February 14, 2022

Driving Results with Selflessness and Servant Leadership in 2022

Selflessness and servant leadership

What is the importance of selflessness and servant leadership? When you start typing something into Google, it will suggest things that people most often search for. When you type in my boss is, Google will complete the sentence using words like toxic, gaslighting me, causing me anxiety, is a micromanager, or passive-aggressive.

Bosses focused on their needs rather than what’s best for their organization or team can cause a lot of problems in an organization. More than half of all workers said they’ve quit a job because of a bad boss. Of those that stayed, another third reported they gave quitting serious consideration. With today’s tight labor market and high turnover, this is a problem.

The opposite is true as well. When your boss puts the organization first and invests in the success of their team above their own self-interest, it breeds loyalty and respect. Not only does selflessness in the leadership ranks improve morale, but it’s also been shown to boost profits.

In today’s environment, business leaders need to embrace selflessness and servant leadership to be successful.

What Is Selflessness in Leadership?

Selflessness is a term used in several different ways in English. Generally, it’s associated with putting others’ needs above one’s own. Selflessness is also often described as a behavior that is motivated by concerns other than personal gain or advantage when faced with choices.

Selfless leaders in the corporate world have a higher stake in the organization. They are focused on more than just their own success. They put the success of the company and their team ahead of themselves. Leaders will often sacrifice their personal needs to work towards another goal — one that benefits everyone involved.

“It’s amazing what you can accomplish with pride and unselfishness—where you have people who don’t care who gets the credit,” said former US President Harry S. Truman. Another President, Ronald Reagan, kept a small plaque on his desk in the Oval Office that read: “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he does not mind who gets the credit.”

Selfless behavior is considered to be a strong “value-added” characteristic of leadership; this is what makes great leaders. To achieve this behavior requires the leader to put others before themselves, even if it means taking risks that might negatively affect the leader personally.

By always putting the company’s needs first above their own, selfless leaders make it clear to team members that there is no personal agenda involved in decisions. This helps reduce office politics and keep team members focused on the right goals.

Traits that Define Selfless Leaders and Servant Leadership

Selfless leaders practice what’s called servant leadership by focusing on organizational goals and helping team members thrive. As a group, they also tend to share a set of traits that define their leadership style.

Vision and Purpose

Selfless leaders have a clear sense of purpose, which they share with others openly, and often. They hold themselves and others accountable to that vision to keep everyone on task and aligned with organizational goals.

They are passionate about reaching goals together and often inspire and motivate their teams to achieve.

Honesty and Openness

Servant leaders empower their teams by providing a nurturing and safe environment where views are shared. This includes fostering equity and inclusion within the workplace. A selfless leader ties tasks to the mission and encourages dialogue and feedback. They don’t shy away from dissent because it allows them to debate, coach, and redirect.

During Abraham Lincoln’s administration, he surrounded himself with his former party rivals. His cabinet meetings welcome vigorous debate and often dissenting viewpoints. Instead of dictating what happened, he helped guide debates to fully explore solutions and empowered his team to commit to shared goals.

Workplaces, where employees feel their voice is heard, are more than four times more likely to feel empowered to perform better.

Focus and Flexibility

Companies often struggle when they fail to evolve or adopt new practices as situations change. Often, they refuse to listen to their employees or customers or are afraid to change once a decision has been made. Servant leaders listen and constantly evaluate what’s going on around them. They are not afraid to change decisions if it will mean serving the greater good.

Humility

We’ve all seen arrogant leaders that stick with a bad decision because they don’t want to admit they made a mistake. This causes employees to fear admitting poor decisions and cover them up instead.

Selfless leaders practice humility, which allows them to admit when they are wrong or ask for help from colleagues. It also helps others to see that human errors are not fatal mistakes in the workplace, helping them grow and try new things without fearing negative repercussions.

Caring

During the pandemic, we quickly saw whether company leaders truly cared about their employees or not. Effective servant leaders care deeply about both meeting goals and taking care of team members and understand how these two things are interrelated.

When leaders demonstrate an authentic concern for their team members — both in their work and personal lives — it’s powerful and often is reciprocal. Creating a caring, nurturing culture leads to greater productivity.

While managers have traditionally felt they needed to keep themselves at a distance from their employees, research shows that developing a culture of caring helps form tight bonds that help teams perform better. Genuine compassion, empathy, and appreciation make a big difference.

Ethical Decision-Making

The most successful business leaders adhere to ethical decision-making even in the face of adversity. Servant leaders value character over profit, often refusing to leverage opportunities if it means sacrificing their ethical beliefs.

Whether you agree with their politics or not, Chick-fil-A is an example of putting values over profit. Founder Truett Cathy kept his restaurant closed on Sunday so employees could worship and rest. This put his chain at a significant disadvantage to other locations that served customers on Sunday. By the way, Chick-fil-A was named the best chain restaurant for the seventh straight year in 2021 and earns more per store than any other quick-serve restaurant.

Self-Awareness

Ask most people whether they are self-aware and most people will say yes. Research in the Harvard Business Journal, however, estimates that only 10%-15% of people are truly self-aware. Yet, self-awareness is essential for strong leadership.

Self-awareness is the ability to identify and monitor your feelings, thoughts, and actions and understand how this impacts those around you. Selfless leaders know their strengths and weaknesses and model their behavior to mitigate negative impacts.

How important is self-awareness? A study by Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations reported that high self-awareness scores are the strongest predictor of leadership success.

Impro Can Help You Become a Selfless Leader

Some people confuse selflessness and servant leadership with being passive or meek. In reality, selflessness is a powerful motivating force that produces passionate employees. In today’s world where employee engagement is low and turnover is high, adopting a selfless mindset can be the key to re-engaging team members and improving productivity.

If you’d like to learn more about becoming a servant leader, we can help. At Impro, we guide business leaders to become more authentic and selfless to help produce significantly better results.

We’ve taken the lesson we’ve learned through our team’s deep knowledge gathering from one-on-one coaching and created an online platform to help business leaders grow and achieve. In just five minutes a day, you can unlock your potential to optimize your performance at the highest level.

Learn more about Impro on our website today. We’d love to hear what you think.

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