“Servant leaders put followers first, empower them, and help them develop their full personal capacities” (Northouse, 2016, p. 225). This quote from the text rang true to me when I first read it. Today there are too many leaders that are just out for themselves. Personally, these are the leaders that I do not follow, but I learn from in the sense that I know what not to do. In the Marine Corps, many servant leaders may seem weak to the culture and looked down upon by some of the senior leaders. They just don’t understand why a leader should serve their followers. However this could not be further from the truth. For the health of the organization, we as leaders must engage in some kind of servant leadership. We must not only ensure our work and development is achieved, but also must look to groom these junior leaders to take over for us someday. We simply cannot do this without some form of servant leadership.
Spears lays out ten characteristics that are central to servant leadership (Northouse, 2016, p. 227-228). They are listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. I will just touch on a few that have been integral to my work as a servant leader.
1. Listening is the process of communicating interactively that includes sending AND receiving messages (Northouse, 2016, p. 227). Most leaders forget that they need to actually listen to their followers. They hear them, but unless they actually listen to them, their followers won’t feel validated and it will seem like the leader doesn’t really care.
2. Empathy is putting yourself in the shoes of the follower and “attempting to see the world from that person’s point of view.” As a servant leader it is important that you show the follower that you are at least trying to understand what they are going through. This can make the follower feel validated and tht you actually care.(Northouse, 2016, p. 227)
3. Stewardship is taking responsibility for the actual leadership role entrusted to the individual (Northouse, 2016, p. 228). The leader must not just think about being charge, but must also commit to manage the people they have been entrusted with and ensure the health of the organization. In the Marine Corps, this means not just leading your Marines, but ensuring the health of the organization is ensured for the future.
4. Commitment to the growth of people is treating each follower as a unique person that is not just a cog in the system, but someone that has value beyond the organization (Northouse, 2016, p. 228). A key component of this is ensuring that each follower can grow both personally and professionally.
As a leader, being able to develop our follower’s needs to be a priority right below mission accomplishment. If we are unable to serve the needs of our followers, we will lose them and their contributions will pale in comparison to if we ensured they were taken care of. In my experience in the Marine Corps, this has never been more evident than in the case of Corporal Smith. Corporal Smith was a Marine with unlimited potential, but no one took the time to actually see it. She was great with her analytical skills, very well physically fit, and had a lot of life experience to draw from to relate to the rest of the platoon. However, all they saw was someone that acted immature and just didn’t care so they treated her as such. Using just those 4 key concepts as I laid out above myself and Gunnery Sergeant Cisneros were able to actually turn this Marine around and she turned out to be one of our greatest assets on a deployment. She was crying out for someone to actually care and we took the time to work with her.
In the model of servant leadership discussed in the text, one of the antecedent conditions that is integral to servant leadership is follower receptivity (Northouse, 2016, p. 232). Not all followers are receptive to servant leadership. They may see it as micromanaging and be averse to it. Evidence however has shown that when the follower desires it, it has had a positive impact on performance (Northouse, 2016, p. 233). In the case of Corporal Smith, she turned out to be very open to it. Prior to myself and Gunny Cisneros taking over her platoon, no leaders had ever taken the time to actually care about her as a person. They just saw her as someone that had messed up in the past and they never gave her an opportunity to grow. She was continually written off and essentially just told to “shut up and color.” When we sat her down and began to actually learn about her, it was sadly the first time any leaders in the Marine Corps had taken the time to get to know her and she appreciated that. We did not treat her as a screw up and saw her as an actual person that had value. She was open to servant leadership.
The servant leader behaviors we utilized with not only her, but the rest of the platoon, had a profound effect on her development. The main behaviors we utilized in her case were emotional healing, putting followers first, helping followers grow and succeed, and empowering.
Emotional healing “involves being sensitive to the personal concerns and the well-being of others” (Northouse, 2016, p. 233). Corporal Smith had many issues from her past and present that contributed to her acting out. She was worried that all her leaders would always be like that and thought “what’s the point of trying?” By simply listening to her and understanding where she was coming from when she said her leaders had constantly kicked her when she was down, we were able help her to show her we actually cared instead of just writing her off like in the past.
Putting followers first is “using actions and words that clearly demonstrate to followers that their concerns are a priority… It may mean a leader breaks from his or her own tasks to assist followers with theirs” (Northouse, 2016, p.234). In the case of Corporal Smith, even though we were extremely busy with our work while deployed, we never missed an opportunity to talk to our Marines when they needed it and we constantly were at odds with our leadership for standing up and helping Corporal Smith. They felt she was a waste of time and that we shouldn’t stick our necks out to help her, but in doing so she saw our commitment and worked even harder for us.
Helping followers grow and succeed is knowing their personal and professional goals and heling them to accomplish them (Northouse, 2016, p. 234). Everyone gets out of the Marine Corps at some point. It doesn’t matter if you get out after 4 years or retire after thirty. Something we stressed to the platoon and especially Corporal Smith was that the needed to be prepared to get out. In her case, we took the time to find out what she planned on doing when she got out. Initially it was just “I don’t know, probably go to college.” We learned what her interests and aspiration were and found out what she actually wanted to study. We found programs for her to begin while she was in and got her information on the ones she could begin to apply for then for after the Marine Corps. We also found out what she actually wanted to do instead of just sitting in a corner and began to assist her to achieve those professional goals. In the Marine Corps this is the most important job of a leader. You have to be able to commit to doing tasks outside the normal work related things to ensure your Marines are set up to be good productive civilians when they leave the organization.
Empowering refers to allowing the followers to be independent, make decisions on their own, and be self-sufficient (Northouse, 2016, p. 235). This allows the followers to share power with the leaders and gives them some sense of control. In her case, we saw her potential to lead. She was a seasoned analyst and had taken many classes. She even had a prior degree in intelligence studies. Instead of keeping her in a corner, we actually put her in charge of the analysts and empowered her to be in charge of training them for the deployment. We also let he lead physical training sometimes. She went from never being around, to constantly being in the classroom and working with the junior analysts in the platoon. We found her keeping them late to complete the instruction and training and she would actually show up early and ready to do physical training. She had never felt like her value to a platoon could be realized. All we really did was give her the opportunity to use this value and she came around quickly and became one of the best Marines we had.
The last part of the model are the outcomes. The final outcome of servant leadership according to Greenleaf, is to create healthy organizations that nurture individual growth, strengthen organizational performance, and produce a positive impact on society (Northouse, 2016, p. 236). The first outcome of servant leadership is follower performance and growth. Corporal Smith was able to realize her potential as a Marine and as an individual. She went from being one of the worst in the battalion, to receiving multiple awards for her contributions to the mission while deployed. She was recognized as one of the best analysts in the battalion, and she was put in charge of the battalion analyst training upon return from our deployment. The performance of the organization not only benefited from her training upon return, but her ability to quickly analyze the situation while deployed and have the foresight to recognize developing trends in her area of responsibility had a noticeable impact on the operational planning of the units she was supporting. The societal impact she has had is in her work now. She works in Africa for an aid organization. She had never thought of helping others before we worked with her, but from out talks she decided she wanted to work with the less fortunate.
Servant leadership does not always work, but when the conditions are right, it can have a profound impact on the leadership and the followers. I learned a great deal about leadership from working with Corporal Smith. I continue to use the lessons I learned everywhere I have gone. I still talk to her and she lets me know that the effect the leadership of Gunny Cisneros and I still resonates to this day. She has gone on to live in Africa and is working with organizations over there to help the less fortunate. She is applying the principles of servant leadership without even knowing it.
References:
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.). Los Angeles: Sage Publications.