When I look at my own experience and leadership roles through the analytical lens of servant leadership one of the most rewarding aspects is helping followers grow and succeed.  I have worked with many bosses and some of them did more than manage over the years.  Servant leadership was hidden in their behaviors and became part of mine as a result of the positive behaviors I learned and outcomes I experienced.

Those who demonstrated leadership always had at least one aspect of servant leadership that stood out for me, they would take dedicated time to help followers grow and succeed.  “At its core, helping followers grow and succeed is about aiding these individuals to become self-actualized, reaching their fullest human potential” (Northouse, 2021).  I would not be a leader today if a few of my leaders hadn’t taken the time to get to know me, my own personal goals, and helped me identify ways to accomplish those aspirations.  Those leaders that were the best took time to meet one on one, review urgent work and discuss strategy, but these meetings also became opportunities to build personal relationships, coach, or ask for advice.

The best leaders also looked for feedback from me on what they were doing and how to deal with certain situations which had the effect of empowering me to speak up and think for myself rather than just doing what the ‘boss’ said. Northouse (2021) identifies empowerment as building followers confidence to think for themselves, and be confident in taking action based on their own judgement.  These one-on-one sessions were great opportunities for developing that judgement and thinking capability.  Often this would become a collaborative effort leading to greater shared outcomes for both of us and our teams.

As a developing leader I began to have one on one meetings with team members, both those who formally reported to me and those who I just worked with on a regular basis. I began to see my coworkers/followers improve their performance which is also one outcome predicted by Meuser et al. (2011) for receptive followers to servant leadership.  I began to see project managers develop greater confidence and proactively beginning to address obstacles to their projects on their own which is also predicted by studies done by Bande, Fernández-Ferrín, Varela-Neira, & Otero-Neira, (2016)on servant leadership.  Working with one of our key partner organizations I began meeting one on one with their primary team leads and coaching them in similar ways, and I saw the same empowerment and autonomy with improved task performance and helping their coworkers in their organization and across our organizations.

It seems servant leadership is infectious or can be passed through organizations and relationships. Hu and Linden (2011) found that through servant leadership the effectiveness of teams was promoted through shared confidence and improved group process clarity.  In my own cross functional teams, they started continuous improvement meetings, tracked undesirable outcomes, began root cause analysis and worked together without blaming each other to improve shared processes and develop stronger processes.  This was really just an extension of one-on-one coaching and development taken to a group level with each team member participating in the improvements.  The overall outcome was better processes, fewer delays and failures, more time for improvements, happier workers, shared success.  Northouse (2021)  says “Initial research has shown that in addition to positively affecting followers and their performance, servant leadership has an influence on organizational performance” which I can confirm.  Northouse goes on to explore societal impact which I can’t comment on directly, but I will say one of our companies’ core values is to make the world a better place for everyone, and I see that occurring incrementally as a result of my experience applying servant leadership in the workplace.

References

Bande, B., Frenandez-Ferrin, P., Varela-Neira, C., & Otero-Neira, C. (2016). Exploring the relationship among servant leadership, intrinsic motivation and performance in an industrial sales setting. Exploring the relationship among servant leadership, intrinsic motivation and performance in an industrial sales setting., 2(31), 219-231.

Hu, J., & Linden, R. C. (2011). Antecedents of team potency and team effectiveness: An examination of goal and process clarity and servant leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 4(96), 851-862.

Meuser, J. D., Linden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., & Hendersn, D. J. (2011, August). Is servant leadership always a good thing? The moderating influence of servant leadership prototype. Paper presented at the meeting of the Academy of Management.

Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory & Practice (9 ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.

One of the criticisms of transformational leadership identified by Northouse (2021) is that the concept of transformational leadership was created to be used in social and political contexts so it may not apply to business.  However, I have seen this play out at work in both situations where I have been a follower or a leader.  In my own experience transformational leadership concepts are an excellent way to lead groups of followers in corporations as long as a clear vision of the expected outcome and benefits can be communicated to followers.

