How Servant Leadership Can Help Overcome Common Organizational Issues

© 2015, Steven A. Martin Page 1
Originally published as a part of the 2015 PMI Global Congress Proceedings – Orlando, Florida, USA
To Serve or not to Serve – There is no question for a Leader
Steven A. Martin, PMP
Abstract
I am often called into organizations to help them address significant business, product and/or people
issues. Regardless of the organization’s core issue(s), I regularly find the mindset of leadership at the
heart of the dysfunction. A relentless top-down driven environment with work pushed onto teams is
common. This tends to lead to a culture of indifference, lack of accountability and/or innovation, and
results not typically aligned with stakeholder needs. With a servant leader approach, where a partnership
and coaching stance is used, I generally see much better results, increased morale and more growth from
all parties. Transitioning to a servant leader mindset is a challenging and lengthy journey. Several
approaches are discussed.
What’s the problem with the current leadership?
As a seasoned consultant focusing on helping organizations transform to operating with more of an Agile
mindset, I often work with senior leadership (C-levels, Executive Vice Presidents) and management
teams (Directors, Senior Managers, Direct Line Managers) to help them clarify “what’s the problem.”
The typical responses I receive are along the lines of what Amr Elssamadisy describes in his book “Agile
Adoption Patterns: A Roadmap to Organizational Success” as smells, indicators that things are not quite
right and organizations are heading in an undesired direction. (2008, Chapter 4) (See Exhibit 1)
Business Smells Process Smells
 Quality delivered to Customer is
unacceptable
 Delivering new features to Customer
takes too long
 Features are not used by Customer
 Software is not useful to Customer
 Software too expensive to build
 Us vs. Them
 Customer asks for everything including
the kitchen sink
 Direct and regular customer input is
unrealistic
 Management is surprised (lack of
visibility)
 Bottlenecked resources
 Churning projects
 Hundreds (possibly thousands) of bugs
in bug tracker
 “Hardening” phase needed at end of
release cycle
 Integration is infrequent (usually
because it’s painful)
Exhibit 1: Business and Process Smells (Elssamadisy 2008)
At the risk of posing what may be considered a rather broad and potentially controversial opinion, after
some root cause analysis, regardless of the smell, one detracting factor often seems to be common across
a vast majority of my clients: the leadership.
Many of the managers and teams I work with view their respective leadership as people who manage, not
lead. While there is acknowledgement and awareness of “good leadership traits”, actions performed by

the leadership often tends to demonstrate what may be considered “traditional top-down” management.
Characteristics I regularly observe includes leaders using their position as power over others to:
 Tell/direct subordinates what to do
 Focus on efficiency of individuals and departments
 Over-emphasize cost containment (penny wise and pound foolish)
 Separate teams performing work from their actual customers/clients, removing feedback loops
 Require unnecessary documentation with layers of sign-offs
 Mandate metrics collection and reporting with little actionable value as proof of progress
 Reduce risk by ensuring conformity across organization with blind application of process for
consistency purposes
With this, teams and management under their respective leaders tend to:
 Wait to be told what to do and how to do it, which, in turn establishes:
o Lack of accountability in final solution (“I just built what you told me to”)
o Limitations in creativity in solutions
o Culture of fear; no safety net to try things
o Less satisfied workers (lower morale)
 Implement tremendous waste in overall process (hierarchies of signoffs, handoffs) leading to:
o Poor quality
o Complicated governance processes
o Increasing time from concept to in the customers’ hands
 Focus on individual(s) or department(s) rather than the system. While this may be localizing
efficiencies, in actuality, it hurts overall end-to-end delivery (slower, more issues, greater risk).
I would like to propose that a relentless drive from upper levels ultimately leads to the smells listed in
Exhibit 1. Even worse, it can permeate the organization, leading to a culture of indifference, lack of
innovation, delivering solutions that don’t (or no longer) meet customers’ needs, and little incentive or
desire to continuously improve. While there are times at which “top-down” driving is necessary, I don’t
believe this is the best way to get things done over the long term.
Of course the level of distress all depends on the organization and business factors for that industry. And
also, let’s acknowledge that as a consultant, I am almost always brought into companies when situations
range from irritating to just plain, well, I can’t mention the phrase that I’ve heard executives use in the
field. So, my perception is likely skewed. Even with this caveat, I still believe that there is enough
evidence supporting a large enough kernel of truth to the above problems with leadership that compels us
to do something differently.
So what needs to change?
Observing how important leadership (versus management) is first hand, there has to be an approach that
emphasizes, as an organization, not only delivering high value products and services to their customers,
but also in the how they deliver them. The focus in this paper will be on the latter, but not from a
“process” point of view, but from a leadership perspective – specifically, having a servant leader mindset.
Before I get into servant leadership, I’d like to step back a moment to see how I arrived at this assertion.

