Category: Teamwork & Leadership

After a long week at work and a late night serving curry and clearing tables at a BBQ we had hosted for our students, it was 9:30am on a Saturday morning.  I was at the airport collecting some colleagues (that I’d never met before) who had flown into town from another campus for an event that they needed a lift to, 214 km away, off-road.

“Your taxi is here!” I happily chirped as I loaded their suitcases into the back of the car.   They thanked me graciously and we talked for the next 3+ hours as we bumped and jiggled along one of the most beautiful typically-deep-red Australian outback tracks to a remote Aboriginal community.  

As we rocked up to their destination, one asked “so what did you do to deserve having to be the driver for trip like this? What’s your role?”.  

“Oh I didn’t have to” I answered; “I’m the Head”.

After overcoming the initial mortification at having not recognised me in my casual ‘Saturday rig’, my guests became incredulous.  “But you’re the most senior role here; why didn’t you send a driver?”

“Well because I can drive, and it’s an honour to be able to serve you”.  

Great leadership is about service.

Now of course, you don’t have to give your colleagues a 428km round offroad trip to be a great servant leader, nor does giving somebody a lift constitute as great leadership service.  There are many ways to serve others as a leader, and that paradoxically elevate us further as a leader in doing it.

In this article I will share with you some ideas of what servant leadership is, some servant leadership theory and servant leadership examples.

Traditionally, the stereotypical concept of a leader has been of an authoritarian figure.  One who stands ‘up front’ and ‘on top’ (autocratic leadership), calling the shots, giving the orders and telling people where to go, what to do and how to do it.  

In this traditional leadership style, ‘The Boss’ is someone who gives the whole team one thing in common – being that somebody that they can all hate.  

The autocratic method of leadership ensures that leaders get hated for the decisions they make, the tasks they delegate and hated just simply because they are the boss.

But it doesn’t have to be like this.  

It is actually very hard to hate a person.  It is their behaviour, how they make us feel or what they represent that we actually hate.

But as a leader, that puts us in a constantly conflicting position – because we have to provide direction, we have to assure organisational outcomes, monitor performance, keep accountability and deliver information that people may not want to hear – all of which involve the potential pitfall of making people feel like they are being told what to do, managed, controlled and monitored.  Not exactly the ingredients for getting onto people’s Christmas card lists.

As a result, many leaders find themselves facing a crisis, in a position of either doing our job (and making our people hate us) OR, keeping everyone happy and failing our organisation by avoiding being seen as ‘bossy’.  It this what leadership comes down to?!

No.

There is another way.

A way that allows us to actualise the mission of our organisations, to meet and even exceed our objectives.  A way that allows us to do this in a way that empowers our people AND that engenders the greatest level of mutual understanding and collegiality between us and our team.

It’s called ‘Servant Leadership’.

“servant leaders have a particular view of themselves as stewards who are entrusted to develop and empower followers to reach their fullest potential” (Sendjaya)

What is Servant Leadership?

Servant leadership, coined by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970’s, is a philosophy that centralises the staff and community that the organisation serves as the leader’s primary priority. It’s about enhancing the intrinsic motivation of our people, leading ethically, with wider social responsibility in mind.  It is a people-centred, moralistic, equitable form of leadership.

It is all about sharing the ‘power’ that your role has within the organisation and focuses on the leader’s role as being one to serve the people, instead of the people’s role to serve the leader.

“It is the leader’s role to serve the people, instead of the people’s role to serve the leader”

But before Greenleaf’s writing on the topic, concepts of servant leadership have come up throughout history, especially in religious texts.  In the Bible, Jesus Christ himself washed the feet of his disciples (his ‘followers’) to show them that he considered himself as equal to those that he led, that he cared for them and put their needs before his own.

1. 
   Giving is receiving

This has always been a guiding principle for me and was one of the keys to my rapid business success prior to taking on an Executive role at a university.  

I taught business owners that in order to lead in their industries, it was critical that they generously gave away their best-kept secrets without measure – that the more they gave freely, the more they would get back.  

The more they served their industry and their market, the more business they would get.  

The more they gave people something to thank them for, the more successful they would become.  

I encouraged aspiring professional speakers to speak for free if they wanted to get paid for it one day, and to keep doing it for free even when they were getting paid for it.  

I encouraged educators to provide free workshops and give away free mini-courses.  

