I’ve written earlier about how a servant leader struggles with their impact. But what happens when the positive measurement is brought to you?
In the life of the servant leader, sometimes comes recognition that this leader has impact, and others recognize this. It may be in the currency of compliments, awards, or even compensation.
I use a test myself to measure the guardrails of the servant leader, to make sure the desire to serve remains the utmost goal:
Did I seek this?
A recognition sought by any means is anathema to the servant leader. Awareness must be brought to the motives of the leader, and purging of the dross must happen, else The Impostor is reigning. He is cunning, skillful, and corrupting, and must be diligently guarded against.
Should I share this?
Rarely is recognition of a leader happening in a vacuum, but it is a reflection of those being led. Broadening the context of the recognition, giving due to the community that the leader serves, is modeling the Best Test when it would be tempting to keep the recognition to yourself.
Does this feel like just flattery?
Sometimes recognition is given that is bereft of meaning. Recognition like this can be met with grace, depending on the giver – someone in power may not be ready to hear rejection.
Sharp awareness when this type of recognition is given avoids the regrets later — holding it loosely, allowing it to drain away, defeating the haunting chimes of The Impostor taking hold.
Is the group giving this?
A group well-served may choose to give regard to the leader. These moments can be deeply satisfying, but also raise underlying tension, as the group may feel led rather than supported. Addressing these moments when they come is recognition as well. Sometimes a skillful reversal, a pull-in of the group is warranted; sometimes meeting it with uncomfortable grace is best.
When recognition has come to my life, I have not always been up to the task, been blindsided by it, and caught in its charm. The Impostor is always close at hand. But asking these questions quickly forms the wall I need, the wisdom to detect sincerity.
The cost of servant leadership is not without reward, just that the rewards must be worthy of the cost.
(This is a continuing story – Part 2 is found here, or if you’re just dropping in please go here for Part 1)
We promised to have a weekly meeting, so Fred and I had to discuss what this next meeting looked like. At the first meeting, we sent the participants (eight, as I recall) back to their departments with this message: please give us everything that is bothering you – important to you for us to address. It was a pretty bold ask, for the transparency we needed, as well as some anonymizing characteristics as they were given to this Focus Group member.
[I want to acknowledge the work of Fred here, the Focus Group (later the ACT) was my vision, but he truly caught this vision, and started driving the organization toward it. Fred, in a a staff meeting, had me introduce the vision of the Focus Group, and then explicitly directed all his supervisors to provide one member of their team toward the effort. This represented commitment, and the starting hints for his own transformation.]
What came back was pretty long, and we started to push the feedback into buckets – “this is easy” (in Bosch terms, just do it), “I can work on this” ( just do it with more effort), “this is tough” (going to need a project), and “this is impossible”. I remember that Fred picked off a few of the “this is easy” topics right away, giving the team some trust that the feedback was not only listened to, but acted upon.
Pretty much from the beginning, I started using the phrase lancing the boil, which Susan would scrunch up her face and give me a “eww” every time (along with attended nervous laughter). I eventually changed to using more appropriate corporate cultural language, but Susan and I still made references to it years later, as Susan was the only one who saw the totality of the group – even when she changed departments, she still stayed.
The pus was all over us, but trust was building.
Some of the “I can work on this” and “this is hard” topics related to HR policies in the location, which was also manufacturing product, and need to have these policies match between manufacturing and service. As the manufacturing was larger than service at this moment (two thirds to one third), it was clear where this focus would be.
Mildred, the HR manager of the site, had a very interesting relationship with Fred; they had grown up together in the site, both achieving beyond expectation, both now managers. They were brother and sister; sometimes playful, sometimes incendiary, all times loyal. I’m sure Fred was discussing what we were doing with the Focus Group with her, keeping her abreast of developments, showing progress on the Associate Satisfaction Survey, and striving to not run afoul of already set policy.
The arc was clear, though – having Fred in the middle, carrying messages back and forth from the Focus Group to Mildred was not going to scale; Mildred had to see for herself. Bringing her into the Focus Group, after a few months was a decision placed in front of all the members – she wasn’t invited without everyone saying yes.
Her first meeting, we brought Mildred to speed; what we had accomplished, what was still pending, and what we needed her input, effort, or even total commitment toward. She was justifiably conservative, knowing what this means, and what cost she would bear. But, I sensed a curiosity building in Mildred as well, as she recognized the potential of a group like this for manufacturing.
However, manufacturing was steeped in command/control leadership, and the organization change would have been significant. Instead, Mildred assembled this feedback a different way, building a suggestion system that was giving back real incentives (Bosch Bucks, used for swag purchases). The kicker was that the suggestion board applied also to service, so now the associates could earn for their ideas, and the Focus Group had other input for their evaluation.
We could see the faint outlines of an improvement group, improvement system, and a working group that would take us to the next turn of the flywheel.