In recent headlines, there is an interesting notion being challenged by several companies regarding the
value of management in the first place. Do we even need managers if they are not providing value?
Zappos didn’t think so, as they radically redesigned the entire organization to remove management
(Sweeny, Gosfield 2014), as well as Morning Star (Hamel 2011).
Google even started questioning the value of managers – so much so, that they initiated Project Oxygen in
2009 (Garvin 2013). As presented in Harvard Business Review’s article “How Google sold its Engineers
on Management,” they spent several years extensively performing data collection and analysis regarding
management. Google not only concluded management was necessary, but furthermore great managers
exhibited 8 traits (see Exhibit 2).
A Great Manager…
1. Is a good coach
2. Empowers the team and does not micromanage
3. Expresses interest/concern for team members’ success and personal well-being
4. Is productive and results-oriented
5. Is a good communicator – listens and shares information
6. Helps with career development
7. Has a clear vision/strategy for the team
8. Has key technical skills that help him/her advise the team
Exhibit 2: 8 Traits of a Great Manager (Garvin 2013)
Over time, Google implemented a training program that emphasized demonstration and evaluation of
leadership skills based upon these 8 traits. According to the HBR article, “by November 2012, employees
had widely adopted the [management] program—and the company had shown statistically significant
improvements in multiple areas of managerial effectiveness and performance.” (Garvin 2013)
What is Servant Leadership?
Reflecting upon the Google traits, at least the top 6 seem to be in alignment with what I would consider as
traits of a servant leader.
So what is a servant leader? The concept of servant leadership is certainly not new. The modern view can
be taken from Robert Greenleaf’s essay “The Servant as Leader”, where he coins the term “servant
leader,” describing it as:
“A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the
communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the
accumulation and exercise of power by one at the ‘top of the pyramid,’ servant leadership
is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps
people develop and perform as highly as possible.” (Greenleaf 1970)
Peter Economy at Inc. magazine says it a little more succinctly with, “the idea of servant leadership is that
the typical hierarchy where employees are supposed to serve their bosses is turned upside down. Instead,
leaders serve their people.” (2015)

