Curt Fowler | Fowler & Company
Ken Blanchard states that servant leadership is the only leadership style guaranteed to get great results for your organization with great human satisfaction. If servant leadership is so great, why is it so rare? Why is great leadership of any kind such a rarity?
The answer is clear – “short-termism.” As investors and leaders, we are all part of the problem. The markets demand we hit our quarterly numbers. If we don’t lead public companies, our pride craves fast results. When is the last time you heard a leader talking about building a “100 year” company. The whirlwind of today’s urgent problems keeps us focused on surviving today, not on building something great for generations to come.
Servant leadership can be the solution to our short-termism addiction. Are you ready to try it? Here are the steps:
Create Clarity
Leadership is about taking an organization to a compelling destination. The clearer the picture of the destination, the easier it is to align your team behind the vision. The compelling destination must be in the service of a purpose greater than just profits. Take Chick-fil- a as an example. Their purpose is to “To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil- A.”
In service of their purpose, their vision is to “be America’s best quick-service restaurant.” In the pursuit of its vision, Chick-fil- a team members are asked to act according to their core values of Customers First, Personal Excellence, Continuous Improvement,
Working Together, and Stewardship.
Combine the purpose, vision and values with an understanding of what your role is in accomplishing the vision and decision making can become pretty simple for everyone at Chick-fil- a. Employees must be trained well but are then released to use their best judgment to help the organization accomplish its vision. The power of clarity comes from having everyone on your team rowing the boat in the same direction with less bureaucracy and much more engagement.
Everyone Gets A’s
While everyone getting A’s rarely happens, it is the goal of a servant-led organization. The goal is to have everyone win. Everyone includes employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders and the community.
Servant leaders set clear, quantifiable goals that spell out what winning looks like and then coach their people on how to achieve those goals. There is no forced ranking where the bottom 10% of your team gets cut. In a true-servant led organization the need to fire someone is seen as a failure on the part of the leader. The question is not what did the person do wrong, but why has the leader been unable to coach them to success? Did the leader hire someone who did not have the skills and values needed to excel at the position?
Servant leaders put their people first. Their people feel loved and cared for. They know their leader is looking out for their best interests. That is why employees of servant leaders perform better. They care because someone cared for them first.
Great organizations like Chick-fil- a, the Ritz-Carlton, WD-40 and many others excel by following servant leadership principles. Are you ready to give it a try?
Curt Fowler is an organizational growth expert and President of Fowler & Company, a business advisory firm dedicated to helping leaders create and achieve a compelling vision for their organization. He has an MBA in Strategy and Entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA, and a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and four children.
Have a business growth topic you’d like me to cover? Send suggestions to cfowler@valuesdrivenresults.com.