Servant Leader Lessons
Growth – Fred directed supervisors to assign members, but something shifted. He started seeing these eight not as complaint-gatherers but as people worth developing
Community – The Focus Group members stopped being individuals collecting pain points. They became a team with shared identity, explaining the work back to their departments.
Stewardship – Fred picked off the easy wins, moving them into the done pile; as this became more significant, more feedback could be given to enhance trust.
Conceptualization – The Focus Group built mechanisms to sort feedback into actionable buckets, recognizing some problems as ‘impossible’ while clearing the path to address what could actually change.
(This is a continuing story – please go here for Part 4)
(This is a continuing story – please go here for Part 1)
I know that I called this series “Servant Leadership in ACTion”, explicitly using the term ACT, which stood for Associate CIP Team – but ACT is a later construction. We really started this under my term for the group, which I used so much creativity to construct – the Focus Group.
My vision before the first Focus Group meeting was for this group to solve their own problems. In the immortal words of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, “Kein Operationsplan reicht mit einiger Sicherheit über das erste Zusammentreffen mit der feindlichen Hauptmacht hinaus“, or for us English speakers, “No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.“
Fear and trepidation drove me into the first Focus Group meeting. I’d assembled the Associate Satisfaction Survey results, prepared potential solutions to prime the pump, arranged the conference room. I was trying to control what I couldn’t yet trust.
The survey gave us indicators – ‘I have confidence in my management,’ ‘I feel valued at work’ – consolidated feedback, on forced questions, that could be universally applied, but said nothing about the “why” of the selection.
As the meeting started, and I walked through the feedback charts and graphs, I felt naked, exposed in ways I could not express. The results from the Associate Satisfaction Survey were inadequate to describe the conditions participants faced, and I felt the full weight of their scorn.
Their pain was visceral. The time clock was a significant impediment, even though HR had constructed policies that, at least from the management side, felt generous. One participant – I’ll call her Shelly – had just had a baby. Attendance issues were the wolf at her door, and she responded in anger to what she was facing.
Fred was silent for most of the meeting, only enumerating the policies (which I didn’t really know, being new to the location, and not subject to the time clock).
Shelly was not having it.
The impasse was palpable and felt insurmountable. Yet we could not focus on Shelly’s issues alone – all eight participants had needs, and they represented departments full of other needs.
We moved into my blank slides and abandoned the Associate Satisfaction Survey quickly. It didn’t resonate. It formed a ‘management thinks’ hedge against the ‘I’m feeling’ desperation. But this first meeting was wild. Almost a visceral snarling of a caged animal finally having a hand stuck into their domain, a hand that could be mauled.
I felt the mauling. I was new to the organization, new to the location, and I was a ‘Bosch guy.’ This location had been integrated three years prior, but no change activity or development had been done. They didn’t know the history of Bosch. They didn’t really know how they were contributing. All Bosch was to them was a paycheck and a smattering of logos and platitude signs.
I came in with 25 years of Bosch – knowing the tempo of how it operates, experience with the German culture embedded deeply inside the company even though they try to excise it. It is a proud heritage, even a noble one, one that has stood over 100 years. However, the fact that they did not know any of this was a deep wound that no one had acknowledged.
I started gathering pain points from the participants. Shelly was vocal – but I didn’t let her dominate. It was me typing furiously to capture this initial set. Not just the time clock issues, but others. Two or three slides that I remember. The meeting ended with just open questions on slides and a request to gather more from their departments.
Fred and I, a little worse for wear, said little to each other as we hunkered down for the next storm.
Later Revelations upon Reflection
Shelly needed resolution for the impossible tension between being a new mother and the time clock’s demands. Not a policy explanation. Not optimization. Resolution – which might mean changing the system itself, or might mean something else entirely that could only emerge through genuine engagement with her wound.
I didn’t know that in the first meeting. I just knew my prepared deck was worthless and their snarling was real.
The Inadequacy of “Others-First”
I came into that first Focus Group meeting as an “Others-First” leader. I’d assembled the data. I’d prepared solutions. I was ready to help them solve their problems efficiently so they could be more productive, more engaged, more aligned with organizational goals.
But “Others-First” leadership has no space for the visceral snarling of people who’ve been ignored for three years. It has no response to Shelly’s wolf at the door beyond enumerating policies. It treats wounds as problems to be solved rather than pain to be honored.
The blank slides weren’t a technique. They were surrender. I had to abandon my prepared solutions because servant leadership requires what NYLT calls the EAR model – allowing people to Express their wounds, the leader Addressing and upholding that pain, and creating space to Resolve (not solve) what they’re experiencing.
Servant Leader Lessons
As we moved through the meeting, I felt the stirring of new lessons that were deeply applicable:
Listening – not to gather data for optimization, but because Shelly and the others had inherent worth and wisdom that deserved reverence. Even when that listening meant sitting in the mauling. Even when their snarling exposed my inadequacy.
Awareness – not keeping an eye out for disturbances I could manage, but turning the spotlight inward first. I had to surface my own awful truth: I was the Bosch guy carrying 25 years of corporate culture into a wound no one had acknowledged. My prepared solutions were part of the problem, not the answer.
