Servant leadership is great, but boy, this article is a whole lot of nothing.
"To be a good leader, you need to trust your team and listen to them!" Gee, thanks.
Maybe I'm being overly critical, but there's no insight, no analysis, no practicable takeaways at all; just a bunch of GPT-esque bullet points about how some famous people are kind of nice to their employees sometimes. Feels like crappy content marketing, but there's not even any content being marketed.
Yeah, this is "servant leadership is great. Here are some examples of people who are great servant leaders: X Y Z". Great, thanks, since I don't know any of them personally, I have no use for that.
I've been reading _The Servant_ among a number of other books recently as part of a "management focus" in my role and in many ways so many of these books overlap on many of the hot-areas of leadership.
One of the big takeaways is that most of this information isn't just professional, you can (and, IMO, should use it personally).
How you handle feedback and responsibility with your direct-reports is going (most of the time) how you do/ought to do things with your own children. And with those you worship with. Valuing personal relationships isn't just for the home and friends: it's important in a business context. Taking ownership/responsibility is something you must do personally and also across all aspects of your life.
The beautiful thing is that so many of us get so stressed out because we have so much to do. However, being a good servant leader—addressing what people need rather than what they want—will often mean that you pass on things to others. This makes them feel more valuable and also means less stress for you. I did this yesterday with my son and the trash. He's got an Apple Watch and an alarm clock. So I told him: you're responsible for the trash. I'm not going to remind you about it, but if you don't do it, you sure as heck will hear about it. He relishes the idea of me not reminding him, and even though it's just taking out the trash—he likes the idea of "owning" it. (Not to mind the fact that he'll be driving in a few years... God help me!)
This is a one-weird-trick that management tries to use on underlings: they talk about motivating a sense of ownership to things. But this doesn't jive with the fact that employees are hirelings and thus have no ownership to anything in the company. But it would be convenient for management to push more of the responsibilities of ownership on the underlings, even though they will get none of the benefits.
This of course assumes that the employee has no stocks in the company... but it would have to be more than just a symbolic amount in order to count.
This attitude is the path to hell. If you own nothing (not even your own attitude, or the quality of what you are doing), then you’re a perpetual victim, always at the whims of others, and always unable to change anything that matters for you.
If you take ownership of you and what you do, and how it impacts others and can produce value, you can make choices. To say no. To say yes. To push for recognition, and leave if you don’t get it.
Owning what you’re working on (and refusing to work for someone who won’t let you) is usually a key part of mental health and actual real world success for everyone.
No one is suggesting killing yourself for someone else’s dream. That is trying to take ownership for something that you have little scope to impact, frankly, and as you note don’t see the benefits for.
I’m saying, having ownership of what you are doing and what you control is essential. Not doing so is a path to hell.
That can be the section of the codebase you’re specializing in, or just the effectiveness and quality of the code you’re producing. Or the product you’re delivering, as delivered.
If you don’t think the pay you’re getting is fair for that, then that is a separate issue - and one solved by not doing it, not by trying to pretend you had no part in the deal.
> No one is suggesting killing yourself for someone else’s dream.
Nobody makes it that explicit. Managers just ask you (your team) to deliver more story points, go the extra effort to meet a deadline, etc.
And the risk of setting boundaries (saying 'no') to the implicit ask is not being viewed as a "team player", not being promoted or given a raise, or, at worst, being fired.
I am willing to take those risks. Not everyone is.
I understand where you're coming from, I'm the same way. It's about taking pride in your work and taking responsibility for the success and quality of your own work.
As you noted, it's risky in that others may take issue with your actions, but it's not nearly as risky as the hell that is being forced to work 8 hours/day for things that don't matter to you at all.
I'll speak only for myself here, but:
Not everyone is made like that, but on the flip side it's why I'm typically respected and appreciated. And for environments that don't appreciate that attitude I quickly leave or am pushed out (generally I leave).
perfect example, a few years back I left a position due to power politics. Before I had gotten there a man had been removed as head of the It department but due to the good old boys system had wiggled his way into the CISO position.
I gave it about 8 months but at some point it became clear the CISO was using his position to ensure IT failed overall. And indeed about 3 months after I left, that's exactly what happened and the whole of IT was once again put back under this man.
