There is no question that the primary challenge for many who are interested in becoming a servant leader is the willingness to surrender his or her power and need to control others. Suggesting that one give up power can appear very unsettling to some and even foolhardy to others. However, the paradox is that surrendering one's power over others actually fosters greater personal power because you gain greater influence and respect through empowering them. When your employees perceive you as sincerely willing to listen to their input, encouraging them to succeed, and caring about their well-being and development, they trust you and become very committed to following you. In effect, you gain tremendous credibility which is the foundation of any genuine leadership.
Notice that the words "sincerely" and "genuine" are used in the above discussion. It needs to be emphasized that the decision to become a servant leader has to originate from an inner desire to truly serve others, rather than any manipulation or ploy to motivate them to higher levels of performance. If you pursue the latter, your employees will eventually realize that your motives are not sincere and, as a result, their morale, commitment, and performance will wane, and even more tragically, your credibility as a leader will drastically suffer.
This need for sincerity in one's motives points to the broader issue of character, an indispensable attribute of servant leaders. Although far from perfect, servant leaders seek to grow in their personal character, embracing and practicing greater levels of humility, honesty, integrity, caring, authenticity, and accountability. Moreover, their ability to live out these qualities on a consistent basis will have a profoundly positive impact on the organizational culture as employees become committed to a set of shared values which then provides a strong foundation for organizational success.
It's now time to get more personal and practical in terms of assessing your leadership effectiveness. Are you ready?
ASSESSING LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS
The most logical and easiest place to start in determining your current level of leadership effectiveness is to take our FREE leadership self-assessment. This 18-item assessment will give you some baseline data on how you rank on 6 key leadership dimensions as extensively researched by Laub (1998). These dimensions are:
• Providing leadership
• Sharing leadership
• Valuing people
• Developing people
• Displaying authenticity
• Building community
You are strongly encouraged to be brutally honest with yourself in your responses. After taking the self-assessment, add up your total score and enter it in the designated location. This score will reflect your leadership effectiveness within a certain range (very effective, moderately effective, or very ineffective), and will indicate to what degree you are currently practicing servant leadership principles.
Regardless of your score, it is very important to keep in mind that this score represents your own self-perception and is not necessarily indicative of how others view your leadership effectiveness. We each have our own individual blind spots, areas in which we possess little or no self-awareness due to our need to present ourselves in a favorable light and defend against unwelcomed personal truths. Therefore, in order to correct for this self-bias it is very beneficial to gather feedback from other sources who know us well in order to provide a more comprehensive and objective assessment of our leadership strengths and weaknesses.
In order to provide this more comprehensive picture, we offer the OLA 360, which is a 57-item online questionnaire developed by Dr. Jim Laub, founder of the OLA Group (OLAGroup.com). This instrument involves eliciting feedback from peers, direct reports, and supervisors on the previously mentioned 6 dimensions of effective leadership. It also assesses the extent to which the person is facilitating the development of: (1) a healthy organization; (2) a learning organization; and (3) a growing organization. The data generated from the OLA 360 can then serve as a springboard for targeting specific areas needing improvement in these dimensions.
How To Use the Results from the OLA 360
The targeting of specific areas for improvement leads to the development of what Laub (1998) calls an individual learning plan (ILP) which defines the process and time frames for measuring progress.
This process is comprised of three separate but related components:
• Training
• On-the-job experiences
• Coaching
The training can be flexible and geared toward the leader's learning needs and style, including workshops, CDs, and webinars which target specific principles of servant leadership.
The second component is on-the-job experiences. If the training is to be effective, it needs to be implemented on the job so that new learning can be integrated into real life experiences. In this regard, these on-the-job experiences need to be sufficiently challenging to afford you the opportunity to step outside your comfort zone, and begin developing new practices and habits that will foster progress as a servant leader.
The third, and very critical component, of the ILP is coaching. Because change can be very difficult and challenging, you need a leadership coach who can support, encourage, and challenge you during the change process. Moreover, coaching provides the necessary accountability which provides that extra push and motivation to sustain your momentum when the going gets tough.
In order to monitor the progress of the ILP, it is highly recommended that the OLA 360 be re-administered after a 6- to 9-month period of time. This second administration will provide you with an assessment of your improvement and determine what needs to be done as you move forward in your servant leadership journey. The option of continued coaching may also be considered in order to consolidate the gains which you've made so far.
ASSESSING ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH
As you're experiencing progress in your own personal effort to become a servant leader, it is very likely that you will see the need to expand this change to your entire organization. However, there are obstacles! As we all know, change on a massive scale can be very daunting. Overcoming resistance to change is challenging since organizational cultures can become very entrenched and seemingly intractable. People often complain about the status quo, but then struggle with changing because it requires them to move outside their comfort zones. However, if top leadership takes the lead by confronting the cost of not changing in terms of continued turnover, stagnant productivity, low morale, or even total collapse, then the pain of maintaining the status quo can become a strong incentive for overcoming the complacency of doing nothing. If you are truly committed to fostering a servant-minded organization which seeks to develop the potential of all its members, then the undertaking is definitely worth the effort.
Although the process of transforming an entire organizational culture can be quite time consuming and require a great deal of perseverance and commitment, the potential outcomes will be staggering in terms of the impact on employee motivation and performance, customer service and satisfaction, as well as the bottom line.
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