I encouraged authors to write for free and give away their books – as all encapsulated a service to their industry and its people, rather than a marketer who wanted to take from it.

It works.

Just like a bank account – the more you deposit, the more you accumulate. People who could never afford you will get to experience you for themselves, they will recommend you and save up for your next offering because the first taste was so good.

Many found this a hard concept to grasp. They would ask me things like ‘but Sarah, if I give all of my information, knowledge, IP and secrets away, surely I’ll lose my business?’.  

I would reply ‘But if they don’t know that you have it then you won’t get their business anyway.  If people get to see for themselves that you acquire the information, skills and knowledge that they need, then they won’t need you to convince them to trust that you have it – there the battle is over’.

For me, I could (and still do) always see two types of people when it comes to service and leadership:

1.       I will serve the people when I am their leader (I serve because I lead)
2.       I will become a true leader as a result of my service to my field (I lead because I serve)

The first type of person is considered as having a goal-oriented motivator of service – there is a motivation behind their wanting to serve.

They come from what I would call a ‘leadership ambition’ standpoint – that they desire to lead and service is a by-product of leading or a means to get there.  And therefore the only reason they serve is to gain the result of leadership.

These people often too believe that they will only have anything of real value to give ‘if’ they become the official ‘leader’.  As long as they do go on to serve, this is not an inherently ‘wrong’ mindset, but it will be harder and slower to get there and they will run out of motivation to continue serving once they get ‘there’.  

It also misses the point entirely that you don’t have to be a leader to serve others; AND that serving others is in fact what makes you into a leader – and keeps you as one.

The second type mentioned above is the person who I always see succeed – what I would call ‘the leader by nature’.  They are not driven to serve by a desire to lead, but instead, naturally, are followed by others due to the service they provide so selflessly.

Inside the workplace, the same concepts apply – leaders are afraid that sharing with their team powerful information like budgets, income, annual objectives, implementation plans, strategic plans, staffing models, operational plans etc – that they will have no power, control or authority left.

But the absolute opposite happens.

The more that people feel like they know ‘what’s going on’ and that you care, the more they feel part of the organisation and therefore affiliated to the mission you are serving.

Share your power, knowledge and information as much as possible – not for the purposes of showing people how clever you are, or how much power you have – but instead to genuinely empower them with it.

Sometimes the true leaders in an organisation – that is the one who the majority trust unquestionably, feel like they have their back, listen to, seek advice from, consider to be the influencer and admire; are not always the ones with a formal leadership job title.  They are the ones who intentionally, or naturally, serve others most.

2. Raise better people

But servant leadership goes deeper than that.  

It’s not just about serving our people so that they can better serve our customers.  

It’s about serving them so that they can become better people – and better servants in the world itself.

Our role as a servant leader is to serve a future of opportunity to our staff – not just within the organisation but for their lives.  

Do we provide them with opportunities to do their life’s best work?  

Do we give them opportunities to grow as people, to learn and develop?  

The freedom to make mistakes without fear but with enthusiasm and support?  

Do they flourish in our workplace in that as the time they serve passes, they become more skilled, wiser, autonomous and better servers themselves?

Joe Iarocci, author of ‘Servant Leadership in the Workplace’ suggests that servant leaders have 3 key priorities, where people development comes first:

1. The personal and professional development of your people
2. The development of a workplace culture of trust
3. An organisation that measures and achieves its results

Here are 7 other examples of servant leadership in action:

3. Commit to good stewardship

Good stewardship in its simplest definition, is taking care of, or looking after something.  However it also has a more theological definition that denotes that we are responsible for the world and must take care of it for our future survival.

Being a good steward means ensuring the future vitality and wellbeing of our people, our organisation, our wider community and the planet.  

It also means strategising the assurance of the sustainability and operations of our organisation, financially and in regards to all of our other resources.  

Our leadership roles are only temporary, but we must see our service as part of a life-long legacy.

We live in an ever-changing world and it is our duty as servant leaders to be good stewards by constantly adapting and changing for the good of the future vitality of the organisation we work for and the community in which it operates.

4. Our success is others’

Servant leaders measure their success not by their own achievements and accomplishments, but instead by those they are serving.  

In the education sector, this is an easy concept to understand as the translation is fairly literal – if our students are passing their exams, we are doing a great job.  

However, this can be harder to conceptualise in other industry workplaces.