I could have chosen to simply do the work, take a paycheck, and not care. That's not me. Compromises are always made, but if I fundamentally cannot take pride in my work then I don't stay.
I feel like the intended colloquial interpretation of "ownership" here is a combination of responsibility and agency. Just because you're responsible for something doesn't mean you actually have power to influence the thing. So "sense of ownership over X" is shorthand for "sense of responsibility for X plus the agency necessary to fulfill the responsibility"
If you have no ability to change the outcome, or no benefit/loss depending on the outcome, it’s pretty hard to say someone owns anything.
It someone will suffer the consequences of an outcome with no ability to change anything (or make decisions), that’s just making someone a scapegoat.
If someone can make decisions/do things but will not benefit from or lose anything from the outcome, then I’m not sure what they are (judge? Arbitrator? Ruler?) - but they don’t own the thing.
Ownership is responsibility + benefit (or loss) for an outcome IMO, protected by some kind of agreement. Societal or contractual. Title. Employment agreement/laws.
If there is positive benefit received on a good outcome + a responsibility for maintenance and the like, that is a form of ownership IMO. If a negative benefit comes from damage/destruction/bad things happening to that thing, that also tracks.
Anyone who owns real property quickly discovers there isn’t anything like truly unencumbered and unconditional ownership of anything - the first property tax bill will make that clear if nothing else.
That doesn’t mean someone doesn’t take on significant risks and benefits (hopefully) from owning it. It can still be yanked away if they don’t pay certain people or follow certain rules - or via Imminent Domain.
Someone working a job has more constrained ownership, but it still exists. And like buying a property, they need to choose carefully as they’ll still end up with consequences regardless.
Is possession == control then control == possession.
We can have a world like that, if someone worked in some role for a period of time we could have a legal process for them claim their proceeds of the enterprise. That sounds really complicated and it isn't the world we live in today.
I think the reason the word responsibility isn't used is generally you are expected to pay for people who take responsibilities off your hands. A plumber takes responsibility for your toilet problem, if you also have a unrelated faucet problem he can take responsibility for that as well, but not for free. On the other hand, owners aren't expected to be paid like that as they profit off the overall health of the enterprise, without providing that sort of mechanism, I don't see how you have any real ownership.
Not if the deal was that they got a flat pay rate regardless, then anyone would expect they wouldn’t be busting their ass either.
If they get a bonus, then if they did a better job they’d have a right to expect a good bonus. Equity, a higher share valuation (modulo how little control there may actually be there).
I think the thing you’re struggling here is with scope.
For an hourly employee, the ownership extends about as far as ‘what I can do within the hour I’m there, and how can I do it the best I can’.
For the plumber example, it’s owning fixing the toilet. If it breaks because they did a shitty job, it’s also taking care of making sure it’s done right. If the faucet is part of the job, it’s making sure that is done right too (or they say no, I can’t/won’t).
Doing the faucet for free is stepping out of their area.
More ownership, more risk, more scope (all scope sometimes) more upside/downside, less direct payment.
Someone paid a salary is getting a lot of risk reduction (almost all, frankly), and it would be very odd for whoever is paying them to give up all their upside AND take all the risk of it not working.
It seems to be a fairly common usage. Perhaps "Responsibility" is less ambiguous but it doesn't have the same connotation of "right to control" that "ownership" has, so isn't perfect either.
I agree with your comment, but I think the post above is trying to make another point: That in companies you often are expected to take ownership (or are assigned ownership), although the environment does not allow you to make choices - which you refer to as a consequence of having true ownership, right?
What I noticed decently often is that the safe decisions you can make are fairly constrained. By safe I mean that even if things don't go well you will not be held too responsible in a material way. This might be communicated directly but usually is just a constant background vibe reinforced by the company/social norms. You can step over that line and make un-safe decisions but then the risk is implicitly more directly on you.
That's the way I generally understand ownership to work in this context.
I should have the authority to make decisions about how to execute a project I'm given (or take) responsibility of.
In the context of "Servant Leadership," how well I execute the task should inform my manager's response. If it is not done correctly/well, I should get the feedback needed to ensure I don't repeat those mistakes. Future work assignments should be adjusted based on how "wrong" my work was. Maybe the project was too complex, and I should be given a more limited scope for the next one, or maybe being shown the corrections is sufficient to trust me with the same level of work next time.
