resignation.”
There are many reasons why someone might leave what seems to be a perfectly good job: perhaps out of fear for personal safety, difficulty finding a good work-life balance, or receiving what is perceived to be unfair treatment at work. These people aren’t ungrateful, or picky, they’re simply putting themselves first for once.
Employers who beat them to the punch by taking steps to create environments where associates feel safe, valued, and more empowered stand a much greater chance of keeping these employees.
The task is for companies to create a desirable workplace that provides this environment. Doing so doesn’t just ensure your people are happy to come to work, it actually creates an environment where your team unleashes their discretionary resources. This is the key to growth.
Why Discretionary Resources Matter
I’ve always said that what you pay people for is a part of their brain, a little of their heart, and their fingertips on the keyboard. That’s what you pay people for; everything else they give you. They actually volunteer it.
So yes, you pay your people, but they are also volunteers. They volunteer their commitment, their passion, their energy, all their brain capacity, their creativity, and their heart. A huge component of what they offer can only be volunteered – you cannot pay them for it, or compel them to bring it; they only choose selectively who they will bring it to and how they will actually bring it.
So how do you create an environment where people can and will unleash these gifts voluntarily?
The answer is servant leadership.
What is servant leadership?
Servant leadership is the character-driven practice of serving and sacrificing for the legitimate needs of those you lead, so that they willingly work towards your shared goal or objective. In their willingness, they give their energy, time, passion, ideas, and creativity.
When it comes down to it, servant leadership is a state of mind. It requires seeing your role and place in the organisation’s structure as different.
There are times where you have to be directive – this is not a replacement for other leadership approaches. Servant leadership primarily comes into play regarding how you think about your relationship to other people.
1. Consistent intention: it’s not about you.
Servant leadership begins with the leader’s clear and specific intention to lead with character. Despite the fact that many feel powerless to lead differently, you have a choice. The first choice is to make your leadership not about you, but about those you’re leading.
Once you choose to make your leadership about others and about the cause of the team or organization, you can take the next step to choose to love those you lead.
2. You have to approach your people with love
Wait! Did I just say, “love those you lead?” Yes, I did, and love has everything to do with leadership.
Not romantic love, or even the love you feel towards family or dear friends.
Vince Lombardi said it best: “I don’t necessarily have to like my players and associates, but as the leader I must love them. Love is loyalty, love is teamwork, love respects the dignity of the individual. This is the strength of an organization.”
This is the love of commitment. The love of behaving with character even when you’re not feeling so loving or the people you lead aren’t so lovable.
3. Serve their legitimate needs
From the deep commitment, or dare I say, love, comes the next step in Servant Leadership. The choice to ask the question every day: “What are the legitimate needs of those I’m leading?”
And then comes the courage to serve (and sacrifice for) those needs.
We’ll dive deeper into this in upcoming posts, but suffice it to say, these are extraordinary seeds that lead to an extraordinary harvest of influence.
4. Have influence
Influence in the context of servant leadership is when people willing work and follow in the direction you’re leading. Or, as Jim Collins said, “…when people follow you even when they have the option not to.”
Ask yourself right now, if your people had the option to follow someone else, without any ramifications to them, would they?
This leads to the last part of servant leadership.
5. Leadership
You’ve made choices of character, love, and service. You’re truly followable. Now you can point the way. Set the direction, vision, and mission.
Leadership was once described to me as getting things done with and through people.
In the landscape of getting things done, there are many competent, capable people. A person’s ability to manage themselves, their knowledge, their resources, and the skills of those that report to them make them capable, but it doesn’t make them followable. How you lead is what makes you followable or not.
We live in a world of tremendous change. The U.S. Army coined the acronym VUCA that stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. They did this to describe the changing landscape of military operations. Leaders in organizations face a similar, challenging, dynamic landscape.
To successfully lead in this world, a leader can’t just be capable – she MUST be followable. Followability is the result of the person you are and the influence and impact you have on those who come in contact with you. This is a result of character, or in other words, having the courage and moral maturity to do the right thing even if it costs you something.
Servant Leadership is the only proven leadership framework that creates unparalleled followability in a leader. Simply put, Servant Leadership is doing the right thing. It is character in action.