If you could only choose one word to describe what servant leadership brings to the workplace, what word would you pick?
Me? I might pick freedom.
Here are 10 workplace freedoms I’ve enjoyed when working with servant-leaders:
- Freedom to Implement. Surveys show that these are the top three workplace frustrations: (1) micromanagement, (2) micromanagement and (3) micromanagement. Servant-leaders usually leave the implementation to those who do the implementing.
- Freedom to Accomplish. It feels good to accomplish a goal and it feels bad to have goals changed in midstream. Servant-leaders know the importance of allowing those whom they lead to finish what they start.
- Freedom to Fail. In today’s business world, innovation is often necessary for survival. To create conditions that produce innovation, servant-leaders don’t punish failure, they learn from it; servant leaders know when to embrace failure as part of the creative process.
- Freedom to Grow. People who can’t grow in the workplace become disengaged or they quit. Both cases are costly. Servant-leaders focus on the growth and development of people – and reap great benefits in doing so.
- Freedom to Have Fun. Show me a high-performing workplace and, nine times out of ten, I’ll show you an environment where people enjoy themselves. A servant-leader knows that fun is both a cause and a consequence of high performance.
- Freedom to Go Home. People get tired at the end of a long day, a long week or a long month. People have families and occasional obligations outside the office. The servant-leader allows team members to go home when they need to go home.
- Freedom to Dream. Nothing great happens without a dream. More than a dream is necessary, but the dream must be there first. Servant-leaders encourage the dreaming of great dreams at work.
- Freedom to Dissent. Servant-leaders create the environment where any team member feels comfortable to dissent. Indeed, servant-leaders often encourage dissent as a way of finding the best ideas. They discourage groupthink.
- Freedom to Be Different. The workplace is filled with external diversity and internal diversity – especially diversity of thought. Servant-leaders value diversity and recognize that diverse teams can be especially innovative.
- Freedom to Take Opportunities. Servant-leaders want the best for others. In developing team members, servant-leaders willingly prepare them for great opportunities – even for opportunities outside the company. In so doing, servant-leaders breed fierce loyalty. They often have minimal employee turnover on their teams.
Robert K. Greenleaf offered this “best test” of a servant-leader in his landmark 1970 essay, The Servant as Leader: “The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”
I am sure we could add more freedoms to this list. What would you add?