If you have no actual ability to make choices at all (including what you do, how you do it, what choices you make, etc.), then yes you have no ownership except for your turning the crank and how well you do it.
Which is still a thing. It’s rarely that tightly constrained however.
Completely and utterly false. Even a slave owns his own mind and how it reacts to things. (Insert Stoic spiel here.) And it is best to cultivate a mind which is in accordance with the Serenity Prayer.
Another thing entirely is what you formally own. I mean as in by-law, not some aspirational or motivational bullshit. And someone is trying to manipulate you if they try to foist the responsibilities of ownership onto you (even if it is just in your own mind—staying late, fretting about it in the shower, etc.) by encouraging “taking ownership” without actually physically letting you own it.
> Owning what you’re working on (and refusing to work for someone who won’t let you) is usually a key part of mental health and actual real world success for everyone.
As far as I can tell you lazide are in agreement. If your comment didn't start with "Completely and utterly false" I'd think you were writing a supporting/reinforcing follow-up!
Hrmph. This is what often happens on the internet:
- Someone makes a cynical comment on some specific topic
- Someone else makes a completely inappropriate extrapolation and concludes—based on nothing—that the first poster is making an argument for being defeatist and negative for its own sake
- The first poster has to then correct this inappropriate extrapolation—which was based on nothing—by stating that, yes, it is good to (say) have a positive attitude in your life
- Onlookers act puzzled as the first poster is contradicting himself (apparently) by hostilely agreeing with the second poster that having a good mind-attitude in life is good!
So yes I suppose I could be agreeing with the second poster...
I was making a cynical comment on management. You bust in out of nowhere and claim that I am making a case for being a “victim” in general. I correct your inappropriate extrapolation by stating that I was narrowly talking about what this one-weird-trick by managers is trying to achieve, which has exactly nothing to do with how one decides to govern ones attitude towards life. You then act confused when it turns out that I am not arguing for being a “victim”, a conclusion that you just pulled out of your ass.
And that's about four more sentences of extra clarification that none of your comments have even deserved.
By ownership, the OP means "accountable in the micro". Even if you don't own the company or the macro, there is a sense of cultivating your own skills and mental well-being when you make yourself accountable in the micro.
It’s also just as often detrimental and leads to burnout when that “accountability” is a delusion pushed by management because the employee has no real control and the whims of management override any real choices they can make.
When someone really has ownership, management has to come to terms with the fact that the owner may make choices that are suboptimal to the company for the sake of their or their teams’ sanity. The majority of management never make that mental leap.
Good leadership (which servant leadership is intended to facilitate) is all about fixing those problems. Management shouldn't override any real choices on a whim, and management should work to align incentives such that an owner acts in everybody's best interests at once
100%. It's a cheap motivational "hack" to call it ownership, but it's just responsibility without little power to make necessary changes. A recipe for frustration.
In the example with the trash above, can the boy now choose to get a bigger trash can, so that he does not have to carry it outside so often? ;-)
You may not have ownership of the company but you can have ownership within the scope of your work. For instance, as a developer there are so many areas which involve decision making from code design, testability, reliability, observability, choice of tooling, non-functional roadmap, documentation and onboarding etc. Of course, working within an organizational framework, you may not have infinite degrees of freedom across these, but if you don't have at least a handful of degrees of freedom in what you do, then you depend on somebody to tell you exactly what needs to be done all the time and your work will not be very interesting.
Managers are underlings in that sense too. They don't own enough stock or have enough influence that they would rationally be thinking of the gains they'd make in their stock.
Managers take ownership because they're looking for their project to succeed, they want to advance their career, etc. and the same applies to "underlings"
> This of course assumes that the employee has no stocks in the company
I'm grateful that I get to work for a company that encourages growth and promotes heavily from the inside. Not all organizations are like this. But Servant leadership and companies growing quickly go hand in hand.
I'm confused as to what you think work is. Managers are just hirelings as well. They have different responsibilities, which includes effective delegation. If you think "ownership" of a process is just a trick to get employees to work, what's the alternative here? You're responsible for the outcomes of this process but don't own it and thus can't guide the direction of it? That sounds patently terrible.
The benefit of owning a process is the control you have over it. I can't tell you how many times I've heard engineers bitch about the decisions made over their head that they have to conform to. But now engineers apparently are just going to bitch if given control over the process. There's no winning with some of you.
