Servant leadership

https://effyai.substack.com/p/all-you-need-to-become-a-servant

by makhovskyi • 3 years ago

61 102 3 years ago

effyai.substack.com

nvahalik3• 3 years ago

I've been reading _The Servant_ among a number of other books recently as part of a "management focus" in my role and in many ways so many of these books overlap on many of the hot-areas of leadership.

One of the big takeaways is that most of this information isn't just professional, you can (and, IMO, should use it personally).

How you handle feedback and responsibility with your direct-reports is going (most of the time) how you do/ought to do things with your own children. And with those you worship with. Valuing personal relationships isn't just for the home and friends: it's important in a business context. Taking ownership/responsibility is something you must do personally and also across all aspects of your life.

The beautiful thing is that so many of us get so stressed out because we have so much to do. However, being a good servant leader—addressing what people need rather than what they want—will often mean that you pass on things to others. This makes them feel more valuable and also means less stress for you. I did this yesterday with my son and the trash. He's got an Apple Watch and an alarm clock. So I told him: you're responsible for the trash. I'm not going to remind you about it, but if you don't do it, you sure as heck will hear about it. He relishes the idea of me not reminding him, and even though it's just taking out the trash—he likes the idea of "owning" it. (Not to mind the fact that he'll be driving in a few years... God help me!)

avgcorrection8• 3 years ago

This is a one-weird-trick that management tries to use on underlings: they talk about motivating a sense of ownership to things. But this doesn't jive with the fact that employees are hirelings and thus have no ownership to anything in the company. But it would be convenient for management to push more of the responsibilities of ownership on the underlings, even though they will get none of the benefits.

This of course assumes that the employee has no stocks in the company... but it would have to be more than just a symbolic amount in order to count.

lazide15• 3 years ago

This attitude is the path to hell. If you own nothing (not even your own attitude, or the quality of what you are doing), then you’re a perpetual victim, always at the whims of others, and always unable to change anything that matters for you.

If you take ownership of you and what you do, and how it impacts others and can produce value, you can make choices. To say no. To say yes. To push for recognition, and leave if you don’t get it.

Owning what you’re working on (and refusing to work for someone who won’t let you) is usually a key part of mental health and actual real world success for everyone.

mkreis2• 3 years ago

100%. It's a cheap motivational "hack" to call it ownership, but it's just responsibility without little power to make necessary changes. A recipe for frustration. In the example with the trash above, can the boy now choose to get a bigger trash can, so that he does not have to carry it outside so often? ;-)

tstrimple• 3 years ago

I'm confused as to what you think work is. Managers are just hirelings as well. They have different responsibilities, which includes effective delegation. If you think "ownership" of a process is just a trick to get employees to work, what's the alternative here? You're responsible for the outcomes of this process but don't own it and thus can't guide the direction of it? That sounds patently terrible.

The benefit of owning a process is the control you have over it. I can't tell you how many times I've heard engineers bitch about the decisions made over their head that they have to conform to. But now engineers apparently are just going to bitch if given control over the process. There's no winning with some of you.

baz00• 3 years ago

Ownership is about mandate and ability to effect change. That doesn’t imply any material benefit other than being paid to do it.

What management roles tend to do is assign ownership without mandate and ability.

fweimer• 3 years ago

Some companies literally assign to you ownership of your upstream contributions, whether you did them on your time or theirs.

But maybe that too is to convey a sense of ownership that isn't actually there.

nvahalik3• 3 years ago

This of course assumes that the employee has no stocks in the company

I'm grateful that I get to work for a company that encourages growth and promotes heavily from the inside. Not all organizations are like this. But Servant leadership and companies growing quickly go hand in hand.

jonfw2• 3 years ago

Managers are underlings in that sense too. They don't own enough stock or have enough influence that they would rationally be thinking of the gains they'd make in their stock.

Managers take ownership because they're looking for their project to succeed, they want to advance their career, etc. and the same applies to "underlings"

potamic• 3 years ago

You may not have ownership of the company but you can have ownership within the scope of your work. For instance, as a developer there are so many areas which involve decision making from code design, testability, reliability, observability, choice of tooling, non-functional roadmap, documentation and onboarding etc. Of course, working within an organizational framework, you may not have infinite degrees of freedom across these, but if you don't have at least a handful of degrees of freedom in what you do, then you depend on somebody to tell you exactly what needs to be done all the time and your work will not be very interesting.

