Talk: Putting others first: How to develop a Servant Leadership style
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Speaker:
Natasha Ah-Fat
Talk description
Title:
Putting others first: How to develop a Servant Leadership style
Short synopsis:
Retailers are operating under challenging and ever changing times. To survive, my organisation responded to this through agile transformation. I work for a large UK retailer with a unique core principle that’s been around for over a century. It identifies that the ‘happiness of all it’s members’ relies on their ‘worthwhile and satisfying employment’. I’d like to share how this early thinking strongly correlates to what we’re trying to achieve by encouraging a leadership style that puts others first. In this case study, you'll learn about how we're embracing a style of leadership that empowers our people, some of the challenges we faced and hopefully take away some tips on what you can also do to support the people you work with.
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Long synopsis (optional):
This session is a case study with personal insights on how my organisation went through agile and lean transformation. Specifically, I’ll talk about how we want to encourage a servant leadership style so that our employees can make a difference to other people’s lives. I’ll touch upon how servant leadership links closely to our unique democratic principles, which have been around for over a century. In this session, I’ll share my understanding of what Servant Leadership is; I talk through my personal experiences of supporting Delivery Leads transitioning from Project Managers, which was part of a significant investment my organisation made under organisational agility and transformation. Part of my responsibility is to develop skills capabilities and behaviours of our employees to become servant leaders, moving away from traditional command and control styles. Almost 80% of last years’ overall IT training budget was ringfenced for delivery employees alone, catering for 220 permanent staff (less than half of all our permanent staff members). The programme of work for skills capability build was called Delivering our Future, and it was developed in recognition that UK retailers are operating in ever challenging and changing times (Brexit, continuous discounting, shift from shop floor to online, ecommerce more competitive, technology changes faster than ever etc). In addition, over the past 5-6 years, my organisation invested heavily in major ‘super tanker’ programmes to deliver strategic, foundational platforms and solutions, but we were slow to deliver value, and respond to our customers changing needs. Not to mention, they were a nightmare to run, were over-complicated and over-engineered. Looking ahead at our future portfolio, our ambition is high and we recognised that to deliver demand, our IT delivery engine needed to respond to change faster. Further, to retain talent, we wanted to empower and equip our employees with the right skills to deliver, and provide an exciting place to learn new skills and develop our interests. I’ve based this case study on a similar session on Servant Leadership that I developed and facilitate within my organisation. I had an initial target of reaching all permanent employees that work in our IT delivery engine by Spring 2019, although this is now expanding to many other technology & change functions, as well as our other business units- I’ve found that most of the value came from sharing experiences, which is why I was compelled to tell this story. I’ll introduce the session with an 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. Leadership is a well known topic. The word ‘Leadership’ means different things to different people and it’s been debated and researched for years. I’ll briefly cover a definition and some core principles of servant leadership and ask ‘What do you look for in a leader? Who do you think is a great leader and why?’ Learning Outcomes: To recognise that the people who make a difference to us 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. To recognise that satisfaction and value comes from serving others A leader is someone you want to follow and someone who cares ~ 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. Our founder may have been ahead of his time when he lay down some principles of what he thought made great leaders - and curiously, on the whole, his ideas describe servant leadership. Mastery. Servant leadership also 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 organisation, 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 my work background) right through to today - where our Project Managers have transitioned 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 takes time to embed. I’ll share some of the things we’re doing to support our leaders with this often uncomfortable (new roles, skills matrix, communities, buddying, new line management structure, foundational training, learning journeys and showcases to name a few). 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). Purpose. “By competing we fail to think win-win - which is the way of servant leadership”. Here, I’ll answer some of these questions: How and why individual team/group occurs in our working environment (silos) What did some of our leaders say would be required to change our mindset to ‘think first’ of serving others I’ll give an example where teams have competed with other teams (or worked in silos), rather than thinking about the bigger picture and working collaboratively - and how we changed this in our Digital teams 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 will lead us onto 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. I’ll share Jurgen Appello’s 7 levels of delegation poker cards and how I've used this as a coach to get people to think and behave differently. 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 organisation 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 - which is a core principle in where I work today. The last area we touch upon is autonomy. 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.
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