Who's Afraid of Being a Servant Leader?

This week in the (only properly functional - I’m conscious you may not get this due to a massive LinkedIn issue) newsletter - Chasing Psychological Safety we talked -again- about Servant Leadership and how it’s high time.

Despite both articles clearly stating things such as:

“So it’s easy enough, right? Get a leadership team, obsess about yours, invest in self-care and don’t impression manage. You only have two jobs now. The practical one: remove blockers and serve the team with resources, the not-so-practical-one: inspire through fearlessness. Add one to it - hinge both to-dos on an obsession on Psychological Safety and you have Servant Leadership at its best and no demand that anyone sits down in a crowded office 9-17 while fantasising of clocking out and consuming an economy-saving lunch deal.”

there were still a shocking amount of people who clearly didn’t quite get it or argued against it. Aside from the ones who didn’t even understand the term (I got asked if this is about civil service workers several times), there were the ones who launched into extensive diatribes on how, just as we shouldn’t “throw away waterfall for the sake of this Agile trend but find ways to combine them” (!!!) we should recognise the merits of command and control and not “insist on this new fangled way to manage people only”.

I was -unsurprisingly- utterly appalled. That we can’t deliver on the extreme transformation this needs in terms of mindset is understandable, but to not even agree with the principle is inexcusable in this day and age. How can anyone argue against the fact that empowering people, helping them and getting out of their way while making sure they are motivated and fired up about their impact and purpose, is more efficient than any amount of micromanagement, is beyond me.