587 | Why Embrace Servant Leadership in Business?

Introduction

Learn how embracing servant leadership can align your team's personal goals with your business success, fostering a thriving and high-performing culture. That is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are.

Today we are discussing why embracing servant leadership is essential for your business.

Now, as I say that, I'm sure a bunch of folks out there, a bunch of you're sitting there listening to this going, well, duh, of course we need to be servant leaders.

I'm going to dig into some things on the personal side of your team and ask you to try to be a servant leader in those areas. Now, usually when we think of servant leadership, we think of crazy enough people thinking of leading their clients.

Defining Servant Leadership (00:01:14)

A lot of times when you ask somebody about servant leadership, that conversation usually ends up talking about clients and not their team. So we're all about the team right now. Yes, definitely.

There is a service of leading your clients through a process. But usually when you hear the term servant leadership, it should literally be thought about your team leading your leaders to lead others with a servant's heart, leading your family with a servant's heart, and definitely leading your clients and your vendors as well.

But today, what we're talking about is the personal side. Now, why is this even something we're talking about? Why is this important? Isn't, isn't it just obvious, Chris, everybody should just be a servant leader? Sure.

If you just take the definition of servant leader, then, yeah, everybody should be there. But what I have come to discover is that a lot of folks don't have an idea of what that looks like.

What does it look like to serve in leadership? You know, what does it look like to make sure that you're taking care of your team not only in a business sense, but also, what does it look like in a personal sense?

That is very rare that anybody thinks about servant leadership with their team members on a personal sense. Now, again, a lot of my entrepreneurs out there are going, oh, crud, here we go.

We got to care about their personal side. Yeah, you do. Yes, you do. You should. And if you just even do a couple of the things I'm talking about in here today, then I can just about guarantee you, depending upon who the team member is, there's certain caveats.

But if you have a champion on your team, this is going to help your business succeed. It's going to change the way that they work at your business, the way that they treat your clients, whether internal or external, it will motivate them immensely.

Aligning Personal Motivators with Business Goals (00:03:11)

So what are we talking about? Taking those things that are your team members' motivations, their goals, and aligning them with their role, actively setting them up for success.

So let's explore how servant leadership can transform the business by getting the most out of your team. And again, we're not doing this just for the result of what happens to the business. That's a fantastic outcome. But what are all the great incentives for the team member?

Increased morale, increased joy and happiness at work. Increased communication with other team members. There's all kinds of stuff that benefits the team member, and obviously, if it's going to benefit the team member, it's going to benefit your business.

So let's start by kind of defining servant leadership. Now, most people probably think of these first few of, you know, leading by example, right? I'm serving my team. If I lead by example.

This is the thing I expect of you. This is what I want to see in you, and you're going to see it in me. If I'm hoping that you're going to take care of a client, then you're always going to see how I take care of clients.

What you're not going to see is a difference in how I take care of a client and how, you know, externally and how I take care of a client internally. Right.

If I treat the client, the external client, different than I do the internal client, then I'm probably not very legit on how much I care for that person. Right.

So if you see me taking care of a client, you should see me treating people inside of our team the same way. Right. If I care about them, I love on them, I serve them, I do whatever for them.

Well, I should be doing that same exact thing for the person that works for us. Right? So, absolutely. Leading by example is an important thing. Another thing you can do is foster a supportive environment that empowers each team member to grow. Right.

Professionally, we're looking for professional growth. We want them to grow in the role that they're in.

We want them to become better if they want to become, you know, something, an elevated role down the road, is there an opportunity for us to help them to get there as well?

If this is somebody, it's a champion that's going to do a great job, and we need that role. Right. So look for those opportunities, right. What does it do to you if you don't pour into your team? What does it look like? I think it was John Maxwell decades ago who said, would you rather pour into your team with money and train them and they leave with that training, or don't pour into them and they stay.

That should be an obvious one. Sit on that one for a little bit. Let that one sink in. Pour into your team. Look at those opportunities for growth. What about opportunities for well-being? Right.

So let's take a look at that personal side. Is there opportunities for us? I mean, we're constantly not only talking about the business side, we talk about the personal side. Next-Level Life.

Every team member goes through Next-Level Life. Some team members even say that they get Next-Level Life quite often, but that's because people want to know, how do they do things differently?

How do they change? How do they learn from their past? How do they implement the tools that we teach? All that kind of fun stuff. Also, what you need to be doing is practicing empathy, actively listening to team members needs.