(This is a continuing story – please go here for Part 3)
Servant Leadership will bring you to many places not defined by organization and process, but by need and desire. This series picks up my experience of ACT (Associate CIP Team), tying the characteristics to a group that far exceeded even my lofty vision!
The Need Defined
Bosch, in its inimitable way, has many curious processes – being a worldwide company with German roots leads to interesting congruities. One such method (at least until 2021) was the all-associate satisfaction survey, performed every other year. As I started reporting to the Lincoln site in 2011, AS11 was getting completed. As expected, results took quite a long time to compile, present to different layers of management, and filter down to operational departments; so the results were down to our department in early 2012.
The Review
Just before this was delivered, I had received my yearly review, and my first review since moving to Lincoln. It must have been hard for the manager there (let’s call him Fred) to evaluate me; I started reporting to him in April, I spent months in Mexico implementing a new ERP system, and had spent little time in the Lincoln facility. So, when Fred got the task of building my review, he had scant evidence.
I had made a small comment in a moment of pique to a fellow associate, saying that “if I start using large words, you know I am angry”. This had somehow bubbled up to Fred, and this phrase landed on my review, especially in the area of communication. It stung, and I still remember the hot face I had when he delivered it to me; here I am, delivering Servant Leader principles, and I have this impediment drawn in full display. I felt it was unfair, but, as we teach NYLT youth, feedback is a gift (not expressed is the way it should be treated as one you desired). I did, however, in the wisdom of the moment, ask that Fred alert me if he sees such behavior so I can quickly remediate, so this also stood on my review (and, as you may imagine, never showed again).
Back to the Survey
Fred, finally gaining access to the survey results, felt defeated, and helpless; they were significantly bad, and seemingly worse than the last survey of AS09. He had to report through the layers about how this would be fixed. In a small meeting we had, he expressed frustration and impotence in changing the outlook of the organization.
I had another experience at Bosch with these surveys, and even bad ones; the idea that took hold of the VP in charge of that organization was one of Focus Groups – selected individuals from relevant departments that could tease the feedback out of the (rather generic) result, giving a measure that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-based (or timely) – most of you already know about SMART goals.
Upon giving this idea to Fred, and outlining the strategy and possibilities, plus offering my effort and direction to organize it, Fred immediately recognized a solution, a move forward, and the possibility to gain some traction with the organization. He approved the Focus Group idea, and had me share it at the next staff meeting, so that each department could give one or more associates to this. I gave Fred a vision!
Servant Leader Lessons
As a Servant Leader, I exercised foresight as I brought lessons from the past forward, with a heavy dose of persuasion as I laid out these plans to Fred, and ultimately to all the other staff members. Plus, I had to do some healing for myself, as I processed the feedback from Fred on my review, increasing my awareness of how I could communicate to this new organization.
(This is a continuing story – please go here for Part 2)
Today, I’ve been ruminating on the topic of obstacles.
The natural way to think about obstacles is, of course, barriers that are placed on us from the outside. External obstacles that some face:
Lack of clear goals – not knowing where we are going
Insufficient resources – not having enough to sustain the journey
Inadequate communication – not having enough direction from leadership
Ineffective team dynamics – negative workplace culture
Lack of autonomy – mistrust showing up as enfeebling
This list cuts deeply into a servant leader, because teams experiencing any of these obstacles is discouraged, needing listening, empathy, and healing to even engage in some level of trust, even before the application of other characteristics.
However, obstacles also can be internal to the one served, and these are as devilish, even to the point of creating the external obstacles:
Lack of focus – too many ways of direction or distraction
Poor self-awareness – Intentional or non-intentional gaps in self-assessment
Fear of change or loss – Doubt, even to the point of paralysis, of being able to move in a new perceived direction
When encountering these internal obstacles, an application of further servant leader characteristics such as awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, and foresight give those led not only the space to build trust, but give them encouraging directions to be more wise, experience freedom, engage autonomy, and pick up the mantle of serving others; this truly is the measure of a servant leader.
I was reading this post by Seth Godin, and it brought me to how Servant Leaders both keep velocity, and accelerate.
For groups (and individuals), velocity takes shape in what they are currently capable of handling, and the productivity or achievement ongoing. Servant Leaders, tending their garden with listening, empathy, stewardship, and community give freedom to those led, space to see progress, and satisfaction of well-executed planning. Such things, over time, are taken as givens, and are routinely ignored, unless reflective constructs are employed.
However, Servant Leaders provoke acceleration through healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, and growth — giving fuel to push forward, tension to push higher, strength to reach out. Being a catalyst for change, increasing to higher velocity, moving beyond the humdrum gives energy towards the group (or individual), and the Servant Leader.
In fact, sometimes it’s hard to determine which is being used at the moment with a Servant Leader, since the carry bag of the Servant Leader includes both velocity and acceleration tools — they are bright and sharp from constant, repeated use.
