Showing Up As Serving Leaders

ANNOUNCEMENT: Welcome back to Lead.From.Within. Learning Blog! It has been quite a journey since we were last together. Those of you who have been with me for a long time know that Mother made her transition 15 months ago. It was then that I took a break from blogging. I needed the space to just be and to share with family and to begin again. I had been the primary caretaker for Mother for 16 years and it was truly a shift in my life. I am glad to be back with you and to connect with you on our continued journey in Servant Leadership. To get us started, I am honored to have my colleague and friend, Chris Thyberg, offer his writings on the Servant Leadership movement to get us rolling again with Lead.From.Within. Learning blog. To learn more about Chris, please visit https://www.theservingway.com/background. Welcome to our new friends on LinkedIn and other social media (over 1,000)! Let us begin…

I want to be this lovely woman! Don’t you? She’s present in the moment, taking everything in with her undivided attention. She’s shown up with her full self.

So, here’s the question: How do we get the people we lead to show up every day, eager to be present, to pay attention, to serve each other, our partners and our customers in order to create true value that really matters, not only for the bottom line but also for the common good

In my piece, “What do YOU think?” I shared five behaviors that set up the conditions for people to contribute their best thinking, best feeling, and best doing for the greater good. Each day, with everyone you engage:

• Give your full attention
• Ask penetrating questions.
• Establish reciprocity.
• Put people at ease.
• Establish unity while honoring diversity.

Here are five more serving-leader actions that will create the conditions in which people can show up for work with their heads and hearts as well as their hands.

• Show appreciation when things go well

Our society conditions us to focus on deficits to the neglect of assets. We learn from command-and-control leaders that praising what is good is naïve and soft, whereas critiquing shortcomings is realistic and strong. The result is that we start to view others and ourselves as flawed and incapable. And that kills engagement.

 If we start with and dwell on assets – strengths and successes, possibilities and resources – we will get better results when it’s time to turn to the ways we need to improve. Serving leaders should aim to spend 80% of their interactions with followers thanking them for who they are, what they bring, and their commitment to growth. Here’s the place to start:  This is great! Do more of this. Here’s what would really help; start doing that

• Offer encouragement when things are tough

For so many of us, it’s far easier to feel more strongly a sense of failure than a sense of success. Encouragement – literally, imparting courage – builds resilience, determination, and grit. When we move to deficits – weaknesses and failures, challenges and limitations – the message is: Here’s what’s less helpful; consider doing less of this or even stopping this behavior altogether. Why? Because there’s a great purpose we are trying to achieve together, and we need you at your best.

An honest acknowledgement that there is always room for improvement, reassurances that everyone is safe to take risks in order to get better, and vulnerability that we ourselves have “struck out” our fair share and that it’s a normal part of playing the game gives people power to regroup and aim for their new personal best.

• Harness feelings to re-engage thinking

Sometimes life just gets the better of us: fear grips us, sadness slows us, and uncertainty clouds us. Great thinking stops and our fight-flight-freeze instincts take over. Command-and-control leadership tells us to get it together, leave the emotions at home, and toughen up.

The serving leader acknowledges and engages us in our full humanity. Here’s where the attentive listening and authentic presence is so powerful. There’s a fine line to walk between appropriate recognition, empathy, and release of emotions and getting sucked into each other’s drama. But it is the calling of the leader to serve the whole person. The next time a colleague or follower begins to show signs of feelings, relax and welcome them. Once the air is cleared, good thinking can resume with fresh energy.

• Share information as fully as possible

Information is power, and this power needs to be shared if you want people to think well. People are basing their decisions and actions on assumptions all the time. When the information is incorrect the assumptions are incorrect, and the quality of decisions and actions suffers.

Information is crucial when we are confronted with denial, the assumption that what is happening is not happening. Penetrating questions can bring a person safely face-to-face with what is true so that they can think well about it. Learning how to formulate these questions is a life-long quest for the serving leader.

• Demonstrate humility in all things

The common thread woven through all these practices of serving leadership is humility, the virtue of being so secure in our sense of self-worth that we can put others before us while still retaining a strong core of purpose, vision, and values. As Ken Blanchard’s mother used to tell him, “Being humble is not thinking less of yourself. It’s thinking of yourself less.”

• It takes humility to give others your full attention and ask liberating questions rather than simply waiting for your turn to provide the answers.
   
• It’s the humble leader who establishes reciprocity, which creates a culture of ease and openness.
   
• The ability to honor diversity comes from the humble conviction that everyone is infinitely worthwhile, but that we are greater together, united in common purpose for the common good.
   
• Humility is the bedrock for appreciation and encouragement, empathy and the power that comes with sharing accurate information and defense against denial.
   
• And humble leaders always point to others rather than themselves. After all, for me to tout my humility proves that I’m not all that humble!

All we do as leaders flow from the conviction that service is the reason we are in positions of leadership. It’s not because of how great we are in ourselves that people choose to follow us. It’s how great our people are becoming under our leadership that defines out greatness.

Ten tips for empowering those who follow us to show up each day excited to give their very best. How are you putting these into action?  Comments welcome!

(Copyright © 2018 The Serving Way — Chris Alan Thyberg.)