A few years ago, I was working in a group that had a change in leadership.  Our new had new ideas that he wanted us to work on together.  It is not feasible for a leader to sit with every follower in a large organization and tell them how to do their work.  However, by using transformational leadership concepts the new leader was able to achieve this outcome.  Our new leader followed the for factors of transformational leadership identified by Northouse (2021).

He started by developing an over-arching vision of what we should focus on achieving for the business, the benefits for the business and why we would want to follow him in working on this shared objective.  Northouse calls this factor “idealized influence” (2021, p. 192). Once his vision was established he inspired us by having us consider the alternatives, and negative outcomes of doing nothing, or the positive outcomes of working to completion of the vision and how that would lead to benefits throughout our organization, this represented the “Inspirational Motivation” factor (Northouse, 2021, p. 192).  Each day when we would work with the leader bringing up new obstacles or opportunities, he would ask us how we could solve these problems or take advantage of these opportunities to work towards the over arching vision that had been laid out.  This “intellectual stimulation factor” (Northouse, 2021, p. 192) both began to develop our own ability to further implement the vision as well as empowering us to continually develop and adjust the plan with the end goal in mind rather than bringing every minor change or concern to the leader.  It led to new innovative ways of doing things in the organization that had not been considered before when a leader had to decide everything.  Some worked and some didn’t but the ones that worked went way beyond older ways of doing things.  Even as the new leader was addressing each of these other factors in the organization, he would consider us each individually in 1 to 1 meetings and collaborative planning sessions.  The leader accepted constructive criticism and a collaborative problem-solving mindset developing for each of us. I personally felt that my own work had greater meaning when my contributions were being considered and included in the larger plans.  It addressed the final factor of “Individualized consideration” (Northouse, 2021) while continuing to motivate and inspire for further growth and development.

In my owner leadership roles as I continued to grow, I considered the effects this transformational leadership had on me and also followed these same methods for developing idealized influence inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration, when working with followers that I lead today.  Overall, I have found that my own teams are empowered and able to adjust and innovate as they work towards a well understood vision with inspirational benefits to motivate them.

Transformational leadership may also be suited to developing political campaigns or leading large groups of followers in transforming the political landscape, but as I have seen it applied in business it is a powerful tool for developing multitiered organizations, fostering individual empowerment, and motivating followers to pursue a shared vision once they understand the shared gains that can achieve.

References

Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory & Practice (9 ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.

You may have heard the old saying that you can lead a horse to water but you cant make them drink.  I have found the same to be true with virtualized cross-functional project teams.  A recent team I worked with had to completely restart their project due to avoidable issues.  In fact, I had advised them of missing participants needed for their success, but they chose not to take action and delayed their project only to restart with the participants joining the team.  The team leadership theory and perspective is a framework used to systematically analyze variables that contribute to a team’s success or lack thereof (Northouse, 2021).  My role does not always give me the authority to stop a project if it is heading in the wrong direction, but I have the opportunity to coach and advise the accountable leaders.  As a leader overseeing the work of many cross functional virtual project teams formed from multiple business and departments, I find the Team Leadership theory to be a useful method of organizing my own thoughts and planning responses to situations that arise daily in an effort to guide these teams toward success.

Hackman (2012) proposed six factors that contribute to successful teams.  For my organization we have developed a Project Design Review document that addresses these factors before a project is initiated to help avoid this situation.

1. “Is it a real team?
2. Does it have a compelling purpose?
3. Does it have the right people?
4. Are the norms of conduct clear?
5. Is there support from the organizational context?
6. Is there team-focused coaching? (Hackman, 2012 as cited by Northouse, 2021)”

Is it a real team?  This is addressed by identifying the portion of the organization who is accountable for the project being planned, and the key technical contacts that will be engaged to achieve a shared outcome.  For the project that had to be re-initiated, the design reviewed identified a need to engage a team that was not represented as part of the initial project design.  The accountable project leadership determined that they would not need additional technical expertise as they planned to do the work themselves.  This was a risk cited both during quoting and by the project manager during project kickoff and accepted by the accountable leader. When a project is started by turning down advice provided by part of the team, this is not a collaborative team if it is really a team.   In many ways this is just a transactional relationship rather than a team.