Use your organisation’s’ overarching strategic plan to create a detailed implementation plan that guides your team towards clear, specific and easily achievable tasks that they can move towards weekly – giving them frequent opportunity for a sense of accomplishment.

Find ways to show them how achieving these micro wins is leading them to achieving results that goes far beyond the duties on their job description – that they fulfil a much bigger mission, and have positive impacts far beyond the goals of the organisation.

Scour the internet for awards that you can nominate your team for – and give yourself a goal to recognise all of your top achievers with some kind of internal award or external award nomination.

I also encourage my staff to anonymously send me feedback (via an online form) to praise their colleagues, so that I can celebrate them on behalf of the organisation.  

As servant leaders, there is no success that isn’t that of our teams.  

5. Awareness and foresight

It is critical as a servant leader that we have strong self-awareness to ensure that we recognise how our own behaviours, words and ‘energy’ affect those around us, and the humility to correct ourselves as we go along.

Servant leadership demands that we have the emotional intelligence to notice how our people are really feeling behind both good and bad physical behaviours, so that we can help them.

We must show awareness and remain attuned to the subtle underlying cultural heartbeat, sensing people’s feelings, moods, body language and verbal language used, to pick up on emerging trends and adjust the course as necessary to keep everything and everyone on track.  

We can often critique the ‘jungle drums’ in an organisation (you know, that invisible vine of gossip that spreads ‘Chinese whispers’ through every department and that you are constantly trying to correct?!)  

But it can also be a fantastic source of information – not literally (as the facts are usually wrong), but what people are whispering about can give us insightful clues to ways in which we can help and serve our people and the organisation.

It is also critical that we use all of this information as well as anecdotal, intuitive and measurable from our locality, our industry and the wider global trends, to have the foresight to serve further – to ensure that we can take action for the sustainability of the organisation, to ensure the continued growth and skills acquisition of our workforce to maintaining currency and demand in their roles and to know where and how we could be serving further for the good of all for the future.

6. Be relatable and show empathy

Greenleaf believes that one of the first steps to becoming a servant leader requires us to be somebody that our staff can relate to.  

However this is challenging when or if our staff see us as above them, more powerful than them or simply unapproachable.

Having empathy means understanding and sharing the feelings of another.

We should not condemn people in pain, anger, frustration or who act hastily or make mistakes.  Instead, it is our role to understand the humanness of these responses, help our staff to overcome them, provide and implement the solutions to stop it from happening again and then provide them opportunity to heal.

It is also our duty as leaders to foster relatability through empathy.  This is, to help them understand that not only do they have feelings, emotional reactions and humanness that must be acknowledged, respected and cared for, but so do we too.  

It is incredibly easy for our staff to see us as some kind of inanimate machine that operates solely on coffee-fuel and policies.  

We are all human beings who need love, compassion and understanding.

7. Don’t be a martyr

Many leaders sacrifice their own wants and needs for the good of others daily – those who have children are also a classic example.  

Leaders often do it behind the scenes, taking the bullet from their own senior management on behalf of their team, or taking the bullets from their team on behalf of their senior management; working many unpaid hours attending events, pulling overtime and working through lunch breaks to ensure wages get paid and contracts get awarded to keep staff employed.  A little self-sacrifice is required to get anything in life – it’s all part of the balance and is part of being a servant leader.

However, there is a big difference between self sacrifice and martyrdom.  Serve because you enjoy it, because it’s your calling and because it is the right thing to do.  Don’t serve out of the neediness for attention and sympathetic acknowledgements of ‘how hard you work’ – that’s not servant leadership, it’s being a martyr.    

8. Inspiration, spiritual and transformational beings

Being a servant leader is easier for those who can relate to spiritual and creative conceptualisation.  

It requires a futuristic, optimistic, inspirational outlook that believes in the good of the giving of service and gets joy purely from that alone – but also believes that it ultimately leads to transformational outcomes – for the future of those that they serve and the ripple effect of ‘service that will come from those people later on too.  

Servant leaders are innately philanthropic, have a ‘global’ cognitive processing system (that is, they see the much bigger picture) and do not require the acquisition of immediate results in order to ‘know’ that what they are doing is of value.

Servant leadership is about seeing what doesn’t yet exist and contributing all that we have, are and can do in order to support it’s actualisation.  It’s about conceptualising a greater future, translating it into practice and inspiring and persuading others to join us in the service of that mission.