On the surface, there seem to be obvious benefits for servant leadership. Mr. Economy states “by serving
your employees, you can build a happier, more-productive business with a better bottom line.” (2015)
Providing some more quantitative perspective to the benefits of servant leadership, studies have shown
“when the practices of servant leadership are implemented through leadership training in a business,
performance has improved by 15 - 20% and work group productivity by 20 –50%. Fortune magazine’s
annual rankings of the best 100 corporations to work for show that companies that practice SL
consistently rank within the top 10 (e.g., Southwest Airlines, Synovus Financial Corporation, TD
Industries, and Container Stores).” (Wong, Davey 2007)
Heskett (2013) further discusses work by a group of organizational psychologists led by Adam Grant to
impacts on the servant leaders themselves, not just on those that they lead. Grant asserts that, “servant
leaders are not only more highly regarded than others by their employees and not only feel better about
themselves at the end of the day, but are more productive as well.” [Grant’s] thesis is that “servant leaders
are the beneficiaries of important contacts, information, and insights that make them more effective and
productive in what they do even though they spend a great deal of their time sharing what they learn and
helping others through such things as career counselling, suggesting contacts, and recommending new
ways of doing things.”
Characteristics of Servant Leaders
There are many opinions on the characteristics of servant leaders. Mr. Economy (2015) summarizes
nicely the work of S. Chris Edmonds from his book “The Culture Engine,” that servant leaders believe:
1. Every person has value and deserves civility, trust, and respect
2. People can accomplish much when inspired by a purpose beyond themselves
Tangentially, this reminds me of Daniel Pink’s writings in his book “Drive”, where motivation is not
based upon money (and notion of carrots and sticks), but instead on autonomy, mastery, sense of purpose.
(2011)
Based upon my coaching and mentoring of leaders, there are several characteristics of those that possess a
servant leader mindset, as described in Exhibit 3.
 Goes beyond self – not an “I”, but a “We” attitude
 Is very self-aware (high Emotional Intelligence), willing to continuously improve him/herself
 Demonstrates being a exemplified Communicator, Listener, Negotiator, Facilitator
 Can read situations, and knows how to adapt; demonstrates there is no “one size fits all”
 Comfortable with shared power, encourages and supports team decisions
 Primarily coaches (to help with self-discovery), but knows when to mentor (to provide guidance)
 Sees the big picture (holistic visions) as well as details (execution of a strategy)
 Can think several steps ahead, such as “assuming that this result or outcome happens, what
the team need next? What ‘blockers’ would then appear”
 Is willing to let the team safely fail at an appropriate time if there is a lesson to learn
Exhibit 3: Proposed Characteristics of Servant Leaders

You’ll notice that I didn’t say a “Manager” or “Senior Leader” needs to have these characteristics. I
observe very frequently members on teams that have informal power, those that clearly influence others
and get things completed without formal authority. I assert that you don’t need to have a leadership title to
be a servant leader.
There is some caution, though, that should probably be mentioned. In lines with “too much of a good
thing,” being a servant leader does not mean that you always do what your staff or others want you to do.
That’s not what servant leadership is about. As a leaders, there are things that need to be done, and these
things may not be “wants.” This is the paradox and challenge of being a servant leader: What’s the
appropriate balance?
How can you transition to being a Servant Leader?
While there is no clear-cut way to becoming a servant leader, in general, I’d suggest following these four
steps, each of which will be explained further.
1. Make the commitment that you want to be a leader.
2. Understand yourself. Learn patterns of how and why you react the way you do.
3. Understand others. Identify patterns of others, learning how and why they react the way they do.
4. Incrementally demonstrate the characteristics of a servant leader.
1. Do you really want to be a leader?
From my experience, there seems to be a high percentage of people who were fantastic individual
performers that were rewarded by being promoted to a management position. However, they are not
exactly what I would deem as models of being good leader.
When I was first promoted to a leadership role, I made all the classic blunders of a novice “leader.” I
assigned. I tracked to needless detail. I checked up on my staff’s solutions, to see if they were “worthy.” I
even looked at timecards. This is what I thought I was supposed to do. I’m surprised I didn’t lose more of
my staff than I did. Looking back, I wouldn’t want to work for me.
You’ll need to make the conscious decision that you want to go through the journey to become a leader.
This seems rather obvious, but it really isn’t. Assuming you want to move forward to become a leader,
and in particular, a servant leader, you will likely need to change.
Hessler (2010) describes in his book “Land On Your Feet, Not Your Face,” prospective leaders have to
“make the leadership choice”, and in doing so, “you may need to leave behind some old competencies,”
being OK with public failure, and willing to “make the leap [to leadership] without certainty of actually
getting there.” If you’re doing the transition to leadership for reasons such as power, money, or
respect/admiration from others, you may be in it for the wrong goals; servant leaders have core motives
beyond these.
2. Understand Yourself
My belief is the more you know about yourself, the better equipped you are to help and serve others. One
of the quickest ways I found to start this journey is to take a self-assessment. Used correctly and
answering the questions honestly, it can provide you with insight into yourself, more specifically into the
hows and whys you behave in the way you do.