What kind of ownership entails “salaries” based on “areas of ownership”? This just seems confused.
Of course! If you have ownership of something then you also bear the burden in case of loss or mismanagement. Blatantly obvious answer to a useless intended-as-rhetorical question.
> He relishes the idea of me not reminding him, and even though it's just taking out the trash—he likes the idea of "owning" it
Kudos to you.
The worst part of owning chores like trash and dishwasher stuff as a teenager was that inevitably it didn’t matter when I had planned to do the thing. My parents would get on my case about not having done the thing yet. Sometimes literally as I emerged from my room to go do the thing, I would get reminded that I need to do the thing. Thanks mom I know I’m on my way.
Always felt like that robbed me of the opportunity to shine.
What I’ve learned since then is that it’s extremely hard to need something done and rely on others to make it happen. The internal stress of “I could do this in 10min but I gotta let the junior team members spend 2 hours fumbling around so they can learn” … oof.
＞ How you handle feedback and responsibility with your direct-reports is going (most of the time) how you do/ought to do things with your own children
Your children don't have the option to show you the finger and move to another family. Nor (hopefuly) are you paying them to be your kids.
I think it fundamentally changes what you should expect from one and not the other, especially regarding responsibilities and ownership. And I'm sure you won't address your son not taking out the trash the same you'd deal with a team member that don't release the features on time.
> I think it fundamentally changes what you should expect from one and not the other
Not exactly. I want my kids to become great people. I genuinely care about them and their well-being.
This is the same thing with the people that I work with and for. I care about them and want to them to get better.
> And I'm sure you won't address your son not taking out the trash the same you'd deal with a team member that don't release the features on time.
Maybe, maybe not. Did they "give the finger" or did something just happen that is a learning experience? If it's a communication problem, these are fundamentally easy to address.
> I care about them and want to them to get better.
Those are the same words but pointing to a radically different reality.
I care about my coworkers being healthy, but there are clear boundaries that I won't pass over. If they drink all nights all week stay alive during the day through piles of enerfy drinks, I won't have much to say if it doesn't affect their work.
Same way I can go any length to help my kid succeed at school, including changing school, paying for tuitions, changing their diet and whole life rythm to improve their focus etc. Helping my colleagues succeed goes as much as talking to them and changing their tasks/career path.
This critique of mine is abstract, and maybe even wrong. I feel like this is a way of disguising the reality of power, and how at least in western society, power is really focused on conformity.
The average workplace rehashes the same dramatics as the average sixth grade class cohort. Which makes sense if you consider that education is mostly about learning how to conform, and follow the instructions given to you. Even with servant leadership.
There's very little taught about building solidarity, or altruism, or good-faith debate in a system aimed at producing a national work force instead of global citizens.
What does leadership mean when you are serving a system that relies on making people conform?
Yeah. At its root, all of this only matters because it makes people feel like they own more of the company than they actually do. People work hard and care when they feel like they own the product of their labor - the actual product, not just cash compensation for rendering their services.
When people feel alienated from the product of their labor, that's what feels demotivating.
So obviously in a capitalist system, the solution is to try to make people feel as much like owners as possible without actually giving them ownership in the only way that actually matters in a capitalist framework - in equity in the company.
Maybe it's just me, but when people higher up in the hierarchy than me insist on describing themselves with "low status" labels, it really rubs me the wrong way. This is something I think the military does a good job of avoiding via clarity of rank.
And speaking of the military, Jocko Willink's Extreme Ownership idea is a similar concept to "servant leadership" without the cognitive dissonance. The basic concept being: the leader takes responsibility for everything that goes wrong, full stop.
I get the idea, my problem is that in actuality, the leader is not serving the team. He is leading it and when a hard decision has to be made, the leader is taking it whether the team likes it or not. This isn’t the position of a servant. It’s a fake masking of the real power dynamics at play.
I get the same vibe from “flat” management structures. People can claim that there is no superiority in the org chart and that everyone is equal, but in reality it never works this way.
No one is suggesting that servant leadership is implying their leader is actually a _servant_. Rather, it implies that serving your team humbly should be a priority over stroking your own ego. I'm not sure how useful it is to generalize the concept as "fake masking". Do some people use it as an ego trip? Sure. Are some people good leaders with their people's interest in mind? Absolutely.
