Servant Leadership has recently created a paradigm shift in management training. The concept of Servant Leadership was first introduced by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970 in his book “The Servant As Leader.” Servant Leadership is based on the principle that serving employees is more beneficial than dictating or punishing employees.

This management training concept is gaining acceptance and has recently began being implemented in more and more organizations. Servant leaders desire is to serve employees in any way possible to motivate them to become better people, more autonomous, more productive, more confident and happier within their work environment. The end result of this motivation is a more productive workforce where employees want to be servant leaders as well.

Servant Leadership management training teaches the servant leader to devote his energy towards meeting and exceeding the needs of employees by encouraging their skills and providing guidance to help them overcome their shortcomings. This helps employees become happier and more productive within their work environment which ultimately makes them more likely to remain loyal to their company.

This management training concept will help leaders create an environment within the workforce that is more productive, less stressful and more devoted. Ultimately servant leadership will create an overall feeling of contentment within a workforce. Employees will feel as if their relationship with their leader is more of a partnership rather than a dictatorship.

Starbucks is one company that has adopted the management training concept of Servant Leadership. Starbucks is a hugely successful corporation and one of the major reasons for this is the fact that have created a friendly and inviting atmosphere for its customers largely by creating an environment in which their employees are happy. Starbucks success and growth has been enviable and much of their success can be credited to their adoption of servant leadership as their corporate philosophy.

Servant Leadership management training teaches leaders to work in a partnership with their employees, which motivates them to work in a partnership with the customers. This creates a work environment where information flows from the decision-makers unimpeded and helps create a better customer experience that could not be achieved without that flow.

Here are ten characteristics of Servant Leader management training that are considered essential to the development of servant leaders:

Listening: The servant leader should listen to others in an effort to identity the will of the group.

Empathy: The servant leader should accept and recognize coworkers for their unique spirits.

Healing: Successful servant leaders should recognize the emotional pains of others and help to make whole the individuals they come in contact with.

Awareness: Servant leaders should be self-aware as well as aware of pertinent issues, especially those involving ethics and values.

Persuasion: The servant leader should seek to convince individuals rather than coerce them. The ability to build a consensus is seen as an asset.

Conceptualization: Servant leaders should have the ability to see what may be coming in the future but maintain the balance of looking ahead while keeping up with the day-to-day.

Foresight: Successful servant leaders should know the likely consequence that a decision will have on the future.

Stewardship: Servant leaders should motivate all stakeholders within an institution to maintain their trust for the betterment of society.

Commitment: The servant leader should be committed to the individuals within an organization as well as the organization itself.

Community Building: In order to build a community, servant leaders should lead the way by demonstrating their unlimited liability for a community-related association.

Bill Jenkins – About the Author:

Bill Jenkins is the Executive Director of the Office of Institutional Advancement for Grand Canyon University. For more information about Grand Canyon University, visit http://www.gcu.edu

Training Resource: A Grander Goal tells the true story of how one man went beyond simply “doing a job” and changed the lives of poor, unemployed young men in Uganda.

As 2010 planning initiatives focus on strategies that will prepare companies to return to growth, leaders are looking for new ways to engage critical talent who execute key business priorities. The reason? Research by CLC Genesee, the HR consulting and employee survey division of The Corporate Executive Board (CEB), shows that companies with highly engaged employees demonstrate a 3-year revenue growth of 20.1%, compared to the 8.9% their industry peers will average. They also establish a 3-year EBITDA growth that is three times higher than their industry peers. What’s more, CLC Genesee research shows that shifting an individual employee from low engagement to high engagement can increase discretionary effort level by 60%, improve employee performance by up to 20%, and significantly reduce recruitment costs.

To achieve high levels of employee engagement, you need to first understand what they are thinking. One way to do this is to collect employee feedback through regular employee surveys. However, successful companies don’t just rely on surveys as an event, but also steadily maintain communications and actions throughout the year to continually involve employees in driving positive change. One progressive and admired company leading the way is Google.