There are many different personality / leadership assessments available. I’d suggest using a reputable tool
grounded in science, where results have a high correlation between indicated and observed behaviors.
Exhibit 4 lists just a few of the assessments I’ve used before.
Note: This is not a paper on assessments nor an endorsement of any particular instrument. Rather, this is a
brief listing of the tools as a possible place for you to get started researching what may work for you and
your situation. Simply perform a search on your favorite browser to find a range of assessments and/or
providers. Costs can range from free to paid services.
Instrument Brief Description For More Information
Myers & Brigs
(MBTI)
Based upon C.G. Jung’s 4 dichotomies of
personality, identifies your predisposition and
how these interact together. Leads to how you
perceive the world and make decisions.
www.myersbriggs.org
DISC Assessment by industrial psychologist Clarke
based on Dr. Martson’s work, indicates the “how”
people behave in 4 categories based upon self
and the environment.
www.discprofile.com
Workplace
Motivators
Often pairs with the DISC assessment, instead
focusing on the “why” you behave in the way you
do based on 6 or 7 dimensions of motivation,
depending on the assessment taken.
Many websites from 3rd
parties offering tool; perform
keyword search in your
preferred browser.
Personalysis Developed by behavioral scientist Noland,
displays how people are “wired” which drives
how they connect, commit, and contribute.
www2.personalysis.com
Strength
Deployment
Inventory (SDI)
Identifies how behaviors are driven by
motivations and how these change from relaxed
to stressed states.
totalsdi.com
Career Leader While more career-oriented focused, based on
premise knowing own interests and motivators
leads to future career “success and satisfaction.”
careerleader.com
Exhibit 4: Examples of self-assessments
As an example of how I’ve used just one of these assessments, I’d like to mention a few things about the
DISC assessment, which shows your predisposition for “how” you react in four spectrums:
 Dominance – Focus on resolving problems and challenges, sometimes quickly and bluntly
 Influence – Emphasis on people, getting to know people
 Steadiness – Focus on pace, ensuring consistency and calmness
 Conscientiousness – Emphasis on procedure, quality, accuracy, and constraints
We all possess a combination of 4 characteristics to some degree, but often one (or two) rise up to the top
as most prevalent. By having awareness of how you tend to react to situations, you can better “head off”
any of your own unnecessary behaviors that tend to clash with the servant leader characteristics before
they escalate too high.
Furthermore, under DISC, we display these characteristics based in 2 different states:
 Your primary style – this tends to be who you are at your core, and does not shift much over time
 Your adjusted / adapted style – how you’ve changed to your environment

If you happen to have a delta of 20% or more points in any one of the 4 characteristics from your adapted
to primary state, it indicates that you are likely to display signs of stress; it’s challenging for folks to
“swing” that much and still possess the skills necessary to more effectively demonstrate servant leader
behaviors. For example, if you have a low Dominance score as your primary style and your adapted style
is high Dominance, there’s an awful lot of extra energy and strain to maintain a high Dominance style.
After taking the self-assessment, give yourself permission to increase your own awareness in how you
behave towards certain situations. Learn your patterns for how you react and how it manifests in the
combinations of the 4 characteristics above. This will be a building block before you apply it to others (as
described in the next section).
There are a few words of caution regarding self-assessments:
 Self-assessments are based upon your perception of yourself. Most assessments can be gamed.
You need to answer questions honestly, not for what you want to be, but for where you are.
o A “360” tool may provide a wider view into you (and possibly identify some blind spots)
by asking subordinates, peers, and those above you to provide feedback. However, 360’s
require a bit of effort, coordination, and reliance on a third party to gather and present
information back to you.
 Assessments should never be used for hiring or continued employment decisions.
 Better results come when there is voluntary participation versus coercion.
 It is more essential to have the openness and self-awareness to take the time to read through the
outputs and do something with the feedback from the assessment.
 The example above is just one type of assessment; there are different assessments out there that
identify “how” people react. You’ll need to find the instrument that resonates with you the most.
3. Understand Others
Once you recognize your patterns of the hows and whys you react to situations, you can more easily
identify patterns to others around you. Understanding others will tend to help you exhibit servant leader
characteristics, such as listening, communicating, negotiating, and facilitating.
Carrying the DISC example started above to the next level, let’s assume that you have a high Dominance
style and you are paired with someone having a high Steadiness style. Your tendency to want get things
done quickly and decisively will likely clash with their need for patience and predictability. In this
situation, as a servant leader, you need to pull back and coach towards what they may perceive to be a
reasonable pace, so they can learn and grow. (Of course, there are times where you need to mentor versus
coach, as the situation dictates). In other words, you are adjusting your behaviors to theirs, in recognition
of how your behaviors may cloud or impact your perception of others.
Expanding this to a group example, let’s say your team has an over-abundance of folks that are high
Steadiness and high Conscientiousness, low in Dominance and Influence. In my experience, this is a
common profile of a software development team. There is potential that the group may tend to:
 Want to work alone. With low Influence, they may be introverted. This can make it more
challenging for collaboration, communication and coaching.
 Get stuck in “analysis paralysis.” With low Dominance in combination with high
Conscientiousness, wanting perfect, high quality, well thought out analysis before taking any
action.

