Servant Leadership: The Secret to a Successful Team (Part 1)

Last week, I was meeting with a friend and colleague, Ken Cavellier. Ken’s been a successful salesman and sales leader for most of his career and, as we were catching up, he turned to me and said, “You know the secret to leading a successful team? It’s understanding that you work for them.”

Without using the exact words, Ken encapsulated what I understand the core concept of servant leadership to be – that, as leaders, we are there to serve. Put another way, we need to do everything in our power to make our teams successful. Sometimes that means overcoming obstacles, at other times it translates to holding people accountable but it always involves communicating and keeping everyone informed to the greatest degree that you can. I have tried to follow the concepts of a servant leader for most of my career and I thought it might be interesting to share how I started down this path in following the principles of servant leadership.

My first official job managing people came about when I was 19 years old and was made a shift supervisor at a restaurant chain. It was my first – though not the last – time where I had to transition from being a co-worker to being the person in charge. This can be an awkward shift to make and I’ve seen people stumble with this… myself included. However, I think I actually handled this first experience fairly well and, looking back, I can see how it set me on the path towards being a servant leader.

After being promoted, I remember thinking about what I would do differently as a supervisor. I would have different responsibilities to be sure, but I also felt a strong desire to convey to my co-workers that I was still me and that I didn’t see myself as being more important now. I just was doing different things… including giving them direction and feedback.

One thing that I believe helped me figure all this out was first putting myself in my friends’ shoes. How would I feel if one of them were my boss now? How would I want them to act? What might they do could frustrate me? As a result of that pondering, I started doing several things right from the start:

• Be Humble: I quickly realized that just because I had a “title” that didn’t magically grant me extra knowledge or abilities. Most of the people there knew their jobs better than I did so the best thing I could do was to trust that they knew how to do their work and not presume I could do it better
• Bring Perspective: One of my new duties, however, was to pay more attention to the things around me and to figure out if anything needed to happen as a result. So I needed to pay more attention, ask questions where appropriate and really think about what I was seeing and what it meant
• Be Knowledgeable: Another part of my new role would mean that I sometimes needed to pitch in which, in turn, meant I needed to be familiar enough with everyone’s jobs that I could help and not be a hindrance. They were still the expert, but I needed to know enough to both help when needed but also to be able to ask the right questions
• Ask for Guidance: When I would pitch in, usually my first question was “what do you need me to do” as my people were the ones with the most familiarity and could usually best assess the situation (though I could & would step in as needed). Still, most of the time, I tried to “respect the expert” and had no problem letting them teach and direct me
• Keep a Bit of Distance: This one was actually kind of hard but I felt it was important that I take a step back from my friends. Not to be cold but I needed to convey, if only subtly, that things were different when I was in charge of a shift. I still knew and liked these people but I needed them to understand that I had the responsibility to make sure things ran smoothly and I figured that I wasn’t going to be as effective if I behaved exactly as I did when I was a co-worker
• It’s On Me: Ultimately, I always believed that I was the one who was accountable. If we were successful, then the credit goes to the team; if we failed, then the blame was mine. That may sound a bit like new-age “make everyone feel good” talk but I didn’t see it that way. It goes back to the concept that it’s our jobs as leaders to do everything we can to help our teams succeed. If we do our jobs well, then they shine and we accomplish our mission. If they cannot be effective, then I failed to enable their success

There’s a lot more to servant leadership that I want to cover so expect a Part 2 in the not-too-distant future. Still, my goal with this post was to share with you my own journey to being a believer in the power of servant leadership. If this speaks to you, then I encourage you to start putting some of the concepts into regular practice… and then see what happens.

Know that I’m pulling for you!