You’re struggling to gain experience in Servant Leadership. How can you improve your skills?

Servant leadership is a style of leadership that focuses on empowering and serving others, rather than controlling or dominating them. It is based on the idea that leaders should act as stewards, mentors, and facilitators, rather than as bosses, dictators, or heroes. Servant leaders aim to foster a culture of trust, collaboration, and growth, both within their teams and across their organizations. But how can you develop and practice this skill, especially if you don't have much experience or formal training in it? Here are some tips to help you improve your servant leadership skills.

1 Assess your strengths and weaknesses

The first step to becoming a better servant leader is to identify your current level of competence and confidence in this skill. You can use self-assessment tools, such as the Servant Leadership Assessment Instrument (SLAI), to measure your performance on various dimensions of servant leadership, such as listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to growth, and building community. You can also ask for feedback from your peers, subordinates, and superiors, to get a more objective and comprehensive perspective on your strengths and weaknesses. Based on your results, you can set specific and realistic goals for improvement, and track your progress over time.

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Eliabe Kosta

Treinamento de Liderança │ Coordenador Pedagógico │ Coaching para Desenvolvimento de Liderança │ Treinamento & Desenvolvimento
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Para melhorar suas habilidades de líder desenvolva a autoridade interna. Seja impecável quando ninguém estiver olhando, tenha um mentor ou coach e preste contas. Desenvolver sua autoridade interna vai lhe proporcionar respeito para além do seu cargo.

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2 Learn from the best

Another way to enhance your servant leadership skills is to learn from the best examples of this style of leadership. You can read books, articles, podcasts, or blogs that feature the stories, insights, and advice of successful servant leaders, such as Robert Greenleaf, Ken Blanchard, Simon Sinek, Brené Brown, or Stephen Covey. You can also seek out mentors, coaches, or role models within your organization or industry, who can offer you guidance, support, and feedback on your journey. You can observe how they interact with others, how they handle challenges, how they communicate their vision, and how they inspire and empower their followers. You can also ask them questions, seek their opinions, and emulate their behaviors and attitudes.

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Gregory Coffos

Director of Veterans Services @ County of Riverside | MBA; MAOL
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Even though I can't really speak from experience I think mentorship is probably one of the best ways. I have grown a lot through my own studies and of course trial and error over the years, but I think the mentorship I was able to take on even though not really in physical form per se was the biblical teachings of Christ. That example of authentic and unconditional love for people is what we have to live by when we think of servant leadership. When we place the priorities of others over our own that is what will ultimately lead us to make decisions that will support our team's efforts and catalyze greater service to our customers.

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3 Practice in different contexts

One of the best ways to improve any skill is to practice it in different contexts and situations. You can look for opportunities to apply your servant leadership skills in various aspects of your work and life, such as leading a project, volunteering for a cause, mentoring a colleague, resolving a conflict, or making a decision. You can also challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zone and try new things, such as taking on a different role, working with a diverse team, or tackling a complex problem. By doing so, you can expand your experience, knowledge, and perspective, and discover new ways to serve and lead others.

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Nick Hart, PMP, CSM

Project Manager
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We learn best by doing. You might make mistakes or even fail at first. Growth can't take place in your comfort zone where success is 100% guaranteed. The best leaders are self-aware about how they are showing up for their people in different contexts.

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4 Reflect and improve

Finally, you should always reflect on your actions and outcomes, and seek to improve your servant leadership skills. You can use tools such as journals, diaries, or portfolios, to record your experiences, thoughts, feelings, and learnings. You can also solicit feedback from others, such as your team members, clients, or stakeholders, to understand how your leadership style affects them and their performance. You can then analyze your strengths and weaknesses, identify your gaps and areas for improvement, and plan your next steps. You should also celebrate your achievements, recognize your growth, and reward yourself for your efforts.

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5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Andreas Björklund

Status Quo Disruptor and Agile Coach at Consid AB
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True leadership experience is not that hard to gain once you have the mandate to be either a great leader or a crappy manager. Listen to people and use your position to help them solve their problems to be able to deliver value to the organization. Getting the mandate, well if you have a leadership position with a weak mandate you will have to fight for it. Value stream leaders who are not managers according to the traditional hierarchy have the worst position to help but the best position to work on persuasion skills and gaining valuable experience in leadership how it often is for titles like Scrum Masters or the like.

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Debopom Sanyal

Cardiac Survivor l Organisational Coach l Agile ,Transformation, Product and AI Enthusiast
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Honestly, if you are not gaining experience in servant leadership, then you are not practising servant leadership. All you need is to have the intent of serving or helping others. If you try help someone, and you succeed, you gain experience, if you cannot, you gain experience too. Now, there is obviously, a difference between reaching out to anyone and tell them that you want to help, and being in your role and help develop other people. Try the second one. You can be anyone, just try and help develop the people around you and you learn a lot about people, leadership, organisation , life and many more.

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You’re struggling to gain experience in Servant Leadership. How can you improve your skills?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Assess your strengths and weaknesses

2 Learn from the best

3 Practice in different contexts

4 Reflect and improve

5 Here’s what else to consider

Servant Leadership

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You’re struggling to gain experience in Servant Leadership. How can you improve your skills?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Assess your strengths and weaknesses

2 Learn from the best

3 Practice in different contexts

4 Reflect and improve

5 Here’s what else to consider

Servant Leadership

Rate this article

Thanks for your feedback

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