 Have an “outsider” that doesn’t fit in, which causes stress on the team. For example, if you have
one person that is high Dominance or high Influence, they may be in conflict with the rest of the
group. Eventually, may make others automatically discount any input from that person,
potentially missing some fantastic insight or opportunity for innovation.
These are just hypothetical examples of how to apply the knowledge beyond the self to the group. As a
servant leader, being aware of the dynamics of others and the group ultimately helps you help them
navigate through their waters much easier.
4. Incrementally demonstrate servant leadership behaviors
Becoming a servant leader is much like an endurance sport – it happens intensely over a long period of
time. Give yourself permission to take the time needed to learn, reflect and grow. Some leadership
programs I advise (and have participated in) take a year or so on purpose. When I’ve observed others try
to go too quickly, not only do they themselves have personal difficulty with the pace of adjustment (it can
be overwhelming), but the people around them tend to have a hard time trying to “figure you out.”
Since this is a journey, you need to plan part of your day to account for this purpose. This is a “task” that
takes time out of each day, just like anything else on your plate. You’ll need the quiet moments of
introspection and reflection along with action to start to make your change. Avoid trying to layer this on
top of what you already have. Incrementally shift what you have on your plate. Do this by first
considering what you can give up, then putting plans in place to transition these activities or simply phase
out if there is little or no value add.
Be transparent about your own journey. Let others know that you are trying to change in an effort to help
them and the overall organization so that we all can deliver amazing products / services for our clients –
so, it’s a journey for you as well as them.
Practice servant leader behaviors on solving real problems - not ones you think are important, but ones
that are important to the team(s). Being a servant leader means seeing things and helping from their point
of view. But, most importantly, for anything that you say you’re going to do, especially when helping
resolve real problems, you need to deliver on your promise, as this will build greater trust over time. If
you’re going to miss it or are having difficulty, be open and transparent with your team(s).
Ask for feedback regularly, and, in particular, when you perceive things not going well. Getting feedback,
particularly unpleasant criticism, can be awkward or disappointing. However, some of my best learning
has been from failure and mistakes, even though they weren’t fun experiences at the time. The key,
though, when you do get the feedback, is to do something with it. Don’t just ask for feedback then don’t
change or act on it; soon you won’t get any feedback at all.
From an education and training perspective, some companies generously offer internal leadership training
seminars or funding to take a class outside the organization. If this isn’t an option, you’ll need to get a
little more creative. Consider professional societies such as Project Management Institute®, Strategic
Management Society, etc. I have found many videos and white papers by experts in the field with simple
browser searches. You may also opt for a more formal education or certificate from a university or
education body. The bottom line is you need to put work into learning on your own.