Swizec• 3 years ago

He relishes the idea of me not reminding him, and even though it's just taking out the trash—he likes the idea of "owning" it

Kudos to you.

The worst part of owning chores like trash and dishwasher stuff as a teenager was that inevitably it didn’t matter when I had planned to do the thing. My parents would get on my case about not having done the thing yet. Sometimes literally as I emerged from my room to go do the thing, I would get reminded that I need to do the thing. Thanks mom I know I’m on my way.

Always felt like that robbed me of the opportunity to shine.

What I’ve learned since then is that it’s extremely hard to need something done and rely on others to make it happen. The internal stress of “I could do this in 10min but I gotta let the junior team members spend 2 hours fumbling around so they can learn” … oof.

lazide15• 3 years ago

Yup. Actual good management is hard.

makeitdouble2• 3 years ago

＞ How you handle feedback and responsibility with your direct-reports is going (most of the time) how you do/ought to do things with your own children

Your children don't have the option to show you the finger and move to another family. Nor (hopefuly) are you paying them to be your kids.

I think it fundamentally changes what you should expect from one and not the other, especially regarding responsibilities and ownership. And I'm sure you won't address your son not taking out the trash the same you'd deal with a team member that don't release the features on time.

nvahalik3• 3 years ago

I think it fundamentally changes what you should expect from one and not the other

Not exactly. I want my kids to become great people. I genuinely care about them and their well-being.

This is the same thing with the people that I work with and for. I care about them and want to them to get better.

And I'm sure you won't address your son not taking out the trash the same you'd deal with a team member that don't release the features on time.

Maybe, maybe not. Did they "give the finger" or did something just happen that is a learning experience? If it's a communication problem, these are fundamentally easy to address.

tycho-newman• 3 years ago

This critique of mine is abstract, and maybe even wrong. I feel like this is a way of disguising the reality of power, and how at least in western society, power is really focused on conformity.

The average workplace rehashes the same dramatics as the average sixth grade class cohort. Which makes sense if you consider that education is mostly about learning how to conform, and follow the instructions given to you. Even with servant leadership.

There's very little taught about building solidarity, or altruism, or good-faith debate in a system aimed at producing a national work force instead of global citizens.

What does leadership mean when you are serving a system that relies on making people conform?

Always42• 3 years ago

Surprised to see this on HN.

In my opinion: Servant leadership is underrated. In the long haul at a company it is what is truly needed.

GiorgioG• 3 years ago

It's "underrated" because at most of our employers it doesn't exist. Some might pretend it does, maybe some even believe they're doing it. We all serve the at the alter of next quarterly financial report.

lamroger• 3 years ago

What is it called when people label themselves as something but aren't that thing? People gotta walk the walk

SandersAK• 3 years ago

If you are the majority owner, or stand to profit vastly more than your team from an endeavor, then you are never a servant.

Using terms like "servant" to appear humble, when the equity split is massively lopsided is patronizing at best, and manipulative at worst.

atomicnumber3• 3 years ago

Yeah. At its root, all of this only matters because it makes people feel like they own more of the company than they actually do. People work hard and care when they feel like they own the product of their labor - the actual product, not just cash compensation for rendering their services.

When people feel alienated from the product of their labor, that's what feels demotivating.

So obviously in a capitalist system, the solution is to try to make people feel as much like owners as possible without actually giving them ownership in the only way that actually matters in a capitalist framework - in equity in the company.

ketzo• 3 years ago

Servant leadership is great, but boy, this article is a whole lot of nothing.

"To be a good leader, you need to trust your team and listen to them!" Gee, thanks.

Maybe I'm being overly critical, but there's no insight, no analysis, no practicable takeaways at all; just a bunch of GPT-esque bullet points about how some famous people are kind of nice to their employees sometimes. Feels like crappy content marketing, but there's not even any content being marketed.

fergie3• 3 years ago

Feels like crappy content marketing because it is cfappy content marketing. Sometimes I miss a downvote option on HN.

supportengineer• 3 years ago

I think certain elite users have the down option.

gangstead• 3 years ago

It also has a "Pros and Cons" section but doesn't list any cons. Definitely all fluff no analysis.

stavros2• 3 years ago

Yeah, this is "servant leadership is great. Here are some examples of people who are great servant leaders: X Y Z". Great, thanks, since I don't know any of them personally, I have no use for that.

