Leading to Serve?

Leadership is difficult, especially when the leadership is bigger than life, a person who can hold themselves together can sail through a crisis when everyone is falling apart and can navigate in the most difficult circumstances. 

Leaders are born not made, this phrase almost makes everyone feel, they are not cut out for it. 

However, if we look at life closely, we are all leaders in our short film- or as I always like to reiterate, we are all the heroes in our own story.

 

It is very important to start learning the concept of Servant Leadership from that perspective. To put it simply, it is all about putting others first or putting the need of others first. 

As a Parent we put the need of our children first, as a spouse, we put the need of our better half first, as a responsible citizen, we put the need of our country or fellow citizens first. All this while taking into cognizance that it is not out of any 'sacrifice syndrome' which itself can be damaging quality for a leader. Au contraire it draws from the fact that we recognize that every relationship and organization needs enough nurturing than full-blown handholding to help them sail through difficult times. 

Servant leader would often find themselves, commandeering from the front and encouraging from stands. It seems like too much work as the person seems to require an omnipresent personality. However, a servant leader is more like a 'voice in the head' of every employee, ensuring that their presence is felt without their actual presence. It requires employees to know that they have the support and the knowledge and confidence to take the decision. 

One needs to recognize the pitfalls of this approach-

• Your EGO stays behind- It is never about the leader but the purpose the leader serves- for the organization and its stakeholders.. 
• Identifying Emotions- It is never easy to nurture people without having the awareness to identify the emotions not just for people but also within. 
• Pattern Management- Some pattern work and some don't, the idea is to identify which do and for how long. Just because some patterns work for some time means they will work at all times. 

Leading to serve is an ideal situation but quite frankly a thankless one. One leads without really leading and so is never seen as being a leader but mostly in the role of facilitator and requires a lot of self-restraint for Leaders to accept that people do not need them as more often than not, that is their motivator.

Even as a leader the goal is to align and move forward while serving. We still have a long way to go but till then, the journey has begun with some of the very big names already using this model- Starbucks, Mariott International, to name a few. 

 

However, in the Indian scenario is this model, sustainable. Keep your thought coming.