You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.
Peter 2:5
{Full disclosure: This blog is longer than usual because it covers one of the biggest issues I find servant leaders struggling with. There simply isn’t a shorthand way to talk about this topic. Through reading this lengthier post, I hope that you are supported to take on this core leadership challenge with clarity and peace of mind.}
What’s the hardest aspect of being a leader, for you?
If you’re like most leaders I know, it’s providing feedback when things aren’t going so well. Or – even worse – having to fire people when it’s clear they aren’t able to fulfill their purpose in your organization.
What if I told you that you never had to fire anyone ever again? It’s true. You don’t. All it takes is a shift in perspective and remembering your true purpose as a leader.
Let’s look again at the verse at the opening of this blog:
You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.
Spiritual houses – like any worthwhile structures – require quality building materials.
Consider, what spiritual building blocks do you give people in your workplace? And, what do they do with them?
Consider also: The former is your responsibility. The latter is theirs.
Your sole purpose as a leader is to give people as many spiritual building blocks as you are able and then support them in their building. These blocks take the form of projects, assignments, and responsibilities; activities through which people can utilize their God-given skills, stretch, and transform into the peerless contributors God created them to be.
But, after you’ve provided the blocks and the support?
For your own well being and the well being of your culture, you must remember: You cannot make people be ready for more spiritual building than they have the capacity for at a given point in time. You can only give them opportunities, co-create clear, reasonable, and measurable expectations, and then track performance, provide feedback, and hold them accountable for their own development.
When you do these things well, you actually create a compassionate option for people to self-select out of building, until they’re ready to move forward in their own development.
In other words, they fire themselves. You just take care of the paperwork.
So, how do you create an environment in which people take themselves out of the game through acknowledging they simply aren’t ready for the level of performance you know they’re capable of? What steps do you take?
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Co-create performance expectations.
Invite employees’ contribution into how their positions can help them develop, not just professionally, but personally. Make it safe for them to be candid. Where do they struggle? Where do they self-sabotage? How do they hold themselves back?
This is a much deeper conversation than a one-way “push” about job responsibilities and metrics. You’ve got to make time for such an intimate discussion. You must also build trust, through offering up your own imperfect leadership journey as an example.
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Give effective feedback.
We all crave fair, candid, and caring feedback about our development. Yet, few leaders understand how to give feedback that supports people to be rigorous and resilient in their spiritual building.
Here are guidelines to help you develop such feedback skills:
- Give feedback that is fair. Your feedback is fair when expectations are clear and reasonable. Fairness is also about consequences. People will accept correction and discipline if they feel that the praise or punishment fits their actions and if they feel that everyone is treated fairly.
- Give feedback that is candid. Your feedback is candid when you tell the truth and describe things accurately. This is honesty, but it’s not “brutal honesty.” It’s compassionate honesty. You tell the truth, but are never hurtful on purpose.
- Give feedback that is caring. Your feedback is caring when it’s delivered in the spirit of servant leadership. Tailor your feedback to the person and the situation. Make sure your feedback will help the person gain self-awareness, grow, and do better next time.
Keys to help you give feedback that is fair, candid, and caring:
- Pray before every feedback discussion. God will provide the words that are appropriate for the situation if you ask for His guidance. Ask for His presence in the discussion and to lead the outcome. You don’t have to go it alone!
- Provide frequent feedback. If you are around your people a lot, you will be there when things happen that need improvement or cry out for praise. Be present and seize the moment.
- Have regular one-on-one meetings with your team members. Set aside time to meet with individual team members every week or two to discuss their performance, growth, and goals. Treat the one-on-ones as high priority meetings.
- Measure results against clear and agreed upon development expectations. If you don’t do this, then it will be impossible to be fair.
- Talk about one thing at a time. Give feedback on a specific behavior or development aspect that can be observed or measured.
- Explore and acknowledge their viewpoints. Do this early in every feedback conversation. You may discover that you have the facts wrong or that there’s a good reason for what happened. Start by telling people what you’re going to discuss and why it matters. Then wait for them to speak.