Actively Setting Team Members Up for Success (00:06:44)

A leader needs to be paying attention to what's going on in a team member's life. Right. It could be their needs at work, but maybe there's something going on at home, too.

And I can't tell you how many times in my 30+ years that somebody experienced a loss or something.

You know, somebody had, you know, a super close grandmother that died and they were like, I don't know, five states away, and we put that person on a plane and sent them there. Right?

Now, do you do that for every single loss? No, of course not. But when it's somebody who's super close and that person couldn't afford it, which was a big thing.

They're like, this is a very distraught situation because they couldn't make it to the funeral of somebody that they love so greatly and they spent a lot of time with as a kid. Well, that was an easy one for us.

Put them on a plane, send them on over there. So just something to think about.

You know, if you're actively listening, then you may be discovering things that you can do to help your team members in a personal sense as well, not just a professional sense, that empathy of understanding what they're going through, putting yourself in their shoes.

Right. If they're going through a difficult time, what does that look like?

Now, with that being said, let me throw in one of my caveats here. By saying, be careful, you may find that you have a team member who's always looking for a handout, who always has a crisis because you're the one who comes and takes care of it.

So just, you know, make sure that you're weighing in with wisdom to find out, is this somebody who's trying to take advantage of the system or is this somebody who really needs some serious help?

Folks, if you've been listening to me for any length of time, then you know the number one issue when it comes to business, when it comes to family, when it comes to friendships, is having a lack of high-quality communication to make sure that you are absolutely winning in every aspect of your life.

It all starts with having great communication. The best way to get that communication is to understand your personality style and to understand the personality style of the folks that you're spending the most time with, whether it be at work, whether it be at home.

The best way to do that is to go to chrislocurto.com/store and get your personality profile and personality profiles for your team, to get it for your family members.

Today, as you go through that profile, you will begin to see the greatest ways to communicate. Go to chrislocurto.com/store
today. So another thing you should really be focused on, you have to do DISC and Values to do this, folks.

If you haven't done your DISC and Values, if you haven't gotten the personality styles into your team, you have no clue how much communication quality, high levels of quality communication you're missing out on.

So let's say that we've done that and we've got their motivators, and this is a difficult profile to understand.

But the more that you dig in, and we teach on that as well, but the more that you dig in, a great thing to do is to align their personal motivators with your business goals.

So you got to understand what motivates a team member, right? What if somebody is highly motivated by leadership and you don't know that?

What if somebody is highly motivated by learning and consistently teaching others or developing others and you don't know it? What if somebody is incredibly aesthetic and you need that on your team?

Or you, you have some things you could really use that for, but you don't know it.

When we go through StratPlan, one thing that we look for a lot of times when we're working through processes is somebody who's what we call high Regulatory, somebody who loves systems and processes, somebody who not only wants them in place, but it's somebody who would put them in place.

So a lot of business owners aren't high Regulatory, and so they need processes in place.

And for them to do it, it's probably going to take four times longer than it would if you had a high Regulatory sit down and knock those things out because that's what they're motivated by.

They enjoy that process. Now, again, it's, it's a level of understanding what motivates them. What if they're high Economic and we a lot of times will change that and say high utilitarian because sometimes people just think too much about money.

High Economics are definitely money focused, but they're really reward focused. They're really return on investment focused. What if you have somebody who is high Economic? Where do you plug that RoI into your business success?

How do you even know these things? Well, one thing you can do is take that Values test.

Another thing you can do is have regular one-on-one meetings with each team member to try and uncover what motivates them, what motivates them personally, so you can start looking at areas that you can plug that into.

Again, my wife is incredibly Aesthetic and there's so many things that we do in the business and, you know, she owns the business alongside with me, so, but there's so many times that we look at stuff and go run all of that through Heather.

Make all, you know, make sure that she puts an eye, or hopefully two eyes on everything that you've got there because she's going to see things that we're not seeing.

She's going to make suggestions that we're not thinking of. And she loves it. That's something she absolutely loves doing, is being able to look at something and say, change this, flip this, you know, add these colors over here.

You know, add these pictures, do this thing over here. Because her aesthetic brain sees things differently than everybody else. Right. Sees things differently than the rest of us.

And so we consistently look at her motivator of being a high Aesthetic and how we can plug her into things. We're consistently looking at meetings throughout the business and asking ourselves which meetings do we need to plug her into?

Because she's going to bring something to the table that we don't even think about. So this is on top of everything else that she's doing, but we're looking at those opportunities and going, hey, listen, don't complete that project until you run that by Heather.

