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Building cultures of servant leadership is energizing. The impact runs deep and extends on so many fronts. Profitability goes up. Sales increase. Employee turnover improves. Lives are changed. The positive impact isn’t just immediate; it also carries down through generations. Employees take servant leadership home with them and become better spouses, parents, friends and community leaders.I have seen these results firsthand time and time again.
My first experience of getting intentional about building a servant leadership culture was when I became President of the Banta Catalog Group in 2003. Upon my arrival, I found an organization that was not maximizing its people’s potential.
Profitability, operations performance, quality output, schedule fidelity and employee morale were all well below what a high-performing organization would be delivering. A silo structure mentality that had been fostered by previous leadership amplified problems and prevented teaming, process improvement, innovation and customer focus.We were like many other companies today, who focus solely on the bottom line at the expense of customer service and employee satisfaction.
Our problems were not uncommon, yet our stakes were higher than most. We were challenged with issues of overcapacity in an uncertain market. Moreover, our entire industry was changing; shifting from traditional web offset printing to digital and web-based solutions. We couldn't afford not to begin drawing out the best performance from our people and fast.
Our challenge became to create an energized and empowered workforce that could drive and sustain culture change, create a compelling customer experience and align the organization around shared purpose and values.
I knew the best solution was to embark on a significant culture shift towards a journey of servant leadership. It would be a radical move. Our current culture was based on positional authority, nearly a command and control environment. We definitely had our work cut out for us.
Fast-forward through 18 months of focused culture work…
Key indicators affirmed that we were on the right track:
• Employee engagement had increased 20 percent
• Employee retention had increased by 17 percent
• Profitability had improved by 36 percent
How did we do it? And how do companies that I work with today drive a culture of servant leadership?
Our first step was to recognize the need for culture improvement. We started by asking team members throughout the organization to articulate what they perceived as our core business, our purpose, and our values. Answers were all over the place. There was no consistency other than we are here to “print catalogs” and “make money.”
It became clear that to create lasting change we would need to get intentional about creating a culture where team members were aligned; not just around a common purpose, but also around a set of values that guided actions and created a compelling customer experience. This initial work rested on the shoulders of leaders. We knew our culture change effort was too important to delegate.
As senior leaders, we set out to build the foundation. We began by discerning common ground around our individual personal values. This process provided a strong foundation for aligning the organization’s values. We also discerned our true purpose, which shifted emphasis from an internal focus to an external, servant-minded focus. Our foundation, then, consisted of our purpose as well as our values, each of which was defined behaviorally.
Our foundation created a baseline for behavioral and cultural change. In sharing it with the entire organization, we could support people to behave in ways that would support the organization’s values and servant purpose.
Purpose:
“To deliver quality, on-time merchandising solutions that drive our customers’ success.”
Values:
• Employee well-being—“We have a safe environment where no one goes home hurt. We foster stability and opportunity for all employees committed to our purpose and values.”
• Mutual respect and trust—“I work with my customers, internal and external, openly, honestly, sincerely and ethically. I follow through on my commitments and assume and expect the same from others.”
• Commitment to excellence—“I pledge to continually strive to exceed my personal best and to exceed my customers’ expectations, internal and external.”
It was important at this stage for the leadership team to first model our values and behaviors, and start getting comfortable using our new purpose for all decisions made. We invested several months in this modeling. After the team got comfortable in the new desired norm for the culture, I stood in front of all 700+ team members and shared that this foundation was our new “Boss.” I asked them to hold me accountable “walking the talk” of our purpose, values, and behaviors. It was my job to model this Foundation through my, and my leadership team’s, actions.
Our next step was to intentionally drive our new culture throughout the organization. This process is a journey—not a project or an event. To help team members understand what the behaviors looked like in action, we conducted extensive training that included videos illustrating what it meant to fall below, meet, and exceed performance on each of the values. Our foundation became part of all discussions with employees as we continually educated them on the servant culture we wanted to build.
We provided employees with T-Shirts that illustrated our values in graphic fashion:
We also printed brochures that were given to each employee that listed all of our behaviors and what good performance looked like for each.
We then utilized a team charter process. Each department in the organization developed their own “Team Purpose” to illustrate how their specific work advanced the overall organization’s purpose.
Here are a couple of examples:
Pricing / Contract Administration Team:
“Our purpose is to provide competitive, accurate, timely, and innovative pricing solutions to our internal and external customers to enable their success.”
Maintenance Team:
“Our purpose is to provide world-classmaintenance solutions that support customer needs within budgetary commitments.”
In addition to team purpose, these charters also included norms, goals, responsibilities, and how we would treat customers in each area.
Our final step was to incorporate these new values and behavioral expectations into our employee evaluation system to embed accountability. These values became our compass. They guided each and every decision we made and every action we took.
The results that I mentioned earlier speak for themselves.
But the real benefit was the positive impact our new servant culture had on all employees. Rewarding innovation and focusing on the behaviors that made a difference had a dramatic impact on the
personal and professional lives of each of us. We started out talking about culture and how weneeded to treat people. We then discovered how our culture work translated beyond the organization—into our homes and relationships with family and friends.
That’s when you really see the power of this process beyond the factory floor. Building a culture of servant leadership is among the most spiritually rewarding journeys you can take.
This is just a brief account of what it looks like to build a servant leadership culture. For a complete step-by-step how-to guide, please consider reading Leading Jesus’ Way: Become the Servant Leader God Created You To Be.
Photo source: istock
 | Mark Deterding is the founder and principal of Triune Leadership Services, LLC. In 2011 he formed Triune Leadership Services to follow his passion of working with leaders to help them develop core servant leadership capabilities that allow them to lead at a higher level and enable them to achieve their God-given potential. He is married to his wife Kim, and they have two sons, two lovely daughter-in-laws, and three wonderful grandchildren. This article was first published on triuneleadershipservices.com. Used with permission. Learn More » |
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