- Celebrate successes. The purpose of feedback is to improve your peoples’ personal and professional development. Too many bosses think this means “correcting” team members and nothing more. But legitimate praise is the most powerful tool you have to fuel deeper development. Catch people doing things right. Then praise them for it.
- Develop game plans for improvement in areas where necessary. Some things can be changed after one feedback conversation, but many will take time. When that’s the case, develop a simple plan and review progress at every one-on-one meeting.
- Follow up. The purpose of feedback is to get performance or behavior to change — not just for the good of the organization, but for the good of the person who needs and wants to improve. Your work isn’t done until that improvement happens, or people self-select out of the improvement path (i.e., they leave). After every feedback conversation, follow up to make sure that the changes that you both agreed to have actually occurred.
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Provide the choice.
Sometimes, even with your full support, people just aren’t ready to work through the ways they hold themselves back from spiritual development and top performance. There are any number of reasons for this, most of which are deeply personal.
As a leader, when it appears that people are struggling to release their internal obstacles, you can only offer them a choice. Either they can dig much deeper, do the inner work to liberate themselves, and demonstrate improvement in short order. Or, they can leave.
The choice is theirs. You are simply providing the options.
Managing people in a way that builds up their spiritual — and not just professional — well being takes energy and candor. But, when you commit to whole-person spiritual building in your organization, you shift your performance conversations from defensiveness to openness. People understand that you’re not just concerned about whether or not they are doing what they’re expected to do for the organization, but also for their own well being and happiness.
This way of leading applies to all aspects of your life, not just in the professional realm. As a parent or friend, you can serve others’ spiritual building! With practice, you can support the people you care about most to actualize as God intended.
And as a servant leader, isn’t that your true calling?
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. James 5:16
Hi, Mark – you hit the nail on the head.
You need to set clear agreed upon expectations, provide coaching and support for success and be an integral part of the process. I have had to fire some individuals due to their unwillingness to be part of the process – and having a negative attitude which was impacting the larger team – but not until I had done my due diligence to provide consistent feedback with coaching.
I have used servant leadership for over 20 years now with excellent results – turning around low performing negative union sites into high performing engaged sites while creating a culture of recognition and appreciation, celebrating success consistently and often, having an impact on the community, developing people, and creating meaningful communication (to the staff and leaders)
The other leg to servant leadership is what I learned from Ken Blanchard – Situational Leadership – applied with servant leadership this is the most effective leadership for success – being able to assess the persons competence and commitment – and being able to change my leadership style accordingly with the goal of bringing them from an enthusiastic beginner to a self-reliant achiever.
Of course – having a humble heart and a servant spirit that comes from knowing the Redeemer is the foundation for servant leadership for without this when things get rough – the first thing to go will be you being a servant.
Wow, Steve did you ever provide a great summary of servant leadership! I am inspired by the fabulous work you are doing in this area, and obviously the wonderful blessing you are to all those you are serving! Ken Blanchard and his team have been a major influence in my leadership journey as well, and you are right on that Situational Leadership is the perfect approach to your work as a servant leader. And I totally love how you finished — the importance of humility and partnership with the Redeemer is the foundation. Beautiful!! Wishing you God’s richest blessings in all the great work you are doing!
Agree with everything said here a leader has to do. Yet you will have to fire someone. Hardest thing is change and some people do not have the capacity for change. In disruptive technologies there are great changes that need to be made. Business needs to change in the technology to keep customers, expand into new markets, and from my experience there are 10% + of the people that can not change or their change rate is so slow, you will loose customers. As the business model evolves, it is the leader’s responsibility to lead the change, but as they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make the horse change ! Some people and horses will almost die of thirst before they will drink and change. Just human nature for them !
Thanks for these excellent insights Tom! I am in full agreement with you. And in the situation you mention, I also believe it is the person making the decision to get fired if they don’t agree to change and drive the necessary improvement to keep up with the new business model. If the values of the organization dictate constant change, and they are clearly articulated as such, then all employees are required to have those values as well if they want to be on the team. If they decide not to change, they are deciding to have to exit the team.