Practicing servant leadership

While at the International Marina and Boatyard Conference last week, I attended the Thursday morning keynote on “The Power of Servant Leadership.” The speaker, Jim Hunter, proclaimed that everyone is a leader because everyone has the power to affect someone. “If you have a pulse, you’re a leader,” he said.

He further spoke on how to be an effective leader and what servant leadership means, and it’s simple: You have to be the boss you want your boss to be.

Servant leaders seek to create trust and respect with their employees, they are humble, they praise often and provide constructive criticism when necessary, they influence people rather than “manage,” and they use their authority as a leader wisely. After all, with great power comes great responsibility.

And the importance of servant leadership has a powerful impact on your employees. It all comes down to one anecdote a young woman told Hunter in a previous presentation: “If you’re my boss and you don’t get it, this place sucks.”

Hunter called leadership a skill, not an innate personality trait. And with any skill, one needs to practice. You can’t just read a book and be a better leader. Hunter also asserted that just because someone can perform the job well doesn’t mean they can lead. If you promote your best salesman to manager and he doesn’t know how to lead, you’ve lost your best salesman and your team is being ineffectively led.

This reminded me of the “10-000 Hour Rule ” discussed in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. The rule states that achieving greatness of any kind requires an extraordinary amount of time dedicated to its proficiency. It equates to practicing a specific task 20 hours a week for 10 years.

So to anyone who is reading this and thinking “Great, I already exhibit behaviors of a servant leader,” ask yourself this: Do you exhibit those behaviors 20 hours a week? How long have you exhibited those behaviors?

Since we all have the power to be leaders now – we all have pulses, I assume – start today, especially if you aren’t in a leadership position yet. Just because you’re skilled at your job doesn’t mean you deserve to lead others yet. Find ways to collaborate with your co-workers and lift them up them when they succeed. Ask about their lives outside of the job and empathize with them. Care about them the way you want others to care about you.

You don’t have to set aside time to practice being a leader – it’s as simple as actively engaging and connecting with the people around you every day.

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