Make it Better: An Introduction to Servant Leadership

All of us have encountered leaders of varying types in our lives.  Think back to those people who have had the most positive influence on you.  Did you have a teacher who told you were smart or a good writer?  Was it a Scout or clergy leader who encouraged you?  Maybe a supervisor showed you what working with integrity meant?  Chances are that the person who had the most positive impact on you was a servant leader, a person who believed in you and placed your development as a higher priority than their own need for power. 

While some of the basic concepts of servant leadership have existed for millennia, Robert K. Greenleaf is the person credited with consolidating and developing the idea in the modern era.  Greenleaf worked for AT&T and he was charged with creating training and development opportunities for their staff.  In doing so, he began to question the traditional authoritarian power model of leadership and he set out to create an alternative.  Through years of voraciously exploring ideas, cultures, and beliefs, he formulated servant leadership.

When we hear the word “leader,” most of us think of positional leaders – those who lead by virtue of their title and role within an organization – but leaders exist in many places beyond those in positions of power.  Greenleaf, in The Servant as Leader (page 15), define this style of leadership in this way:

“[Servant leadership] begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve first.  Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.  That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions….the best test, 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?”

This desire to have a positive impact, to help make people and situations better because you were there, is the heart of servant leadership and it is what we will be exploring over the coming weeks. Future topics include the use of the word “servant,” a primer on the power model that contrasts with servant leadership, and critical practices of servant leaders. I hope you will read each post and ask any questions or make observations along the way.

Leadership Styles of the SEC: Mark Richt

Last week, we learned about leadership lessons from Steve Jobs and this week we’ll look at UGA Head Football Coach Mark Richt.  (For those who are in college football withdrawal, I can’t promise this will help but we can always try).  Much attention was given to the outcomes his team produces but do you ever wonder about the leadership style that lead to those outcomes? 

Profiles of any coach demonstrate that they all have the same goal – winning – and each has a multi-faceted approach to getting there, but for Mark Richt, what’s important is how his actions match his values.  Coach Richt wants to win and works hard to achieve that, but he believes he’s failed if he gets the journey to that goal wrong.  As he told Dan Wetzel, “’Do I want to win a national championship…Sure I do. I want to win. Everybody who has ever won a national championship wanted to win the national championship…But it is about a process. Doing things right, fundamentally, schematically and football-wise. But hopefully [it's also about doing it] morally, within the rules of the game, educating young men, educating them academically, educating them about life, helping them understand right and wrong, how to be a good husband, how to be a good father, how to function in this society properly. I'm in the business of doing that. And you do that well for long enough maybe you have a chance to win a national championship. I want to win,’ he reiterated, ‘but it's all important to me.’"

Wetzel asked him: “Does that balance help…when Georgia has fallen short?” and Richt replied: "’Fallen short of what? If we're doing the best we can every day and we're doing it in a first-class manner so that when I go home at night I can lay my head on the pillow and God would be pleased with the decisions I made, how I treated players and the coaches, the media, my wife and kids, I'm OK with that.’"

It’s easy to see that Coach Richt’s focus is on his values, which determine his priorities.  Although he clearly understands the need to win, his values define his priorities and how he measures success. That was reiterated last fall in this press conference.  He was largely applauded for pushing back against an insulting question but a close listen reveals he was making his thoughts clear when a reporter asked about things that weren’t important.  Like Steve Jobs, he is focused on what’s important and doesn’t waste time addressing every single detractor or distraction. 

As a leader, you have goals but how important is the process for achieving those goals?  What values or priorities guide you?  What do you do when your professional priorities don’t match those of other key stakeholders?  How have your priorities altered how you define success and failure?