In my 34 years in contact center management, I have seen a variety of leadership styles. What is important about leadership styles is that it sets the tone for the way a business operates. While I have participated in a variety of leadership styles over the years (autocratic, participative, democratic, etc.), I truly believe that servant leadership enables employees to feel empowered, included and valued; it is the foundation to a culture that fosters all people to reach above and beyond anything they think possible. When this happens, everyone benefits – the company and its people, the customers, the stakeholders and the communities.
At its core, servant leadership is not about what a leader does, but why they do it – the motivations. Servant leaders operate in a way that tells their followers I’m here to help you succeed. Their motivation is to see others thrive, and their focus is on what they can do to help make that happen. Servant Leaders are able to view their position, not simply as a place of power and authority, but as an opportunity to hear the voices of others empowering and equiping them to succeed. They seek out the ideas of others and facilitate a place for those ideas to become realities.
Servant leaders are driven to see others thrive, they place team member needs first. The natural result is the raising up of new leaders. When leading with a desire to see others thrive a culture of trust will often develop as you train and equip your team members to do their jobs, and then empower them to do them well. Employees will begin to take greater pride in their work as you allow them to step into places of leadership and ownership over their projects. Leadership that equips and encourages, trusts you to own your work and to succeed. When this happens, team members rise, teams rise, departments and the company rises.
As with anything, the proof is the results and the rewards. Results and rewards of the journey as well as the destination. In 2007, we began our journey of building a culture with servant leadership at the foundation. While I believe that this is journey that is continual, a solid foundation has been built and Etech’s results have reflected this – Ninety-One (91%) percent growth in the last three years.
As we continue to grow, our servant leadership culture and twelve (12) character commitments should not just grow with us, but be the catalyst to support the growth! Culture is the collective habits of our people. It is not the aspirations of leadership, culture is not what we wish it would be or think that it is; it is what it is. However, I believe that like anything else, it all rises on the leader. Every single day, every leader impacts culture by the way they walk, talk, act, lead, serve and treat others.
I recently completed a book called Leaders Made Here: Building a Leadership Culture by Mark Miller. Below are some ideas presented by Mr. Miller.
- Be Clear – What are the key elements of your culture? How could you institutionalize these attributes? If life-long learning is a cultural norm, you could require everyone to have a personal development plan. Make no mistake, vagueness will scale and when it does, you have nothing but vagueness. Are you clear on the elements of your culture that matter most? Are you clear on the actions that can foster scale?
- Be Selective – You can’t scale everything. I believe attempts to do so quickly look like micro-management. In his book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg talks about power of keystone habits – those habitual behaviors which have a ripple effect. Work to discover these for your culture.
- Be Accountable – If you want to scale a certain behavior, determine how you’ll measure your progress. And by measure, I mean real numbers, not approximations or estimates.
- Be Relentless – We watched a video recently of our founder asking, reminding, and telling us the appropriate response when someone says thank you is … what? We practiced saying “My pleasure” in groups as large as 5,000 people. The interesting thing about the video – it was pieced together from clips over a ten-year period! What are you relentlessly and tirelessly communicating regarding your culture?
These are some thought provoking ideas. There are many things that Etech does that fall under one of these categories, but there is always more that can be done. Culture is powerful – so powerful, Peter Drucker once said, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” If we believe this to be true, then it is our responsibilities as leaders to ensure that we are inspiring the culture we desire and that we are the shining example for all to follow. Every day you will influence company culture. The question is will you be a positive or distracting influence?
Until next time, may you make a difference in the lives you touch each day!
This blog is first published on LinkedIn.
