Servant Leadership: Your Ticket to Reducing Turnover and Inspiring Discretionary Effort

Traditional leadership puts the team leader at the top of the organizational chart with “subordinates” reporting “up” to the boss. For example, in a team of 10 associates, the team leader oversees these associates and provides them direction and constructive feedback when necessary. An associate’s effort is based on what they want to offer at any given time on any given day. Sounds simple, right? - Like traditional leadership.

Servant leaders think of their role quite differently and consider leadership as an act of service to the associates, or those pseudo reporting to them, unlike traditional thinking that positions the leader as the boss. They see their primary responsibility is to support the success of the associates by not just being their “boss,” and their behavior is supportive. You may ask, “How can that work?”

While servant leadership may sound counter intuitive, a servant leader’s standard work is to provide positive reinforcement, set expectations, coach, teach, train, remove barriers, build relationships, seek feedback, listen to their employees’ concerns, and celebrate the associates’ successes. Servant leaders build talent, trust, capability, confidence, commitment, and loyalty by providing leadership that people want to follow. Servant leaders understand their end game is to achieve success through people, and they constantly seek and provide feedback. Servant leaders inspire discretionary effort, take more ownership, and bring higher performance. 

Ask yourself, “Are you practicing servant leadership and is your team benefiting from all a servant leader has to offer?” If you would like to better understand the answer to this question, please feel free to give us a call.