Let her put her eyes on that. Let her think about that, let her process on that because she's going to give you some stuff that's going to save you time and money. Right. It's going to save you energy because she will see it differently.

All of our product stuff that comes out, workbooks, doesn't matter. T shirts, every single thing that we create, all of that stuff definitely goes through her.

She just needs to take a look and go, you know, here is a, a workbook cover that we're working on. Nope, it's not going to fit. That doesn't work. Change this or change the colors on it or go with something completely different.

I mean, it's just crazy powerful. You should be looking at your team members and understanding them to this degree, to this level.

If you do that, then you can start creating development plans that align not only their personal values, those motivators, but also their personal growth goals, the things that they want to do.

Again, like I talked about before, so if somebody. Let's say somebody wants to become, I don't know, a trainer inside of your business, let's say you have opportunities for training team members or even training clients.

Who knows? And you have somebody who's a high Altruist. Altruist happens to be my highest motivator, my highest value. So it's not surprising at all that I'm somebody who always teaches.

I'm constantly trying to develop people, teach people. You know, I'm always trying to remove pain from the world. These are things that matter a lot to me.

In fact, you know, because of my altruism and things that I've experienced in my life, I'm always wanting to help somebody else, not experience the negatives. So think about it.

This show that you listen to, how many times have you heard me talk about something and you're like, ooh, that's good to know. I don't want to go down that path. I don't want to experience that. Right.

That's because my goal is to help you either avoid it completely with wisdom so that you know what to do if the situation ever comes up or give you the tools on how to handle it, maybe you've already gone through it.

We give you the tools on how to recover right. Or learn from not making the same mistakes again in the future. All of those things are important to me. Those are things I value. I care deeply about people.

I care about helping people. I care about teaching people. I care about developing people. So it's not surprising that I'm in the role that I'm in. You don't know that about your team members if you're not spending time discovering what motivates them.

Now, I am in no way saying you have a high Altruist. You should make them a trainer. Chris, we don't even need a trainer, that's fine. That's perfectly fine. But you might find specific situations where this person can teach.

I don't know how we're doing a specific project to the team. You know, maybe, you know, a lot of folks come back from StratPlan and they have a, a state of the union address sometimes to their team.

Just say, hey, here's where we are. Here's what we learned. Here's what we're going to do differently. Maybe you find opportunities to plug that person in on some of the things that you're doing so that aligns with their personal growth.

Now with that being said, are you looking at your business growth and looking for opportunities that perhaps you currently don't see on your, your team?

Maybe there's some things that you need to plug somebody into and you're like, well, I don't think I have anybody like that.

A short period of time running through your team, finding out what their motivators are might absolutely bring somebody you know from inside of your team and present an opportunity for you to grow them into this position.

So as you begin to align your business growth, your strategic plans, the things that you're wanting to do, how you're wanting to grow.

As you align that with the personal growth desires and motivations of your team members, what you will discover is you might find the perfect fit right on your team.

And if you do, what happens? Well, it absolutely boosts morale. It boosts motivation because that's the thing they're motivated about. It boosts performance.

Your team members are going to feel more invested, they're going to feel more driven when their personal goals are being supported. Right.

So if you have somebody who wants to be, you know, over processes, you know, helping you create processes inside of your business and keeping those up to date and all that kind of fun stuff, if you plug that person in, well, they're going to be way more motivated than they are at their current role unless, unless their current role is all about processes already.

So looking for those things, what about if I need somebody to consistently guide clients on information because the stuff that we have is always changing, then I probably want somebody who's a high Theoretical.

I want somebody who loves information and knows that it's going to be consistently changing and keep people up to date and help them to understand what they're, they're going through.

If you're, you know, mutual fund broker, then you probably want somebody who's a high Theoretical, helping your clients to understand what's going into their portfolio, right?

So looking for those opportunities is going to build your business, but it's going to boost morale. It's going to boost motivation. It's going to help your team members to feel more supported and feel like, man, these people actually care about my personal goals.

You're also going to get higher engagement and job satisfaction, which is going to lead to increased productivity. Again, happier employees means better work performance. Happier employees means more work performance.

Think about yourself. The more motivated you are to do the things you want to do, how much more do you bust it? Let's look at the converse. What about the things you're not motivated to do?

What about the things you don't value that you still do? Maybe you shouldn't be doing them. Maybe you have no choice because you're an entrepreneur and you have to do it. But how demotivated are you every time you have to do those jobs?

So we're looking for motivation. We're looking to help our team be more motivated. So our business success also increases in the process.

Now, if we're going to do this, we have to make sure that we are actively setting up our team members for success. