When most people think of servants and servitude the last thing they think of is a leader. But often times the best leaders are servants to those that they lead. A servant leader is a leader that is “attentive to the concerns of their followers, empathize with them, and nurture them. Servant leaders put followers first, empower them, and help them develop their full personal capacities” (Northouse, 2016, P. 225). These kinds of leaders are actually very common among people in leadership roles today. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that unless a leader is willing to be a servant, they can’t be a good leader. However, even amongst servant leaders it is difficult to find leaders that truly serve with their whole being. I was lucky enough to get a good example of a servant leader as early as my senior year of high school. My high school football coach was an exemplary servant leader. He was hired to take over the head coaching position my senior year, and he embodied all the most important characteristics of the position: He put, his players first, he empathized with us, and he worked to develop us beyond football.
My coach would put the health and well-being of his players first above all else. He made sure we had water readily available so we wouldn’t dehydrate. He made sure we would take whatever time to recover we needed if we were injured, and he made sure we had time to study our playbooks so we could be prepared for practice. But he didn’t just stop at our physical well-being. He also made a point to care for our mental well-being. He realized we were all in school, and made sure that we understood that school came first. At our school a 2.2 GPA was the minimum to play sports. A personal policy he had was that he wouldn’t let you play if your GPA dropped below a 2.5. He wanted to make sure we were all succeeding academically. And if for some reason we were struggling in school, he would talk to our teachers for us. He would get us the help we needed to do better. He did just help us in and give what we needed to succeed in football, but also what we needed to succeed in school.
Empathy was one of the traits I admired most about my coach. My coach worked hard to foster a sense of brotherhood amongst the team. He tried to build a community where we could all “identify with something greater than themselves that they value. Servant leaders build community to provide a place where people can feel safe and connected with others, but are still allowed to express their own individuality. “ (Northouse, 2016, P. 229). He treated all our individual concerns with care, but even when he addressed them he did so in a way that would bring the team closer together. And because he worked so hard to foster that attitude amongst us players he became a part of the atmosphere too. He became part of us. When we were happy, he was happy. When we were hyped up, he was hyped up. And when we were sad and in tears, so was he. My clearest example of this was when we lost in the playoffs that year. The whole team had worked hard to get back to the playoffs for the first time in almost a decade, and he could tell. So, when we lost there was no shortage of tears, and even he had to wipe his eyes. Out previous head coach seemed to just take losses in stride, but this coach felt the same as us players, and it really showed. His empathy for us and our work was “confirming and validating for the followers. It makes the followers feel unique.” (Northouse, 2016, P. 227). The fact that he was not there for us, but there with us made him us all feel as if our response was valid. He made us feel special that whole season with a firm belief in us, and that had culminated to the best season our school had seen in more than a decade.
My coach didn’t just want us to be good football players, he also wanted us to be good people. My coach placed a “premium on treating each follower as a unique person with intrinsic value that goes beyond his or her tangible contributions to the organization. Servant leaders are committed to helping each person in the organization grow personally and professionally. “(Northouse, 2016, P. 228). The motto for the season was “accountability, toughness, love”. And he wanted us to grow in all those categories. He would try to help us grow in each of these categories in several ways. To foster love, he tried to build a community amongst us. He would do this by having us engage in team building exercises. And not just exercises like icebreakers, or other things like that, but through service. He would have us do service together so that we not only got closer to each other, but also to the community. To make us tougher he would put us through a grueling practice every day. He would push us all to our limit, so that we would be physically and mentally stronger for it. And the thing he placed the highest value on was accountability. He insisted that we finish whatever job we had started to completion. And if we didn’t finish it, then he would punish up with some sort of physical punishment that was harder than the original task. Eventually we had all learned that finishing the original task was in our best interest, and we all improved to not leave task unfinished or finished poorly. Through all this he had made us not just better football players, but better people.
My coach was a wonderful example of a good servant leader, and even more than that a good leader overall. He put his players first, had empathy for us, and worked hard to help us grow as people. And much like any good leader he got us to get results. Sure, we didn’t win the state championship that year, but we made it to the playoffs, and that was farther than we had expected to get. He served us and because of that we served him. He cared for us and helped us grow not just as football players, but also as people.
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership theory and practice (7th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Michelle Lew says
A great servant leader who is attentive to their followers can go hand-in-hand with team leadership. In this football example, the coach recognized that each individual is a part of the overall team, so if one falters, the rest will follow. The individualized attention of servant leadership is culminated into a larger team leadership. The coach is simply focusing on the strength of the building blocks before focusing on the whole house.
As team leadership is focused on team needs and outcomes (PSU WC, 2019, L. 9, p. 6), Hackman (2012) posits how effective teams hold eight specific characteristics of excellence that are evident as “enabling conditions.” These conditions help foster task work or delegation so that each individual is accountable for their own responsibilities. The organizational or sports team context helps to reinforce and promote excellence. The last condition is where the coach’s servant leadership is the strongest as he provides assistance and coaching in whatever field the players may need it. Each of the eight characteristics falls into each of the three conditions, though some may be more evident in one or the other.
Northouse (2016) outlines the characteristics of excellence by matching enabling conditions with characteristics of team excellence. First, having a compelling purpose or mutual direction is matched with the characteristics of having a clear, elevating goal matched with a results-driven structure that promotes achievement of the mentioned goal. By requiring that the players maintain a 2.5 GPA in order to play football helps maintain team focus in academics. While the group is unified through football, the coach is well aware that academics should be first priority and sports is extracurricular rather than a replacement for studying. The enabling condition of having the “right people” is created by competent team-members. This is achieved similarly through the GPA requirement so that players can have a moderate level of problem solving and creative thinking skills. With health and well-being put first, the coach is able to maintain the safety and long-term inclusion of the players so that they are not injured or fall behind in other aspects of their academic development. Holding the condition of a real team may be the simplest to achieve in this example as each player is already determined to work together on the field with unified commitment and constant collaboration. The coach is no different from the players as he is aligned with the student’s success as much as the student is. Clear norms of conduct are seen in standards of excellence, also tracing back to the GPA required and personal development that the coach was able to foster with individualized attention. Because he is a leader and part of the school staff, he was able to provide external support for the students through talking with teachers and sourcing any supportive resources that may benefit the players. Much of the coach’s servant leadership helps the team through team-focused coaching and the characteristic of principled leadership. The coach is able to ethically support and strengthen the whole team by motivating each individual player. While the coach wasn’t only focused on football, he was able to push his players to “be good people” in all factors of life.
As the leader of the team, the coach is only a part of the group and acts with great servitude so that the whole team can be elevated without any one individual bringing them down. By managing team dynamics to attain the unified purpose, the coach aims to serve each player so that the player may reach their optimal potential in all fields of life.
Resources:
Hackman, J. R. (2012). From causes to conditions in group research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33, 428-444.
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2019). PSYCH 485 Lesson 9: Team Leadership. Retrieved from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/canvas/su19/2195min-5376/content/09_lesson/printlesson.html