Many times in life, someone has to make a call and it's usually the person in charge. Not sure why that has to have malicious intent behind it. You don't have to like the decisions your leaders make, but that doesn't inherently make them bad leaders just because the team isn't 100% on board. (I will concede that good leaders will take the time to get the team on board. It's usually laziness to explain the "why" that results in teams not being on board. That or ego prevents them from letting go of their ideas.)
You don't have to like the decisions your leaders make, but that doesn't inherently make them bad leaders just because the team isn't 100% on board.
No no, I'm not saying this at all. I'm completely fine with the leader making the decision, I just have an issue with the narrative that they're a "servant" serving the team. And if no one is suggesting this, why call it "servant leadership"?
That is what I mean by "fake masking." All of the best leaders I've encountered are cognizant of the fact that they are in charge and thus have more responsibility and decision-making power – and don't try to pretend that somehow they are "servants."
I think our disagreement here may largely be semantics. To be clear, I'd never label myself a "servant leader". I agree I think it's ingenuous to do so. However, if other people use that terminology to describe a type of leader—I get the picture they're trying to paint.
So to be clear, I agree the label is weird and cheesy and maybe should only be used to describe a type of leader (which again, I'd argue is just a good leader). Leaders absolutely should hold themselves to a higher standard due to their responsibility for the good of the team and the fact that they DO have more power.
I'm still not clear on what "pretending" to be a servant would look like. If I'm a shift manager and someone needs to sweep the floors before we leave and one of my team members is a teenager with an exam the next day—damn straight, I'm going go send them home early and sweep up myself. That's "serving" them—putting them before myself. But quite frankly it's also just the right thing to do. So in a sense, yeah I'm a servant in that I am serving my team members, but holy hell if you say, "Yeah, I'm a servant leader so why don't you go ahead and take off early." You're a cheesehead, a weirdo, and probably not actually a good leader. And in that case yeah I agree it's a weird play.
“Maybe it's just me, but when people higher up in the hierarchy than me insist on describing themselves with "low status" labels, it really rubs me the wrong way.”
Totally agree. Reminds me of a lot of articles some years ago where some millionaires called themselves “minimalist” because they had given up their kitchens and other things and eating at restaurants all the time.
It's "underrated" because at most of our employers it doesn't exist. Some might pretend it does, maybe some even believe they're doing it. We all serve the at the alter of next quarterly financial report.
I would recommend Turn the Ship Around! by David Marquet, former submarine captain who effected a significant turnaround on their nuclear submarine. He empowered his chiefs to take more ownership and responsibility and the rest of the crew. I think it reflects more realistically how things go and I really appreciate his side comments at getting pissed off at subordinates and the allure of being the "captain in charge giving orders". He also mentions the need for technical competence and also clear direction from leadership for this to work.
The challenge with "Servant Leadership," like many popular things, is that once it becomes a buzzword objective for "good", it becomes a mask for people who wish for leadership. As a name for a set of particular mindset driven behaviors of leaders, it is great. Performative mimicry of those behaviors without the associated change in mindset is similar to a cargo cult[2], unmoored from the producing virtue it becomes a source of cognitive dissonance.
Mindset: "We define mindsets as core beliefs or assumptions that we have about a domain or category of things, that orient us to a particular set of expectations, explanations and goals." --Dr. Alia Crum [0]
Virtue: "Stable dispositions to perform socially desirable actions in a manner that is sincerely motivated by shared values." --Edward Slingerland from "Trying Not To Try" [1]
Gandhi and Nadella as servant leaders? That's hilariously incorrect.
Gandhi was well known to be incredibly stubborn and exclusionary of outside opinion in the Indian National Congress. He'd impose his ideas onto an unwilling Congress and populace, and a some of them led to a level of blood shed that no other 'peaceful' movement has ever seen.
Satya Nadella came into a deeply suspicious Microsoft. It was a political and paranoid mess, owing to Ballmer's stack ranking setup. Satya Nadella had to rebuild the company's culture from the ground up, and listening to/trusting leaders who had got there through the cut-throat policies of the previous leadership was not the way.
> Anne Mulcahy was Xerox’s CEO. When she became CEO on Aug 1, 2001, the stock price was $8.25, and on Jan 1, 2002. when she became chairwoman. the stock price was $10.05. On May 21, 2009, the day she announced her retirement as CEO, the stock price was $6.82
But not sure why someone would think this is a good example.
