Changing Workplace Culture Through Servant Leadership

Dave,

I’m a manager at a distribution center. The other managers and I are trying to change the culture of our place a little bit. It’s not a terrible situation, but some concerns about development, communication and confidence in the company have come up lately. Do you have any advice for starting this process?

Jules

Dear Jules,

Trust begins to break down when your team members think you don’t care about them. But when someone trusts you and knows that you value them, they’ll fight tooth-and-nail for you and with you.

The only way to make your team feel this way is by thinking of leadership as servanthood.

Now, serving someone doesn’t mean you bring them coffee and donuts every day, and it sure doesn’t mean you take a bunch of crap from them. When I talk about serving, I mean looking at your team as real people. As a manager, what are you going to do if a guy’s wife is in the hospital after miscarriage? How are you going to handle that? You’ve got to care about your team members as people, as human beings-not units of production.

In short, stop being bosses and start being leaders. That entails servanthood, and that also means using the Golden Rule. Before you do something with your team, take a minute and think how you’d feel if you were in their shoes. Put every decision through the Golden Rule paradigm.

All I’m really talking about is treating your people well. You can change your entire workplace culture just by doing that one thing.

Dave