I picked up The Servant Leader: How to Build a Creative Team, Develop Great Morale, and Improve Bottom-Line Performance by James A. Autry. This is a book that I read while on a flight and wasn’t able to take notes as I read. It was nice to focus on the reading and making highlights on the Kindle – but it makes it harder to review. Looking back, I wish there was an easier way to get the shape of my thoughts at the time.

Takeaways from the book

Remember that there is no crises that justifies the suspension of our servant leadership values and practices, one of which is open and honest communication in an invornment of trust.

The underlying concept is that a servant leader supports their team members – and that this doesn’t change when things get difficult. The book covers how to handle this in numerous scenarios such as around feedback, sickness and disability, layoffs, managing conflict, etc.

I’m not sure if a lot has changed since this book was published (2007), or if my management style is a product of the a8c environment and my own personality. A lot of the thoughts in the book felt obvious – of course, you should connect with your team members rather than dictating what they do. Of course, you should be collaborative and work to remove roadblocks. It was surprising that the author noted pushback on these ideas.

The affirmation exercise is a team-building/conflict-reduction exercise that involves having everyone in the room compliment each other. It speaks to the servant leadership style because it allows you to facilitate the team in becoming stronger. Start with one person and have everyone share their thoughts. My team, Supernova, tried this during our recent meetup in Athens. It was uncomfortable, difficult to hear, and powerful in getting to share/hear the things that we wouldn’t normally take the time to say to each other. Most of the team appreciated it, but there was one comment on our post-meetup survey saying that it was the worst part of the meetup. Thank you again to Supernova for being willing to try new things. 🙂

Who would I recommend this to?

It’s a good book to read if you are unsure about the concepts of servant leadership and want to explore them, or want to explore examples more deeply.

In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t read this earlier – it has more impact after I’ve been both a lead and a lead of leads. Many of the scenarios discussed are more applicable to the work I do as a LOL and I therefore had more experience to reflect on. This is an interesting book for leads, but more impactful for division leadership.

Photo by Angela Compagnone on Unsplash