manicennui• 3 years ago

The "Examples of servant leaders" is where the newsletter lost me. The overall message of the piece is good, but Oprah doesn't focus on money? Come on. She'll push anything for a buck and often exploits people's misery. Maybe she does treat her employees well, but she is a horrible human being.

malthaus• 3 years ago

i'd say i live the principles of servant leadership in my team but would never ever call myself that - part of my definition is also not being a narcissist patting his own back on linkedin while doing it, which almost everyone quoting useless influencers like simon sinek will eventually do. and boy does a name like "servant leadership" promote virtue-signalling.

in the end all those frameworks are simplified platitudes with no real actual guidance. you build your own style with experience, based on your personality, your team, your goals - not some self-help crap.

mouzogu• 3 years ago

this crap is written by management consultants. there is nothing to analyse here.

history shows that if you're true good, someone worse will kill you and take your place. literally or metaphorically.

"servant leadership" like we live in some hippy utopia. gtfo of here.

m348e9123• 3 years ago

I used to be a manager. Not a particularly good one, but I did earn a fair amount of loyalty with the team and they worked pretty hard. I would tell them pretty regularly that I work actually work for them. My job was to provide direction, remove roadblocks, and help them be successful. And I did care about those things, so that went a long way.

switch0073• 3 years ago

I would tell them pretty regularly that I work actually work for them

Were they able to fire you?

m348e9123• 3 years ago

Yes, by quitting.

OnlyMortal• 3 years ago

I had to tell my manager about this and I was a manager at the time.

My role was to be the “office admin/firewall” to the team so they could do their job as efficiently as possible.

It’s a loveless role.

S_Bear• 3 years ago

I agree with a lot of principles of Servant Leadership, but boy is that ever a cringy name. I don't 'serve' anybody. It gives me the icks.

jeffrallen• 3 years ago

It is a name that comes from the New Testament of the Bible. It might be that Christianity is not really your thing, that's ok. As long as you can use it to make life better for your colleagues, call it whatever you need to. :)

thewildginger• 3 years ago

Try "leaders eat last mentality" maybe that gives less of a weird vibe.

keiferski3• 3 years ago

Maybe it's just me, but when people higher up in the hierarchy than me insist on describing themselves with "low status" labels, it really rubs me the wrong way. This is something I think the military does a good job of avoiding via clarity of rank.

And speaking of the military, Jocko Willink's Extreme Ownership idea is a similar concept to "servant leadership" without the cognitive dissonance. The basic concept being: the leader takes responsibility for everything that goes wrong, full stop.

blitz_skull4• 3 years ago

I think the idea here is that as a leader your primary directive is “serving” those you lead.

As Jocko puts it, when the team wins, the people win too, so your job as a leader is to help them understand the why.

keiferski3• 3 years ago

I get the idea, my problem is that in actuality, the leader is not serving the team. He is leading it and when a hard decision has to be made, the leader is taking it whether the team likes it or not. This isn’t the position of a servant. It’s a fake masking of the real power dynamics at play.

I get the same vibe from “flat” management structures. People can claim that there is no superiority in the org chart and that everyone is equal, but in reality it never works this way.

rqtwteye• 3 years ago

“Maybe it's just me, but when people higher up in the hierarchy than me insist on describing themselves with "low status" labels, it really rubs me the wrong way.”

Totally agree. Reminds me of a lot of articles some years ago where some millionaires called themselves “minimalist” because they had given up their kitchens and other things and eating at restaurants all the time.

wintogreen74• 3 years ago

> Managers who believe in servant leadership prioritize the well-being of their team instead of focusing on their objectives.

This is not really true and totally impossible when presented as simplistic competing approaches. What it really means is look for the compatible path in service of both, let the action plans bubble up vs dictate down, and own & share in the impact (and shit work) when corporate objectives trump personal and team objectives (it's gonna happen). In other words, the leader is the ocean, not the boat.

SpaceL10n• 3 years ago

I once was rejected from a leadership position at a very large company for mentioning that my management style reflected servant leadership. They actually called it out to me during one of our interview meetings as a negative and a primary reason for them to not proceed with my application. I did not expect them to see servant leadership as a negative! I guess they thought it meant I would be a doormat, and unable to effect change.

jack_riminton• 3 years ago

A whole article on servant leadership without any mention of it's origin (The Military) is just bizarre

but Oprah?! the person who just pledged $20m of her own money to help Hawaii (turns out it was $20m from the general public)

I'm not sure I'd recommend a book but if I had to you couldn't go wrong with this: https://shop.sandhursttrust.org/products/book-serve-to-lead?...

