My brief history with servant leadership
Pizza Hut was my first job. I was a cook. For a lot of my co-workers pushing things off onto the next shift was as good as getting things done. Better, actually. For me it was important to get as much done as possible. I wanted to be a good, hard worker. Eventually, I become the cook supervisor. During my time there, I was surprised to notice that instead of leaving everything to me, my slacker co-workers started to pitch in—at least while I was on the clock. Eventually I went to school and learned about servant leadership and it started to make sense.
Whether it’s because it was my first positive experience with leadership, or something about the idea of helping others, I dunno, but I’ve always been drawn to the idea of servant leadership. But I’m struggling to make it apply to my current job. Maybe it’s just less compatible with the changing environment I’m currently in?
Then vs. now
So at Pizza Hut everything could be learned in 10 minutes and mastered by the time you got your next check. It was a lot easier to be ‘willing to help anyone out’ because I knew how to help. As part of my position I basically do their jobs too. Also, I was living the beautiful, carefree life of a nineteen-year-old living at home rent free. I had a lot of available energy to spend on doing anything.
Now, I work in a skilled, technical team. If the editor or designer is under the weather or feeling stressed, I can’t simply pick up where they left off because I don’t have those competencies. Now, I need to maintain work/ life balance. Now, if I’m willing to do anything, doesn’t that derail collaboration efforts when I’m supposed to be delegating tasks.
My solution (for now)
So I don’t think servant leadership is incompatible with my current position, it’s just about knowing when to apply it and how. Instead of being willing to do ‘anything’ I can focus on helping out with the smaller things and always being accessible. I think simply doing things like participating more in a meeting to investing myself in the new direction my group goes in is a great way to lead by example and continue to utilize the servant leadership style.