What do we mean by Servant Leadership or Servant Leader?

The theory of servant leadership takes a compassionate approach to lead, inspiring and serve by focusing on the support and growth of others. A true servant leader is a servant first, and then a leader.

A servant leader aims to help others not only to produce quality results but to improve their professional growth as well. Whereas, we see a leader as one who has authority and power to control and take decisions.
 
A servant leader's main goal is to involve the team members in the day-to-day decision-making discussions and make them feel valued and respected. For a Servant leader, it is important to have relationship-building skills, as it helps them to connect at both the senior level (management) and frontline or bottom level effectively.

To transform your leader from a traditional to a servant, there are various leadership training programs from which they can learn the skills a servant leader should incorporate.  

Trusted Servant Leader: A New Kind of Leader that People Need

As a servant leader, you focus more on the needs of the people to whom you are connected, especially your team members. A traditional leader works on getting the work done and achieving the goals, but servant leaders work to improve and develop their people. They act as a servant to their people. By giving them the direction, guidance and support they need to meet their day-to-day work and help them to achieve their personal goals, they always try to involve and engage them in decision-making discussions wherever required.

All of this leads to better collaboration, higher employee engagement, more trust, and stronger work relationships with team members. It can also lead to increased creativity and innovation in your organization.
 
But how to learn the skills to become a servant leader?
 
First, let’s dig into the skills which are important to becoming a servant leader and you should be knowing.
 
1. Effective Listening:

Learn to listen to your people to understand their perspectives, not just to hear them. As you will be able to serve people better when you make a deep commitment to effectively listening to them, and understanding their concerns, ideas, opinions, etc.

To enhance your listening skills, start with giving people your full attention in a communication or listening process, keep observing their facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, and other non-verbal elements, and try to avoid interrupting them in between as this will make them disengaged, and always give feedback whenever appropriate.

2. Empathy:

One of the important skills of a servant leader is to be empathetic. Servant leaders endeavour to understand their people's real intentions and perspectives. To become empathetic try to put aside your opinion for a time being, and value others perspectives with an open mind.

3. Commitment to the growth and development of people:

Servant leaders always show dedication to the personal and professional growth of the people to whom they are serving as a leader.

To develop and grow your people, you can plan leadership training programs for your people as per their competencies requirements or as per the skills they need to do their jobs effectively. There are various behavioural, coaching, mentoring, self-development, and soft-skills development programs which you can plan for your people.

A servant leader starts with knowing their people’s personal goals and then tries to give those projects or responsibilities that will help them to achieve.

4. Relationship Building Skills

The relationship-building skills are the combination of various soft skills that an individual applies to connect with others in order to form a positive and trustful relationship. In the workplace, for a servant leader relationship-building skills are essential as it helps to connect with people.

These are some of the skills which are essential to becoming a servant leader, but there are more in list-like behavioural skills, soft skills, coaching skills, etc.
 
Want to know how to learn these skills?
 
You can attend leadership training programs offered by Blanchard Research and Training India. They have solutions and offer various courses from individual contributors to senior-level tenure managers.

As per your skills required to become a servant leader for your people, connect with the Blanchard India consultant for a customized learning journey. They offer the world’s best leadership training programs with assessments.