But ultimately it's not about book learning, it's living by example, "having your compass point true north" as my Commanding Officer at Old College, Sandhurst would say. Or another of his favourites "Do not what you want to, but what you ought to"

peterxpark• 3 years ago

I would recommend Turn the Ship Around! by David Marquet, former submarine captain who effected a significant turnaround on their nuclear submarine. He empowered his chiefs to take more ownership and responsibility and the rest of the crew. I think it reflects more realistically how things go and I really appreciate his side comments at getting pissed off at subordinates and the allure of being the "captain in charge giving orders". He also mentions the need for technical competence and also clear direction from leadership for this to work.

blitz_skull4• 3 years ago

I’ll keep banging the gong—Jocko Willink is a treasure trove of knowledge when it comes to leadership. Servant leadership is really just “good” leadership.

adolph• 3 years ago

The challenge with "Servant Leadership," like many popular things, is that once it becomes a buzzword objective for "good", it becomes a mask for people who wish for leadership. As a name for a set of particular mindset driven behaviors of leaders, it is great. Performative mimicry of those behaviors without the associated change in mindset is similar to a cargo cult[2], unmoored from the producing virtue it becomes a source of cognitive dissonance.

Mindset: "We define mindsets as core beliefs or assumptions that we have about a domain or category of things, that orient us to a particular set of expectations, explanations and goals." --Dr. Alia Crum [0]

0. https://hubermanlab.com/dr-alia-crum-science-of-mindsets-for...

Virtue: "Stable dispositions to perform socially desirable actions in a manner that is sincerely motivated by shared values." --Edward Slingerland from "Trying Not To Try" [1]

1. https://www.amazon.com/Trying-Not-Try-Science-Spontaneity/dp...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

dsr_• 3 years ago

The term is derived from American evangelical Christians of the late 20th century, and will always be tainted by them.

Even if there's something good to say about de-religionized practices, right now it is a likely indicator that the person advocating it is a proselytizing Christian.

1MachineElf• 3 years ago

I was very fortunate to serve a servant leader at my previous job. It was a great finale to a decade-long streak of very good bosses through my career. I've now settled into a place where my supervisor is unstable, threatening, and scatterbrained. Obviously he has issues, and I hope those get resolved in a constructive way. Learning to survive under this type of leadership is my big challenge.

bern4444• 3 years ago

One quality I have found that works well for me (but can be hard especially in the moment) is to respond with compassion.

Someone is annoyed at work and an argument is getting heated? Try responding with compassion to deescalate and prod a little to see what could be behind that raised emotion.

Its hard - you have to actively moderate your own emotional state and avoid being swept up by others'. When I can manage it though I feel much better about handling all sorts of stressful situations.

Its one quality I would hope to find in any form of leadership, but especially for those who espouse a servant leadership methodology

thenerdhead• 3 years ago

I agree that serving others is the ideal form of leadership. I mean those generic leadership posters you'd find in any office or school of the leader helping push a boulder or being on the front line with everyone is pretty common sense right?

What I don't get about servant leadership is why people put it in their LinkedIn profiles, CVs, or boast about the term. Most of those people are obnoxious.

screye• 3 years ago

Gandhi and Nadella as servant leaders? That's hilariously incorrect.

Gandhi was well known to be incredibly stubborn and exclusionary of outside opinion in the Indian National Congress. He'd impose his ideas onto an unwilling Congress and populace, and a some of them led to a level of blood shed that no other 'peaceful' movement has ever seen.

Satya Nadella came into a deeply suspicious Microsoft. It was a political and paranoid mess, owing to Ballmer's stack ranking setup. Satya Nadella had to rebuild the company's culture from the ground up, and listening to/trusting leaders who had got there through the cut-throat policies of the previous leadership was not the way.

Anne Mulcahy was Xerox’s CEO. When she became CEO on Aug 1, 2001, the stock price was $8.25, and on Jan 1, 2002. when she became chairwoman. the stock price was $10.05. On May 21, 2009, the day she announced her retirement as CEO, the stock price was $6.82

But not sure why someone would think this is a good example.

To sum it up, servant leadership is about genuinely caring for your team, listening to their needs and involving them in decision-making. By shifting the spotlight from the leader to the team, you can spark trust, creativity and innovation.

The article is a little too Linkediny for my liking.

Servant leadership

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