Servant Leadership in Action: How You Can Achieve Great Relationships and Results by Ken Blanchard and Renee Broadwell 2018
Servant leaderhship is an interesting book I got due to the constant confusion of what exactly servant leadership actually is.
In a nutshell, the book is pretty much a collection of 42 essays from 42 different leaders from a wide range of industries and walks of life. Each story wants to give a perspectives on servant leadership and what it looks like to implement it. There are good examples about leadership in general, and I think it was a nice read while commuting, with a lot of short chapters.
Key Take aways
Servant leaders serve others and not themselves
They are visionary community builders and persuasive in nature.
The idea of servant leadership is to place others first and not yourself.
They follow an altruistic ideology and want to make the world a place better for others.
They pursue a path that empowers employees and their personal and professional growth.
The essential aspects of servant leadership are defined as having
a purposeful direction, which is the leadership component.
a careful implementation, which is the servant part of leadership
What a servant leader looks for is having a meaningful vision where others are included. This puts more importance on the employees, as they are the foundation of your business, the bottom of the pyramid where everything stands upon.
They have to listen - Paying attention to what people say and what not.
They need to have empathy - Caring about others, accepting others as people and not as tools.
Heal others - they motivate others to face their broken spirits and to keep going on
Being aware - self aware and being aware of the surroundings.
Show foresight - learn lessons and look ahead
Conceptualise work - they need to manage details but also know the bigger picture
Being the stewards - Preserving value for the ones coming after you
Commit to growing people - let them develop professionally and personally.
Show pesuasion - being able to persuade others to achieve their goal.
The key takeway really is to think altruistically and put others first, wanting to elevate them and helping them. This is a trend I see on twitter as well, with more and more people sharing knowledge and helping each other, which creates a positive community of togetherness and looking after each other.
All of this is packed into a lot of stories from various successful people.
It is engaging and inspiring with many examples, but it is also almost a motivational speakers book using a spiritual approach to leadership. With this, it is strongly influenced with christian stories (the servant leadership is pretty much based on christian values) and feels more about like a book about success, than exploring leadership and servitude in detail.