Google firmly believes that feedback and discussion are an important part of doing business, and finds avenues for “Googlers” (as Google employees are called) to not just raise problems but help solve them. Google’s annual survey is critical in gathering employee feedback on what is working well and what can be improved. Beyond the survey, Google uses a variety of regular feedback channels to encourage employee involvement and leverage its philosophy that more minds on an important issue are better than one.

Strategy 1: Create a two-way dialogue on the most important issues on people’s minds.
Open dialogue between employees and leaders has always been an important part of Google’s business operations. Every Friday, Google holds a forum called “Thank goodness it’s Friday” (TGIF) to have an active conversation and answer questions ranging from product decisions and external news to internal people-related policies and decisions. This program initially started small with a few employees asking the founders questions on a Friday afternoon. As it evolved, TGIF now occurs almost every Friday, and the notes are distributed broadly across the company. Googlers use Google Moderator, an online tool to submit and vote on questions, and the top-voted questions are directly answered by Google’s founders and executives. TGIF also includes live questions. High levels of employee and executive participation in TGIF contribute greatly to the culture of transparency and create a more intimate atmosphere despite the company’s size of 20,000 employees.

Strategy 2: Engage employees in solving problems, not just raising them.
Google encourages employees to attend problem-solving sessions designed to resolve business challenges. Appropriately called “Fixits,” these sessions can invite a specific group of employees or be open to anyone. One recent Fixit addressed particular concerns regarding career development in a growing business unit. For one week, suggestions for how to improve career development were collected via Moderator. Googlers submitted 51 ideas, in total receiving 5,615 votes, and the best three ideas were implemented. As employees were involved in the solutions, satisfaction in many areas in the annual employee survey improved one year later, including double-digit increases in the favorability scores on two career development items.

As demonstrated by CLC Genesee research, increasing employee engagement has clear business benefits. Following the lead of companies such as Google, organizations can creatively find new ways to encourage and collect employee input on important issues to achieve measurable business outcomes. It’s not about making employees feel involved; it’s actually involving them. The result is more informed leaders, more engaged employees, and ultimately better decisions for a stronger business.

From http://www.executiveboard.com/businessweek/bw-week41.html Used with permission.

Need More Help in this Area? 5 Questions Every Leader Must Ask is a terrific tool for involving employees in problem solving. Using the proven model in this program, even the most inexperienced manager can generate great ideas and effective solutions in a team setting.

When delegation isn’t done properly, there can be high costs to both the organization and the individuals involved. Don’t let that happen to you!

Ensuring a successful delegation requires that you fully define/analyze the task ahead of time and think about what will be required of the person to whom it’s assigned. Each of the following should be considered before assigning anything to anyone.

1. What is the task?
-Be sure you can be specific about the task and have all the information you need to help your “delegatee” succeed at it.
-Know why this project needs to be done and why you want to delegate it.
-Know any issues that will have to be analyzed or resolved before the task can be delegated.

2.When is it due?
-Have a specific deadline, and know the consequences of missing it.
-Know how the task might be affected by outside factors, such as upstream tasks that may fall behind schedule.

3.What resources are available?
-Know what supporting resources are available – personnel, documents, etc.
-Be aware of any budgetary constraints on the task.

4. What is the outcome or deliverable?
-What are you looking for as a result – a report, a presentation?
-Figure out how you will measure success.

5. Who is the best person for this task?
-Think about the specific skills and experience that will be required.
-Consider the attitude that will be needed.
-Look at your team – whose skills fit the bill? Who has have the right attitude?
-Once you’ve picked the person, determine if they need any additional training.

Use of these questions will greatly eliminate misunderstandings and misconceptions about the task to be performed and the expected outcomes.

Excerpted from the CRM Learning program, A Leader’s Guide to Delegating.

Need more help in this area? For detailed information on this crucial step in the delegation process (along with several others) we recommend the entire A Leader’s Guide to Delegating program which introduces and illustrates a highly effective five-step delegation model.