Continuing the message of servant leadership, we’ve previously touched on:
- Effectiveness
- Continuous improvement, starting with removing waste and impediments that keep our teams from doing what they do best
- A reminder that as leaders we are here for our team (not the other way around)
- And, as leaders, we are as much the student as we are the coach, with the ongoing mindset to Look, Listen, Learn, and Adapt
Let’s remind ourselves that we are “more than our title”.
Put title (and let’s be honest… ego) aside.
What do those actions actually look like, day to day?
It’s rarely one big moment. It’s clearing a blocker before someone has to ask twice. It’s showing up to the tough conversation instead of routing around it. It’s giving credit out loud, in the room, not saving it for a review cycle six months later. None of that shows up on a business card, and none of it needs to… it just needs to happen, consistently, whether anyone’s watching or not.
- Did I remove something that was in my team’s way today, or did I let it sit
- Did I show up for the hard conversation, or find a reason to delay it
- Did credit go to the person who earned it, in the moment, or did it get lost somewhere
- Am I still doing this when nobody’s keeping score
The actions that we take every day to set the stage for our teams, and continuously work to make it better (innovate and evolve) will make the difference that defines us. When we help our teams to win, by enabling them to do what they do best, we all win (from individual team member success, through all things driving overall business success).
How do we know the difference is actually landing?
Not from a title, and not from how we’d describe ourselves. We know it’s landing when the team’s succeeding in ways that don’t run through us anymore… when the actions we’ve been taking (clearing the path, showing up, sharing credit) have built something that holds up without us standing in the middle of it.
That’s the actual test. Not what we call ourselves, not what’s printed under our name… whether the team we’ve been enabling is winning because of the work we put in every day.
That…. defines us as a leader (not the title on our business card).