Does it have a compelling purpose? In the case of the project in question it did have a very urgent and compelling purpose.  The urgency of the purpose was what drove the team to avoid engaging additional technical expertise. However, taking this risk resulted in re-starting the project at added cost, effort, and extended time.

Does it have the right people?  No in this case the project team did not have the right people involved.  A key technical participant was intentionally left out, and the specialized expertise that was not involved is what led to re-initiating the project.  The situation would be like building a house without a licensed electrical contractor, and then being surprised when the electrical work did not pass inspection and had to be redone.

This project had the remaining factors, Norms of Conduct, Support from the Organization, and there was team focused coaching.  On the coaching aspect several stakeholders provided feedback regarding the risk to the project along the way, but the risks were accepted in light of the urgent timeline.  For my own part I privately provided additional assistance to the other leaders accountable for this project in reaching out to the required technical experts initially and again when the project had to be re-initiated with their help allowing the project leadership to save face, and as an effort to achieve the quickest turnaround for our company’s shared objective of completing the project.  However, the documented design review and risk acceptance prevented the accountable leaders from being able to shift blame as a strategy when their project was off schedule.

I have found the team leadership theory to be supportive of successful teams and guiding my own decisions and communication as a leader in a complex work environment.  Time, Budget, and level of Effort are often reasons that are cited for taking on risk in projects.  Having this risk documented protects the various stakeholders and keeps teams aligned for the quickest possible outcome even when things don’t go as hoped. Using a framework such as team leadership theory to analyze these situations helps me stay organized and systematic as a leader navigating these situations.

 

References

Hackman, J. R. (2012). From causes to conditions in group research. Journal of Organizational Behavior(33), 428-444.

Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory & Practice (9 ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.

Does a situation dictate the leader that is needed, or are leaders able to adapt to changing situations?  There have been two times in my career that we had very urgent technical requirements that would prevent the overall business from being successful if they were not addressed immediately.  The first instance occurred almost 10 years ago when I was a new manager, working in a larger team to provide support for a portfolio of applications related to a specific part of the business.  Due to some out-of-date practices that had not changed in years there was a sudden need to update many applications urgently to meet new technical requirements.  Without going into details this meant a very long weekend getting ready for Monday morning.  We eventually remediated issues for 21 applications impacting global production.  Roughly 5 years later I had another similar event on a much larger scale.  I was called on to work with many more teams to achieve very urgent technical results.

In the first scenario I was not the manager of everyone who needed to remediate the applications but had to lead the cross functional team in achieving shared goals.  In Path Goal theory I adopted a Directive Leadership role to quickly initiate the structure needed to get the larger team moving quickly towards a successful outcome (Northouse, 2021).  Directive Leadership style is not my typical mode of leadership; however, this was a short period of time, and I was leading an ambiguously structured team with unclear rules through many complex situations very quickly.  We established a list of everything that needed to be done and I worked through the list with each portion of the team in rotation identifying the tasks that needed more clarity and research to resolve, and delegating actions for each member of the team.  As tasks were completed, I assigned each member new tasks to work through, and refined our full list of tasks with new details.  Our high-level list became a very detailed task list throughout the weekend.  We did not sleep much but by Monday morning we had prioritized the systems needed by each portion of the business and worked through the most urgent systems first.  We identified workarounds to get work started and follow up tasks to fully remediate issues, and when we finished the weekend, the business was working.

Some of my coworkers who were temporary followers were a little astounded by the changes we achieved in one weekend, and the unusually directive role I took in achieving the outcome. However, we couldn’t work like that all the time if we wanted to.  While it was exciting and invigorating to get so much done quickly and achieve shared goals, it was taxing to take on a role that was very directive.  Over a long period of time, I don’t think we could have kept this relationship stable. Follow up tasks were delegated to teams, and they tracked their own work and long term remediation and just reported status back autonomously on a regular basis following the urgent event.  In this way I shifted back to a participative leader with a collaborative role to other leaders who temporarily were my followers as well.

