There is no question that servant leadership for women and other historically under-represented leaders is an effective way to manage teams and organizations. Servant leaders achieve results, not by using their own positional power (e.g., telling people what to do), but by supporting and investing in their teams’ abilities to make things happen. Many leaders, especially those who are from historically under-represented backgrounds, are drawn to this “employee-first” approach to getting results.
While servant leadership is undoubtedly effective, one can argue that servant leadership for women can be tricky because it means that you choose not to use your positional power. However, I believe that positional power is still a critical element of success. Positional power includes the benefits (and detractions) of unconscious bias, which means that the positional power of a black woman, hispanic man and white man may well be different in different organizational cultures, even when they all hold the same title. So how can historically under-represented leaders develop their servant leadership style in ways that reinforce (not detract from) their positional power?
The challenges of today’s labor market and The Great Resignation, create an imperative for all leaders to balance their positional power with a servant leadership style in order to build employee loyalty and stem the tide of employee turnover. For actionable insights on this topic, I sat down with Ken Blanchard and Randy Conley, authors of the new book, Simple Truths of Leadership to explore the role of trust in leveraging positional power appropriately for under-represented leaders pursuing a servant leadership path.
Here’s a high-level run down of the video discussion above:
- 0-3min: Opening & setup
- 3- 9.5min: Discussion of positional power and servant leadership
- 9.5-15min: Discussion of how to be vulnerable and maintain credibility
- 15-19min: Both/and – Is servant leadership just warm and fuzzy feel goods?
- 19-23.5min: The 4 elements of trust – Ability, Believability, Connection and Dependability
- 23.5-25.5min: Deconstructing trust, control and change
- 25.5-27.5min: Controlling our ego and inner voice
- 27.5-min: The importance of taking time with your people
- 32.25-39min: Servant leadership in a toxic culture and situational leadership
Here are some of the principles in the book that are my personal faves (“ST”=Simple Truth):
- ST #5: The key to developing people is to catch them doing something right
- ST #12: Create autonomy through boundaries
- ST#17: It’s okay to toot your own horn/catch yourself doing something right – if someone says something nice to you, accept it!
- ST#30: Someone must make the first move to extend trust. Leaders go first.
- ST#33: Fear is the enemy of trust
- ST #45: The opposite of trust is not distrust, it’s control
- ST #46: People don’t resist change; they resist being controlled
- ST #50: Apologizing is not necessarily an admission of guilt, but it is an admission of responsibility
- ST #52: Forgiveness is letting go of all hope for a better past