> To sum it up, servant leadership is about genuinely caring for your team, listening to their needs and involving them in decision-making. By shifting the spotlight from the leader to the team, you can spark trust, creativity and innovation.
The article is a little too Linkediny for my liking.
I was very fortunate to serve a servant leader at my previous job. It was a great finale to a decade-long streak of very good bosses through my career. I've now settled into a place where my supervisor is unstable, threatening, and scatterbrained. Obviously he has issues, and I hope those get resolved in a constructive way. Learning to survive under this type of leadership is my big challenge.
The "Examples of servant leaders" is where the newsletter lost me. The overall message of the piece is good, but Oprah doesn't focus on money? Come on. She'll push anything for a buck and often exploits people's misery. Maybe she does treat her employees well, but she is a horrible human being.
But ultimately it's not about book learning, it's living by example, "having your compass point true north" as my Commanding Officer at Old College, Sandhurst would say. Or another of his favourites "Do not what you want to, but what you ought to"
One quality I have found that works well for me (but can be hard especially in the moment) is to respond with compassion.
Someone is annoyed at work and an argument is getting heated? Try responding with compassion to deescalate and prod a little to see what could be behind that raised emotion.
Its hard - you have to actively moderate your own emotional state and avoid being swept up by others'. When I can manage it though I feel much better about handling all sorts of stressful situations.
Its one quality I would hope to find in any form of leadership, but especially for those who espouse a servant leadership methodology
i'd say i live the principles of servant leadership in my team but would never ever call myself that - part of my definition is also not being a narcissist patting his own back on linkedin while doing it, which almost everyone quoting useless influencers like simon sinek will eventually do. and boy does a name like "servant leadership" promote virtue-signalling.
in the end all those frameworks are simplified platitudes with no real actual guidance. you build your own style with experience, based on your personality, your team, your goals - not some self-help crap.
>> Managers who believe in servant leadership prioritize the well-being of their team instead of focusing on their objectives.
This is not really true and totally impossible when presented as simplistic competing approaches. What it really means is look for the compatible path in service of both, let the action plans bubble up vs dictate down, and own & share in the impact (and shit work) when corporate objectives trump personal and team objectives (it's gonna happen). In other words, the leader is the ocean, not the boat.
I once was rejected from a leadership position at a very large company for mentioning that my management style reflected servant leadership. They actually called it out to me during one of our interview meetings as a negative and a primary reason for them to not proceed with my application. I did not expect them to see servant leadership as a negative! I guess they thought it meant I would be a doormat, and unable to effect change.
I’ll keep banging the gong—Jocko Willink is a treasure trove of knowledge when it comes to leadership. Servant leadership is really just “good” leadership.
It is a name that comes from the New Testament of the Bible. It might be that Christianity is not really your thing, that's ok. As long as you can use it to make life better for your colleagues, call it whatever you need to. :)
I agree that serving others is the ideal form of leadership. I mean those generic leadership posters you'd find in any office or school of the leader helping push a boulder or being on the front line with everyone is pretty common sense right?
What I don't get about servant leadership is why people put it in their LinkedIn profiles, CVs, or boast about the term. Most of those people are obnoxious.
I used to be a manager. Not a particularly good one, but I did earn a fair amount of loyalty with the team and they worked pretty hard. I would tell them pretty regularly that I work actually work for them. My job was to provide direction, remove roadblocks, and help them be successful. And I did care about those things, so that went a long way.
So your boss told you (or it was in your contract) that if all your reports quit, your job would be terminated? Did that ever happen to anyone in the company?
You’re attempting to redefine the verb “to fire” in a twisted way regardless
The term is derived from American evangelical Christians of the late 20th century, and will always be tainted by them.
Even if there's something good to say about de-religionized practices, right now it is a likely indicator that the person advocating it is a proselytizing Christian.
"To be a good leader, you need to trust your team and listen to them!" Gee, thanks.
Maybe I'm being overly critical, but there's no insight, no analysis, no practicable takeaways at all; just a bunch of GPT-esque bullet points about how some famous people are kind of nice to their employees sometimes. Feels like crappy content marketing, but there's not even any content being marketed.