Talk: Putting others first: How to develop a Servant Leadership style

Talk description

Title:	Putting others first: How to develop a Servant Leadership style
Short synopsis:	Leadership is a well known topic. The word ‘Leadership’ means different things to different people and it’s been debated and researched for years. In this session, we’ll be using serious play and shared experiences to look at a leadership style that puts others first. Throughout, I’ll share my insights on what we’re trying to achieve in my organisation by encouraging a servant leadership style so that our employees can make a difference to other people’s lives. Max size: 500 chars
Long synopsis (optional):	This session is a mixture of concepts, exercises and personal insights. I’ve structured any presenting to be informal, and in way that introduces key principles. I do this by sharing my understanding of what Servant Leadership is; I talk through my personal experiences, including how my organisation has made a significant investment in organisational agility and transformation, part of which is to change the behaviours of our employees to become servant leaders. Intertwined in this session, I’ll use the concept of serious play (the theory that as children, we learned best through play), so we’ll be learning through experimenting and sharing experiences with others via games/exercises. I’ve developed and facilitated a similar session within my organisation and through conferences and I’ve found that the value of the session comes from active participation and shared experiences. I’ve adapted some exercises in this session, to allow for large or small groups. I’ll start the session with a short introduction of who I am, and why I’ve chosen servant leadership as a topic to talk about - including the background that over the past 12 months, my company made a significant investment in developing the capability of our people, and that one of the foundation training sessions I run is to encourage a servant leadership style so that our employees can make a difference to other people’s lives, and feel satisfied in their jobs. This workshop can be done with or without slides; without slides, I usually create a Kanban (Lean Coffee style) to show the agenda and progress through the topics. As a group, if one item is of particular interest, we can decide together whether to stick, or wrap up and move on to the next item. To kick off, we will do a couple of simple exercises to gauge the audience’s understanding of Servant Leadership and I’ll briefly cover a definition and some core principles. One exercise will cover ‘What do you look for in a leader? Who do you think is a great leader and why?’ Learning Outcomes: The goal is to recognise that the people who make a difference are those who care Anyone can be a leader A leader is someone you want to follow Leadership is also an action, and not a position. ~ For me, leadership is when someone can influence, inspire, and motivate action. Organisations have their own definition of what makes a good leader, though this can become outdated and sometimes the values and culture ends up straying away from what that the organisation is striving to achieve. Mastery. Servant leadership therefore emphasises developing training. In my delivery function, continuous learning and feedback is so important, as it ensures our workforce is always on top of their skillset and we’re aware of recent trends and developments (build, measure, learn cycle). Continuous learning can also help secure future leaders for your organization, hence our investment in Delivering Our Future (increase the capabilities of our Partners and develop a growth mindset to boost employee satisfaction). Throughout my career, I’ve spent time learning about what it takes to be a good leader - I’ve learnt from mistakes and I’ve had light-bulb moments. To start the next section, I’ll share my light-bulb moment about servant leadership (I’ll talk beyond by my work background) right through to today - where our Project Managers are transitioning to Delivery Leads - taking our leaders away from command and control (task managers), which is a style we often rewarded in the past, to a new era - which is mostly very uncomfortable (links to powerful behavioural changes, mindset/values and principles, that take time to embed). As Greenleaf wrote, servant leadership is a long-term concept and it’s a transformative theory that might change the way people treat leadership, servitude and authority. I’ll next share how we’re helping our employees to feel engaged and motivated (through talking a bit about autonomy, mastery and purpose). We now play another game - there is an easy and hard way to do this exercise, it all depends on the group thinking in terms of servant leadership - will they work collaboratively to get a win-win? What is the purpose of the exercise and have they thought about the brief as a shared goal? Debrief: “By competing we fail to think win-win - which is the way of servant leadership” From the audience and/or group, I'll ask some of these questions: 1. Why did it take so long for the group to come up with a win-win idea? 2. How and why is individual team/group thinking replicated in our working environment (silos) - can anyone share examples? 3. What would be required to change our mindset to ‘think first’ of serving others? 4. What is an example of a win-win result in the workplace and what did it take to produce it? 5. Can anyone share examples in the workplace where we’ve competed with other teams (worked in silos), rather than thinking about the bigger picture and working collaboratively? Learning Outcomes: Collaboration produces more win-win situations Although something may appear to be competitive, ask ourselves what is the bigger picture/gain? What is the overall purpose/vision/goal? In servant leadership, leaders are not positions and anyone can be a leader ~ Next, we’ll look at what servant leadership says about developing a personalised approach, which leads into the idea of ‘conservation of responsibility’; what are the challenges people have about describing how they switch between “under responsibility” and “over responsibility”. This often makes it harder for teams to work together, and I’ll touch on the concept that delegation is on a scale of ‘all you’ vs ‘all me’. I’ll also share a technique called Delegation Poker that’s helping our leaders to think differently. If there’s time, we can run this game in smaller groups, with me facilitating. The game is simple, and I use Jurgen Appello’s 7 levels of delegation poker cards, kick starting with simple scenarios, until the groups start creating their own scenarios and debating their thought processes. Learning Outcomes: By including others in debate more ideas can be generated, people feel more engaged and valued It’s ok to share responsibility Self awareness - understand your own natural delegation style Empathy - understand other people’s point of view on the delegation scale Since servant leadership listens to different opinions and encourages openness and discussion, it can improve innovation and experimentation. Through this, an organistion can foster and gain competitive advantage over its competitors. Openness to ideas and opinion also means servant leadership encourages diversity within the workplace. A more democratic approach to opinions can guarantee employees don’t feel alienated. The last area we touch upon is autonomy. Who doesn't want to be a Jedi master? Well, in this game, we'll look at what happens when you have a mixture of high or low autonomy/teamwork and what happens when this shifts, how does it feel and where do people prefer to be (HINT high autonomy, high team work). I’ll share an experience of HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) culture and finish on what my organisation is currently doing to break away from this and the journey we’re on to bring other parts of our business in line to this way of thinking. Max size: 5000 chars
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