9. Build a community

The servant leader believes in the greatness of each individual as much as the greater power and impact of their collective greatness – and that means building communities.

As Maslow tells us, a sense of ‘belonging’ is a critical component of our basic human needs.  Therefore, as a servant leader creating a sense of community, regular ‘communion’, coming together, collegial trust, familiarity and communal safety, is another major responsibility of ours.

People can attain a sense of community by first being given the opportunity to build rapport and know each other outside of their immediate duty-related requirements – such as staff get togethers and activities.  

But this sense of community, belonging and grows when there is a shared meaning, purpose or mission behind getting together.  It can be a s small as raising money for a charity they all agree with supporting, to contributing social change in your community or the goals that your organisation is working towards at a mission level.  

Find ways that you can help your team come together to be a part of something bigger than themselves, to find the commonalities between their most seemingly opposite colleagues and to find shared passions and values that they each stand for.  

The power of one is multiplied when there is togetherness – as a servant leadership, we are the thread to bring and hold them together.  

Never stop serving, and you’ll never stop leading.

Contributor name: Sarah Cordiner

Contributor website: www.sarahcordiner.com

Mindsets are a leader’s mental lenses that dictate what information the leader focuses on, how the leader interprets such information, and the leader’s overall decision-making.

According to Upper Echelons Theory, a popular organizational theory, we should be uniquely interested in leaders’ mindsets. This is because Upper Echelons Theory suggests that direction and success of an organization is based upon what its leaders pay attention to. And, what leaders pay attention to is predicated upon their mindsets.

Of all organizational leaders, there are few that have had as much success as Jack Welch. Jack Welch is most known for being the CEO of General Electric from 1981-2001. During this tenure, he increased the market value of GE from $14 billion to $410 billion. He was also recognized as Manager of the Century in 1999.

As he recently passed away, it would do us well to identify what mindsets he possessed that led to him having such a positive influence on the organizations he led.

There are four success mindsets that I want to highlight.

Growth Mindset

When we possess a growth mindset we believe that we and others can change our abilities, talents, and intelligence. Research over 30 years has led experts to say: “Cultivating a growth mindset could be the single most important thing you ever do to help you achieve success.” This is because when we believe we can learn, grow, and improve, we become willing to approach challenges and failures as opportunities to advance, as opposed to things to back away from.

Based upon the following quotes, it seems as though Jack Welch possessed a growth mindset, one that was focused on learning and saw challenges and failure as opportunities.

• “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”
• “I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.”
• “Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.”

Open Mindset

When we possess an open mindset, we are open to the idea that we don’t have all the answers and that we can be wrong. When we possess this mindset, our primary focus is on thinking optimally and finding truth, which leads us to ask questions, invite new perspectives, and to see disagreement as opportunities to learn.

It is critical for leaders to possess an open mindset because it creates a psychologically safe and engaging environment that brings about the highest levels of innovation and creativity.

Jack Welch seemed to portray an open mindset when he stated the following:

• “Arrogance is a killer, and wearing ambition on one’s sleeve can have the same effect. There is a fine line between arrogance and self-confidence. Legitimate self-confidence is a winner. The true test of self-confidence is the courage to be open — to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. Self-confident people aren’t afraid to have their views challenged. They relish the intellectual combat that enriches ideas.”
• “The operative assumption today is that someone, somewhere, has a better idea; and the operative compulsion is to find out who has that better idea, learn it, and put it into action-fast.”

Promotion Mindset

When we have a promotion mindset, we have a clear goal or destination that we are headed toward and we are focused on making progress toward the goal or destination. In other words, we are purpose-centered. When we do not have a clear goal or destination, our default mindset is a prevention mindset, where our focus is primarily on not losing and avoiding problems. In other words, we are comfort-centered.

There have been multiple research studies that have verified that organizations with promotion-minded CEOs outperform organizations with prevention-minded CEOs.

Based upon the following quotes, it seems clear that Jack Welch has a promotion mindset:

• “Set stretch goals. Don’t ever settle for mediocrity. The key to stretch is to reach for more than you think is possible. Don’t sell yourself short by thinking that you’ll fail.”
• “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”
• “If you want risk taking, set an example yourself and reward and praise those that do.”

Outward Mindset

When we have an outward mindset, we see those we lead as being as important, if not more important as ourselves. This is critical for effective leadership because it is only when we see others in this way that we value them as they truly are: as people. When leaders see themselves as being more important than others (i.e., inward mindset), the consequence is that the leaders will see those they lead as objects, and treat them as such.