What’s holding us back from becoming servant leaders?
There could be two perspectives to consider on why servant leadership isn’t more pervasive in
organizations: from internal influences (from the self) and external influences (beyond the self).
Some internal (self) influence that may be holding us back could include:
 You’re just not ready yet to perform the self-reflection needed to become a servant leader. From
your perspective, things are OK, it’s everyone else’s problem, not mine. You’ve been doing
“this” for years, and you’ve already found the best practices. There is no more to learn. If you
have any of these thoughts, seriously think long and hard if you’re ready to become a servant
leader.
 You don’t have the time to invest in your own transition.
 You don’t have resources to help you with your learnings.
 You are not comfortable asking for feedback.
 You don’t want to be in a leadership role in the first place; you would rather be an expert in your
particular field.
Some external reasons (beyond the self) could include:
 Culture of companies, annual assessments, and raises and/or bonuses based upon annual reviews.
I’m a firm believer in incremental feedback over the course of the year versus big bang annual
reviews, which, in my opinion, is often too late and not actionable. The annual review and
compensation adjustment for employees is a one-two punch that tends to lead to a culture of
individual performers vs teams or “we.”
 There may be a perception that servant leadership is “being the nice person”, not seen as a strong
leader – challenging what is meant to be a strong leader. I happen to think a servant leader is
stronger, as it takes influence and “soft skills” over telling folks to just do something.
 Servant Leaders could be viewed as non-value added and/or overhead. Why pay someone to
influence and guide when you can hire someone else to just do it?
 Publically traded companies may not be ready for potential backlash of perception of “not having
anyone in charge.”
Final words from experiences/observations in the field
Servant leadership seems to be more of an individual characteristic versus an organization characteristic.
Within same company, I’ve seen individuals (at both team and management levels) that possess desired
characteristics and some that don’t. In an unscientific manner, I see about one fourth (25%) managers
exhibit characteristics of servant leaders. A good portion of these people I see with these characteristics
are at the team level – they want to help their team members do well, so the whole team succeeds.
I’ve not quite yet observed a “servant leader culture” at any company. In informal interviews with several
colleagues (includes other Agile Transformation coaches as well as Executive coaches), they haven’t seen
this either across any organization. Again, there could be bias here in that the opinions represented are of
consultants who are called into rather adverse situations.
Obviously, it is a rather extreme and bold move for organizations to transition to a servant leader mindset.
So, I think most organizations tend to handle incremental change better.

Sources
Economy, Peter (2015, January 26). 7 Secrets of 'Servant Leadership' That Will Lead You to Success. Inc.
Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.inc.com/peter-economy/7-secrets-of-servant-leadership-that-
will-lead-you-to-success.html
Elssamadisy, Amr (2008). Agile Adoption Patterns: A Roadmap to Organizational Success. Chapter 4:
Smells. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Garvin, David A (2013, December). How Google Sold its Engineers on Management. Harvard Business
Review.
Greenleaf, Robert (1970). The Servant as a Leader. Retrieved from
http://www.leadershiparlington.org/pdf/TheServantasLeader.pdf
Hamel, Gary (2011, December). First, Let’s Fire All the Managers. Harvard Business Review.
Heskett, James (2013, May). Why Isn't Servant Leadership More Prevalent? Forbes. Retrieved from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2013/05/01/why-isnt-servant-leadership-more-
prevalent/
Hessler, Jim and Montenko, Steve (2010). Land on your feet, not on your face: a guide to building your
leadership platform. Plank 1. Make the Leadership Choice (pp 11-27). Seattle, WA: Bennett &
Hastings Publishing.
Pink, Daniel (2011) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. New York: Riverhead
Books.
Sweeney, Camille and Gosfield, Josh (2014, January 6). No Managers Required: How Zappos Ditched
The Old Corporate Structure For Something New. Fast Company. Retrieved from
http://www.fastcompany.com/3024358/bottom-line/no-managers-required-how-zappos-ditched-the-
old-corporate-structure-for-somethin
Wong, Dr. Paul T. P. and Davey, Dean (2007, July). Best Practices in Servant Leadership. Servant
Leadership Research Roundtable, Regent University.

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