Most entrepreneurs believe they should have all of the answers, especially when considering they incubated an idea into a thriving organization.
I was the classic entrepreneur. In a nutshell, the operating system I created was, “Don’t know what to do in a situation? Go ask Doug. He will tell you.”
Without realizing it, the culture I built was one in which employees did not feel empowered to leverage their own skills and knowledge to solve problems and perform their jobs. In essence, I was a micromanager, and as such I created a culture of tension, trepidation and mistrust unconsciously.
My eureka moment came when I asked the team if they were being micromanaged. Silence and tension filled the room. No one said a word.
Finally, during a break, the head of sales spoke to me in the hallway and said, “Doug, sometimes you do micromanage.” While I denied it, I knew he was correct. Over the next few weeks, his words would not leave my thoughts. Eventually I realized that I had to change if I wanted to grow our company into a national organization. I was the bottleneck, and to scale our manufacturing I had to transform myself into a servant leader.
Leaders must create a sense of trust between themselves and their teams, and it is important for the leader to take the first step. Servant leadership provides the opportunity for mutual trust to begin, because a leader will show belief in the employees’ skills and knowledge.
Servant leaders focus on the growth and well-being of their teams. They show strength, self-confidence and awareness by putting employees first.
Making the transformation to servant leadership is a process, and it doesn’t happen overnight. However, once you have empowered your team, the results will yield amazing growth in revenue and profits. Here are a few suggestions to help you become a servant leader:
Do the right thing. Honesty, fairness and integrity are traits that constitute
doing the right thing. Maintaining your character when no one is watching is essential. So are sacrificing short-term profits and avoiding conflict in favor of alignment. Having a willingness to terminate leaders or profitable employees who are great at what they do, but who are unwilling to stay true to the core culture values and vision of the company, is a big part of doing the right thing.
Create and communicate a vision for your company. Does everyone in the organization know the vision? If you, the leader, don’t know where you are going, how will your employees? Equally important is to define your mission, which is your passion, purpose, or cause. This is your “why.” The why is the reason your company exists. Employees, customers, and stakeholders will buy into your passion, purpose, or cause.
Build team value. An organization is only as good as the value everyone within it creates, hence the goal of creating a team united around a common mission, as opposed to a collection of lone workers disconnected from both one another and a sense of purpose. Through collaboration, organizations are much more effective in reaching joint goals. This comes from each employee understanding their worth and knowing that they are important to the organization.
When employees are empowered, they are more likely to be more engaged with the organization, have more trust in their colleagues and leaders, and be willing to seize opportunities to improve themselves and others that they might have otherwise shied away from or ignored completely.
Be an authentic leader. In all ways, the leader must set an example that can be followed throughout the company, making it one that thrives by everyone living the culture and helping each other grow in the process.
The difference between “bosses” and “leaders” is found in the people around them. Bosses have direct reports, while leaders have followers. True leaders are influencers, leading with authenticity by exemplifying how to live the company’s core culture. Being an authentic leader is directly tied into the first point—doing the right thing. Humility, vulnerability and transparency also are key elements of an authentic leader. Authenticity is important in the business culture because, ultimately, it decides who stands behind you and who stands apart from you.
Align processes with the right people. What I learned most prominently by transitioning from a boss to a coach mentality had to do with balance. A great coach doesn’t just know the responsibilities and purpose of each position; they know how to build players for each position. They know who to move to a particular position and why, as well as how to coach a player into being right for a position for which they were not recruited.
It took a long time and a lot of patience before I understood the importance of not only teaching a position in my company, but also adapting a position to the talent I had or wanted. As a leader you need to have a solid understanding of the jobs and the people doing them so you can identify when something is out of sync and what may be causing the dissonance. By working to align your goals with the goals of others, and combining your strengths to reach them together, everybody wins.
I go back to my eureka moment, a defining moment when I discovered that I indeed was a micromanager. And from my experience since then I can honestly tell you this: as a servant leader, you can more likely unlock the great capabilities that exist in your employees and your company.
Doug Meyer-Cuno founded Carolina Ingredients, a commercial seasoning manufacturer that he ran for nearly three decades, then sold to Mitsubishi in 2019. He is ForbesBook author of “The Recipe for Empowered Leadership: 25 Ingredients for Creating Value & Empowering Others.”