Jack Welch’s outward mindset is evident in these quotes:

• “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”
• “When you were made a leader you weren’t given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.”
• “Great leaders love to see people grow. The day you are afraid of them being better than you is the day you fail as a leader.”

Emulating Jack Welch

Because Jack Welch has these success mindsets, he was able to pay attention to the right things and process information in such a way to maximize his positive influence on the organizations and people he served. If you can develop these mindsets, you will also unlock a greater ability to have a positive influence on the organization and people you serve.

Through my research, I have unfortunately found that only 5% of leaders are in the top quartile for all four sets of these mindsets. This suggests that most of us can improve our leadership effectiveness by adopting these mindsets.

If you want to assess the quality of your mindsets, here is a free 20-question mindset assessment: https://ryangottfredson.com/personal-mindset-assessment. It will provide you with an individualized and comprehensive mindset report, including directions on how to improve your mindsets.

About Ryan Gottfredson:

Ryan Gottfredson, PhD., is a mental success coach and cutting-edge leadership consultant, author, trainer, and researcher. He is the author of Success Mindsets: Your Keys To Unlocking Greater Success In Your Life, Work, & Leadership (Morgan James Publishing). He helps improve organizations, leaders, teams, and employees by improving their mindsets.  As a respected authority and researcher on topics related to leadership, management, and organizational behavior, Ryan has published over 15 articles in a variety of journals, including The Harvard Business Review. His research has been citied over 2,000 times since 2014.

Ryan is currently a leadership and management professor at the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics at California State University, Fullerton.

He holds a PhD in Organizational Behavior and Human Resources from Indiana University and a BA from Brigham Young University.  He resides in Anaheim, California. For more information, please connect with Ryan at https://www.ryangottfredson.com

There are endless requirements of a leader, but one we rarely see on their job description is ‘must be able to lead with humility’, despite it being one of the strongest influencers on an organization’s culture.

Pope Francis believes that humility is one of the most empowering leadership qualities, stating in his book ‘Lead With Humility’, “If we can develop a truly humble attitude, we can change the world”.

When your own sense of self importance is reduced, there is space for everyone else to have importance too – and when people feel like they matter, they shine.

Therefore it is critical as leaders, that we keep an eye on our humility.

In this article I share 10 ways that we can lead with humility.  

The workplace can be a battle ground

In the modern day workplace there are endless provocations to ‘fight’ for an outcome, ‘defend’ your intellectual viewpoint, justify an action taken, ‘hustle’ to beat competitors, compete over limited resources to achieve KPIs and to maintain one’s sense of power and dignity in the often endless barrage of internal political power-struggles and personality clashes.  

Some days you feel like you are part of a winning machine that is sailing effortlessly towards a postcard sunset.  However the trap is that in these times of professional prosperity, we risk losing our humility by bragging of our success, or the onset of complacency and arrogance.  

Then there are other days, when you flump in front of your couch at the end of a long week feeling like some of your colleagues have been assigned a do-or-die mission by MI5 to sabotage and derail you by any means possible.

It is these days especially that leaders face the challenge of maintaining their humility as the temptation to defend yourself, assert your authority and do ‘what’s best for you’ to survive, can often drown the higher self, along with the ship you’re sailing.

Having humility is not a skill that we can learn.  As a noun, it is instead something that we must become – it is a way of being.

Who is the leader without humility?

Before we look at what leading with humility is, here are some examples of what it isn’t.

• They are ‘proud’ and fiercely defend their pride
• They are arrogant, egotistical and pretentious
• They focus on the failings, weaknesses and shortcomings of those around them
• They won’t admit their own weaknesses or shortcomings
• They are defensive
• They fight for their viewpoint, convinced that they are right and everyone else is wrong
• They have an inability to use the word ‘sorry’
• If anyone disagrees with them, they become hostile, irritable and negative
• They generally have a negative outlook and complain a lot
• They see problems and challenges as things to complain about or give to other people to fix, instead of seeing them as opportunities for advancement
• They would be highly insulted and angry at the suggestion of participating in personal or professional development
• They see themselves as ‘above’ certain daily tasks within the organization – eg you would never see them cleaning, litter picking, washing the dishes in the staff kitchen, manning a company stand at an expo, answering the main call line or escorting visitors to a colleague’s office.
• They don’t do volunteer work, or participate in anything work related outside of their duty statement and contracted hours
• They rarely say thank you or deliver praise for what has been done, but instead deliver criticism on what hasn’t been done.