Five years later when another very urgent technical event occurred, I did not address it the same way.  In the second event there were many more teams involved and additional leaders were available who very naturally slipped into the Directive authoritarian dogmatic roles that were needed at a senior level to coordinate the many teams.  In this event we set up a rotating group of leaders that tracked activity and prioritized issues around the clock.  In this event I had a unique technical understanding of many of the critical activities and some limited exposure to almost all the teams involved, so I began working with many different teams reviewing their work and providing technical guidance that was then caried out by them with a close manager tracking and managing the individual tasks in each team.

As a result of this situation, I was in very high demand for several weeks. However, this role of consulting project initiation and technical requirements and then working with teams in a consultative approach in a rotating fashion among teams aligned much more closely to my natural tendencies of participative leadership allowing each team to work autonomously but still providing clarity and oversight for control of their work, which was initially ambiguous, unclear, and unstructured  all task and follower characteristics that align well with participative leadership (Northouse, 2021).  At the end of the urgent push to complete this monstrous amount of work we were all exhausted, but for me it was achievable because I had been working in my natural leadership style rather than trying to fill a role that I was not adapted to for a longer period.

While I have analyzed these situations through the perspective of Path-Goal leadership theory to this point, this week I was reviewing the Contingency theory which talks about the type of leaders that are suitable to a situation and would like to consider it as well.  Contingency theory says very directive leaders will successful in very good or very bad situations and relationship based leaders will be successful in more average situation or where follower relationships need to improve greatly, and that leaders should be selected based on their leadership style (Northouse P. , 2007) in other situations.  I find that contingency theory is accurate in my experience of the type of leadership style that is successful in each situation, and Path-Goal theory gave similar predictions.  However, Contingency theory would say that I would have been the wrong leader for the first of the two situations I describe because under contingency theory I am more of a relationship focused leader naturally.  However, we were very successful with me adapting to fit the role necessary for the situation over a short period of time.

In conclusion leaders are not necessarily dictated by the situation, but instead leaders can adapt to a changing situation for a period of time.  However capable leaders should also know themselves well enough to plan a transition to a leadership style that they are naturally suited too and tend to move to anyway. In this way I have been thee two situations are an example of where I successfully did this and once again show us that none of these leadership theories tells the whole story of leadership, but each provides a unique perspective for considering our own roles and development as leaders.

References

Northouse, P. (2007). Contingency Theory. In P. Northouse, Leadership: Theory and Practice (pp. pp113-126). Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory & Practice (9 ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.

Hello, I am an IT Manager in a fortune 500 company.   In my IT career I have worked my way through multiple individual contributor roles of increasing responsibility.  Then I was gradually promoted into roles with greater formal authority as a supervisor, a project manager, a department manager over project management, and now a global department manager. As I started managing other people, I began to see the need to spend less time learning about technology, and more time learning about how to lead people.  Today in ‘middle management’ I function as a follower, a leader, a manager, and an individual contributor at times.

In the hierarchical system of formal authority, the role-based perspective of followership puts the emphasis on the roles of the followers and how followers’ behaviors affect outcomes for the leader and the organization (Northouse, 2021, p. 353). I find that the role-based approach is too formal in my own experience, I find the relational based approach to followership more applicable. “To understand the relational-based approach it is helpful to understand social constructivism. Social constructivism is a sociological theory that argues that people create meaning about their reality as they interact with each other… Rather than focusing on roles, it focuses on the interpersonal process and one person’s attempt to influence and the other person’s response to these influence attempts. Leadership occurs within the interpersonal context of people exerting influence and responding to those influence attempts (Northouse, 2021, p. 353).”

