(649 words = 5 minute read)
# 1 – STOP Being Crazy Busy – prioritize the priorities: identify your top 3 ‘A+’ priorities. Block out time to do important but not urgent work. Protecting that time aggressively.
# 2 – Commit to the ONE THING – Potential – Interferences = Performance. What keeps interfering with you doing your one thing? Many executives want to do more strategic work…
# 3 – Create a DEEPER Emotional Connection – Is this your one thing? Making strong emotional connections enables you to inspire and motivate people in a new and better way.
Three New Ideas
I give thanks for all The BEST BOSS EVER! readers. I’m practicing gratitude this month. Join me! This month’s newsletter is about servant leadership. The fantastic series Ted Lasso made me laugh and think more deeply about those few leaders who embody servant leadership. Here’s to the Ted’s that are in your life!
# 1 – “Servant Leadership” Is Redundant
All great leaders learn how to serve others. That often means they take the criticism and give away the credit. They are humble and demonstrate empathy. However, they are not soft and pushovers. In other words, they are a wonderful paradox of leader and servant.
Learning to do this well takes experience, mentoring, coaching, and training. To create servant leaders, an organization must start with suitable candidates, give them the foundational concepts and skills through training, mentor them along the way, and coach them up when they are ready to take big leaps in responsibility. Culturally, servant leadership must be rewarded.
Ask Yourself: How do others see me? Do I act as a servant leader?
# 2 – What’s Unique About a Servant Leader?
A servant leader’s attitude and mindset is unique. There are many ways to do servant leadership well, but the most critical aspect is the way you think about your leadership. You will not be seen as a servant if your leadership is oriented around power and control. Servant leaders authentically believe others are more important. They don’t have to be the smartest person in the room because they think being the smartest in the room is a detriment to their team.
They choose to surround themselves with others with talented team members with skills and abilities they don’t have. You might catch a servant leader sitting in the back of the room and helping others clean up. They will pick up trash because they believe that if they don’t, how can they expect others to do it? They don’t want to have the closest parking space to the building or a private dining room because it makes them seem more important than everyone else. They attempt to learn everyone’s name because everyone counts, and they want to connect with people…
Ask Yourself: Do I authentically have servant leadership mindsets & attitudes?
# 3 – How to Improve as a Servant Leader
First, seek excellent feedback from your boss, peers, and direct reports to determine how you are perceived as a leader. How big is the gap between your current leadership style and being a true servant leader? (The Servant Leadership Institute has a tool you can use.)
Second, pick one area to focus on and develop a plan to change your mindset and behaviors. Create a specific plan that excites and energizes you to be a servant leader.
Lastly, implement your plan. Daily, do one thing that enables you to think about and act as a servant leader. At the end of the week, assess what worked and didn’t work as you implement your plan. Make a journal entry every week and capture the insights you get from playing back the ‘tape’ from your past week. Notice what worked and what didn’t. Determine what you need to do differently in the future. Rinse and repeat for at least six months.
Ask Yourself: How would my team benefit if I was more of a servant leader?
Want to Know More?
1. How Humble Leadership Really Works by Dan Cable in Harvard Business Review
2. The Servant – A simple story about the true essence of leadership by James C. Hunter
3. The Worlds Most Powerful Leadership Principle – How to become a servant leader by James C. Hunter
P.S. Please forward this newsletter to a friend or colleague. Thank you!