Now of course dear fellow leader, none of these apply to you, right?!  

Our first step to having humility is accepting that it would be almost impossible for any of us to say that we have never been guilty of any of the above.  

Even if we did not commit any of the above acts of egotism with any conscious intent, if those we lead perceive (that is, interpret their own reality as to having had an egotistical experience of you), then you are still guilty.

10 Ways to Lead With Humility

• Share the power

Having a formal leadership position does not make us better or more important than anyone else – in fact there is nothing that makes any single human being better than another.   

Respect is not something that we are automatically issued with or entitled to on the signing of our leadership employment contracts – everyone deserves equal respect and dignity.

Having a leadership role only gives you special ‘power’ that others don’t have, in the sense that you essentially have the pre-approved authority to sign some forms, and the joyful responsibility of going to jail on behalf of your organization if ‘it all goes wrong’.  

Our role is not about being better or more powerful than anyone else, but about using the authority our position has, to give everyone else genuine empowerment.

We can share our ‘power’ further by removing all ‘secrets’ from the organizational operations too.  If ‘knowledge is power’ then it must be distributed.

Do your middle management or ground-floor supervisors have knowledge of your annual budget?  

Do they know the details of your strategic plan, KPIs and objectives for the year?  

Do they know what partnerships, products or services you are developing?  

I have found from my own experience, that the more you give away, the more you get back.

With the obvious considerations of proprietary information and confidentiality, sharing information does the opposite of deducing your power.

• Think and act on behalf of others instead of yourself

Having humility demands that we put our self-importance and pride aside, to quieten our egos and do the opposite of what our survival instinct forces us to do innately – look after ourselves.

CS Lewis said that “humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less”.  

But in the modern day workplace, especially in leadership where your actions and competence is forever being judged by everyone, the thought of this can make leaders’ feel very vulnerable.

To have humility requires the highest level of self-confidence, as it requires us to put aside our own needs and instead only do what is best for others.

• Give away the credit

Gifting the credit of achievements to others for something that you put hard graft into getting done in your organization is often seen as the ultimate injustice or ‘sacrifice’ by the less humble.

However, those with humility know that there is absolutely nothing worthy of celebration that can possibly be achieved alone, and that ultimately, the success of the organization is always a reflection of – and a credit to you – whether you get any overt praise for it or not.

Everyone has within them an abundance of unique qualities, skills, experiences, virtues and gifts and it is our job as leaders to always be on the look-out for these in action, and to celebrate and appraise them as they arise.  

• Graciously recognize and acknowledge your mistakes and areas for improvement

A truly honorable, humble and courageous act of leadership is to acknowledge your errors.  Showing those above and below you that you have the self-awareness and emotional intelligence to graciously admit the times where you acted hastily instead of thoughtfully, responded out of emotion instead of reason, given misinformation, passed a poor judgement or simply have areas that could be improved upon, is one of the most rapid ways to create an environment where everyone feels safe to make mistakes, to continue to find ways to grow and to show them that you too are a human being.

Those who do not have humility, fear that admitting their weaknesses, failings, professional development needs or areas for improvement will somehow detract from their position of power or authority.  Showing your humanness, is showing humility.

Making mistakes can also be a good thing! In the book ‘59 Seconds’ Richard Wiseman claims that mistakes made by people of aptitude makes them endearing and more relatable.

• Silence your own opinions to give a voice to others

This is extremely challenging in world where at some time or another we are provoked to defend our character, decisions, skill set or integrity.  This is all about putting the ego aside – that part of us which is designed for survival.

Accepting other people’s opinions and resisting the burning desire to say your piece (particularly when you have been criticized) is not being submissive or weak.  It’s an act of humility.

Some leaders refuse to listen to the opinions of others as if accepting them somehow minimizes their credibility or authority.  

Being a leader with humility means being constantly open to the fact that we might be wrong.  Our staff are the ones on the frontline in their respective departments each day, and so we cannot possibly always have the best insight into the issues they face and what the most ideal solutions might be.  If we want to improve the organizations that we lead, we need to be able to accept that those around us may just have the better ideas.

Best-selling author Mark Manson says that if you want to see positive change “you must be willing to ask yourself whether you are wrong time and time again”.

