Servant leadership – or “serve me” leadership?

I once observed a manager who claimed to subscribe to the philosophy of servant leadership. She had an admirable practice of meeting early-on with new team members about her philosophy and her preferred ways of working. She dropped the term servant leadership into those orientations and into hiring discussions as something she was looking for in the people on her teams as well. Yet in practice, I’m not sure her ways of being were completely aligned with how she saw herself.

Let’s take a step back. What IS servant leadership? According to the all-knowing Wikipedia:

Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy in which the goal of the leader is to serve. This is different from traditional leadership where the leader’s main focus is the thriving of their company or organization. A servant leader shares power, puts the needs of the employees first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership

Most leaders I have worked with would consider themselves servant leaders, I think. But where the rubber hits the road is in the daily words, actions, behaviors of the leader.

Here are some quotes I overheard when observing the aforementioned leader:

• “Why are you bringing me into this problem you should be solving?”
• “That solution won’t work because…. I shouldn’t need to solve this for you.”
• “I can’t believe you let that communication go out to x, didn’t you review it? I am going to have to review everything now.”
• “Why am I just hearing about this?”
• “Don’t talk to X without my knowledge and permission”
• “Mistakes you make are a reflection of me.”
• “Sometimes I think you don’t know what this job requires.”
• “I need you to figure this out.”

Now, to be fair, all of these are taken out of context. And, under given conditions, any one of them on its own might be a reasonable thing to say even with a servant leadership approach. But when you look at all of them together, you notice some themes. One, the onus of learning is placed solely on the shoulders of the employee. And two, the needs of the leader are at the center: what I need, what is a reflection of me. More of a “serve-me” approach to leadership, don’t you think?

Perhaps it won’t come as a surprise that the people who worked for this leader primarily spoke of being broken down, not built up.

The effects of claiming to embrace a servant leadership philosophy and then acting in ways that are unaligned are detrimental to psychological safety in an organization. People are being told that they should come to the leader with problems (and proposed solutions, of course), should step up and ask for support when it’s needed, and that the leader believes in their growth and development – and that mistakes are opportunities to learn. But when push comes to shove, mistakes are not forgotten, asking for help results in shaming, and development is done begrudgingly, “because you can’t figure this out on your own.”

If you or someone you work with subscribes to this philosophy – reflect on whether your actions are matching your claims, and give feedback when necessary. Chances are that someone who says they believe in this really wants to act accordingly and they might just not be aware of the impact of their actions.