Several years ago, I was in a team working on many projects with multiple managers, project managers, and developers, but I was an individual contributor at the time.  Our director’s role changed, and we suddenly reported to a new director.  The new director came to visit and called a meeting with all the direct reports of the previous director.  As an individual contributor I did not report directly to the director.  However, as the meeting was about to start, people said “Phil should be at this meeting too, he is important for several of the discussions you want to have about planning and setting objectives.”  My manager and his peers came out of the meeting and told me about all this at break time.

A little later I met with the new director as part of a skip level meeting, with the intention that he would get to know the less senior members of his new team and understand their roles in each of the departments that reported to him.  When he met with me, he told me the same story and how confused he was that he met with the more senior people with formal authority, who said I was required to discuss aspects of the work everyone was working on.  I explained that I was not surprised and that they came out and told me after his meeting.

I also explained that I was concerned about being the least senior member of the team and did not have any formal authority, that maybe I would not be involved in decisions any longer.  I figured in the new organization the influence I had developed through expert authority and persuasive influence would not mean as much.  Maybe I should be content to be told what work we would focus on, and get it done.  I explained that I had a bad habit of sharing my opinion openly, but that I would do the work I was asked to perform after sharing my opinion.

The new Director asked me what I knew from talking to the others who had met with him.  I explained what I learned second hand, and what I thought from reading between the lines of what each of his direct reports had said.  I explained how I thought that fit into our larger organization.  How I interpreted each of his direct report’s perspective of his new vision for the organization, where he could expect resistance, and concerns I anticipated with the vision.  He filled in a few gaps and asked me for some ideas about how we could do things differently, to improve the effectiveness of the plan he had laid out.

At this point I had already been so open that I had nothing to lose if he did not like what I thought.  I told him my ideas about how he could refine his tactics for achieving his strategic plan.  The specific details are not important for this example, just an understanding that the youngest least senior member of the team may have been seen as telling the new boss what he was doing wrong.  He pushed back on my opinion and said that his direct reports had not brought any of these concerns up and must not agree with me.  He said he may consider my advice if he was hearing similar feedback from my manager and his other direct reports.

I spent the next two days discussing my ideas with each of his direct reports.  I convinced each one that we should adjust our short-term plans for achieving the same overall vision shared by the new director for reasons that applied to their team.  I thought I had convinced most of them of the merits and decided I would discuss it again with the new director the next time I had a chance.

He scheduled a meeting with me the next week and told me he found it very interesting that over the next 3-4 days from when we had talked several of his direct reports proposed the ideas, I had talked to him about.  Though most of them did not give me credit for the idea, and he did not tell them he knew it was my idea.  He wanted to know how I had convinced several of his direct reports to give him critical feedback on his plan, and I explained that I just broached the subject in passing to each of them, and mentioned my thoughts and what benefits I saw in it for their team, and how limited a change it really was to do the work slightly differently.

Two weeks later he started the paperwork to promote me to supervisor as part of the re-org he planned and gave me a seat at the table with his direct reports.  We adjusted the plan, and I let my new peers all take credit for the improvements but felt very rewarded for speaking up.  I made sure to share my thoughts constructively going forward.

Once we are past the sources of authority my experience demonstrates several more aspects of followership and leadership from a relational perspective.  In Kelley’s Typology I fit the role of an exemplary follower providing constructive criticism in a positive active way (Northouse, 2021).  I did this through communicating with our collective leader in a new relationship where I did not let the bounds of my role limit my influence.  He was a good leader and listened to the constructive criticism and tested both me and the criticism.  We both worked together as partners toward a common purpose, my own development as well as our shared organizational goals and the new director’s success in his position. This fits into Challeff’s typology of leader follower interaction for high support but also high challenge from followers for leaders (Northouse, 2021).

In my experience the relationship between leadership and followership also leads to the development of new leadership over time.  As I have spent time formally learning the scientific theory of leadership and followership, I see evidence to support this from several perspectives.

References

Northouse, P. G. (2021). Leadership: Theory & Practice (9 ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.