The Leadership Game

One of the concepts that I first came across when I began reading up on Agile (waaay back toward the end of 2005) was that of servant leadership. There's a nice Wikipedia entry for it here, in case you want to know more about its origins and interpretations.

While I served as Agile Manager for two years, I tried to embody the notion of servant leadership, with admittedly mixed results. In my first tenure as a Feature Lead (in those initial month-long Iterations with the group that I nicknamed the "B-Team" in my books), I tried to drive home the point that, even though I was an Engineering Manager, I wasn't there to tell them what to do. I was there, instead, to help them succeed. My job was to serve their needs in the best way that I could. Similarly, in some of my other roles during that period, I tried hard to reinforce that same message. Not everyone bought into that kooky approach, though, with some still preferring to defer to me at the drop of a hat. As well, some of my fellow management brethren believed that a heavier (or perhaps, just steadier) hand was required on the steering wheel and thus found fault with my style.

I suspect that such reactions may have stemmed from the fact that some of those same leaders weren't ready themselves to do much more than perhaps pay a bit of lip service to the cause of "leading by serving." Thinking back on it now, I can come up with several different reasons why that might have been so, which would likely vary by individual:

• Sometimes egos are just too large to allow a person to think of himself or herself as "serving others" as a member of management. If you're career-oriented, after all, you probably worked hard to achieve that lofty position, and so why would you lower yourself (back down) to the point where your success could be measured in terms of how much you help others succeed?
• Some people, sadly, have little or no natural ability to influence and thus their leadership style is strictly Command-and-Control because nothing else ever works for them! In that situation, relinquishing some degree of decision-making onto subordinates and then filling your time supporting them in their efforts would be frightening, at best, and incomprehensible, at worst.
• Along the same lines, I think that a few of the managers and executives quite simply don't trust those below them on the org chart. How can you commit yourself to the service of others if you suspect that they're incompetent, unmotivated or just plain lazy? Believing in people often requires a huge leap of faith, and I'm not sure that all of my peers and superiors have been willing to take it.
  

There were other factors at play, as well, I'm sure. But when I conjure up images of some of the "worst offenders" (as measured against this particular leadership bar, that is), those reasons above seem to be the most common.

Something I read recently talked about how important humility is in a great leader, and I think that fits perfectly with servant leadership. Being humble often gets a bad rap... Clark Kent, after all, is described as "mild-mannered" but most of the time that's used as a knock against him. "Why can't you be pushier, like Lane is?" editor Perry White would demand of him. "Nice guys finish last, and don't get the by-line!" I happen to believe that humility's a virtue, because (among other things) it tends to keep your eyes and ears open a lot more than arrogance or even pride ever does. If you accept that you can always do better, for example, then it's more likely that you just might! On other hand, if you're already convinced of your own greatness, there's really nowhere to go (but down).

So if I were building up a new team of leaders today, I'd be looking for at least some healthy amount of humility in each selection. When I took part in the task of finding several new Product Development Leaders (Agile Coaches) for our company earlier this year, I certainly factored that into the search criteria that we used. Anyone exuding a sense of born leadership, for example, was facing an uphill climb, as that attitude seems to suggest that there isn't much to learn in becoming an effective leader (with which, I must most humbly disagree). If a person came across as looking to finally get their chance to wield some power over the folks who were always disagreeing with them, I'm afraid they were similarly at a disadvantage. While some degree of self-confidence is obviously required to lead, we also recognized the need for a healthy dollop of modesty in our candidates, and I think the ones who eventually made the grade all demonstrated it. If all of the current leadership had been screened with an eye toward that attribute, we might have actually fared better in our Agile journey... although that's certainly open to debate. A better Agile Manager would've similarly helped, but we didn't get that, either.

With the U.S. election just barely a month behind us now and a new President-elect in the process of transitioning into power during a frightening economic meltdown, the word "leadership" is getting a lot of play in the media at the moment. I suspect that Barack Obama is the type of man who understands the job in front of him, and gets that the only chance he has of success involves him inspiring great things in others. He comes across as someone who has a vision of how to turn his country around, especially in terms of how to take it into the 21st century (after his predecessor tried hard to send it back to the 19th). Because of the office he's assuming, he'll naturally make many decisions and give lots of orders; but his greatest achievement, if I'm right, will come from empowering not just his cabinet and fellow politicians but also the American people in general. He's smart enough to realize that he can't possibly fix all of his country's problems alone, and so part of his job will be to remove obstacles and thereby enable several million other people to contribute to the solutions. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he ends up providing a model of servant leadership that we all could learn from.

If you're currently in a leadership role (at work or elsewhere), it wouldn't be the worst thing you could do to stop, take a moment, and consider: what am I doing that's actually in the service of those "below" me? If you have a tough time coming up with a very big list, then maybe it's time to shake things up a bit and see what happens!