• Ask how you can help

A big misconception that many have about leadership, is that the leader’s primary role is to dish out instructions and requests to the team.  But there truly can be no humility found in a leader who places herself above those who she is being paid to serve.

I believe that as leaders, our role is to help those we lead to do their life’s best work and to create an environment, equipped with the appropriate resources with which to do that.

Servant leadership is a philosophy of leadership which encourages the leader to share their power for the greater good of the organization and the people that form part of it; and we could all help more and ‘tell’ less as leaders.  

Pope Francis says “The one who rules must be like a servant.  If you change your view of your role as a leader – from one who gives orders to members of your team to one who serves your reports – you open up opportunities that did not exist before”.

• Believe that everyone is inherently good and trust in others completely

The leader less actualized will believe that people should not be trusted until they have earned it.  

However, I believe that the leaders who build the most effective teams and the strongest cultures of collegiality, are the ones who trust completely without question, and continue to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they unquestionably prove to have a meditated malicious intent.  

Anyone who is mentally healthy and emotionally stable would never intend to be cruel, disruptive or bad.  

Despite the fact that it can be hard to embrace this when we are faced with ever challenging colleagues, tough personalities and exhausting repetitive patterns of ineffective behavior from staff, it is important for us to remember as leaders that everyone is inherently good, but that they may need our help to overcome their adopted (often protective) behaviors.  

• Accept the organization’s faults as your own

You may not be the CFO who cut the budget in half, or the Board Director that signed off on 40 redundancies, or the legal director who implemented the excruciating procurement policy – but as a leader, you ARE the representation of those people, their departments and the decisions that they made for the best interests of the organization.  

Leaders who complain about ‘the system’ are not leaders.  They are poison – and the problem.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, we must ‘be the change we wish to see in the world’.  

When we take on a leadership role in an organization, we take on everything that comes with it.  We become the representation of the organization. We don’t get to select the parts we want to be leaders of (the fun, rewarding and easy bits) and reject the bits we don’t like or are ‘too hard’.  

Although we can never change everything about an organization we are employed by – or even one that we own (such as legislation, law, client requirements etc), we can change our attitude to the elements that frustrate us and find better ways of working with them, rather than in rebellion towards them.  

As soon as we act as an enemy of the system by engaging in negative talk of the faults of the system, we switch from a leader of growth and development to a leader of an anti-establishment movement.

If the leader takes a position of helpless victim and critic of the system in which it operates, how can she expect her staff to adopt a positive, motivated and proactive attitude to finding opportunities for improvement?  

Just like Mumma used to say, ‘if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all’.  This doesn’t mean passively accepting dreadful practices, or putting up with inefficiencies.  The point is, that you can be an assertive and change-creating leader, without being aggressive, negative and poisonous to the culture.  

• Assess, evaluate, and review, but never judge

Staff depend on us for feedback and depend on us to deliver it without prejudice or judgement.  Our staff shouldn’t have to wait for the formalities of an annual performance appraisal to find out whether they are on the right track, or that their output is way off course – they should have constant feedback to allow them to iterate and grow along the way.

Having humility doesn’t’ mean agreeing with everything or ignoring things that need to be addressed; but it does mean delivering feedback constructively and sticking only to the facts.

• Balance personal and professional

Don’t forget to be a human.  Socialize with your team, let them see that you are the same as them, have the same problems, enjoy the same pleasures and want the same things for your family as they do for theirs.  Organize social events, team morning teas, staff family events, share your real and raw story of how you got to your position.

Yes, we have a certain level of professionalism to uphold at all times, however, that doesn’t mean ceasing to be an authentic human being.

In every conversation, email, letter, request and in-person interaction, we have the opportunity to either lead with grace and humility – engendering trust and empowerment in our workplace; or to allow our pride and ego to take control and subsequently annihilate our leadership future.

Humility does not demand perfection, it encourages us to have no fear of our imperfection and to not judge that of others.  

Whilst some will argue that the way of the humble leader is a sign of a weak leader, I cannot find reason to doubt that the maximum potential of a leader’s influence, derives from her ability to live and work in humility.

I certainly cannot claim to embody this way of being in my every-moment practice as a leader – there are many times that I have failed.  However, at my very core I try my absolute best, and that’s all you can do too.

Contributor name: Sarah Cordiner

Contributor website: www.sarahcordiner.com