Mission « Small Fish Business Coaching

The servant leader

You might have heard the notion of leader as servant. I imagine that it might be based in concepts from Christianity, but I don’t know for sure. At any rate, I’ve had a chance to learn about the concept and apply it to my leadership in volunteer groups and the workplace.

You’d like to think that the idea is simple:

A leader’s results are delivered because of the work the team does.
The leader can help his team to deliver those results by helping to remove obstacles and facilitate action.
As a result, the leader can be the most value by thinking of himself as a servant of the team.

But this is just a starting place, it’s not the full story.

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Leadership principle #4: Clarity

Your people can only be productive if they’re applying their full efforts to what they should be achieving, and avoiding other distractions.

This is really, really hard. You have to be able to clearly say YES, and more important, to clearly say NO.

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Leadership principle #2: People need a purpose

Do your people have a reason to be inspired to do good work?

Sorry, but giving them a paycheck – even a very good one – is just the price of getting them to show up every day. I’m talking about what inspires them to put in their best, day after day.

That comes from having a larger reason to be engaged in your work.

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What's your story?

Most organizations put together something like a vision, mission, and long term goals. That’s all well and good, but here’s the truth:

The only people who are grabbed by that kind of stuff are those who worked to create it.

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This company's core values

NSEW I’ve talked with a number of people about creating a values-based company, and became convinced that this would help me to create the kind of company that I will be proud of.

Often a company’s “values” or “mission statement” look like they were created by a committee, and end up losing their impact. More importantly, you see a significant difference between the stated values and how people really behave. You get the impression that it’s mostly a marketing exercise.

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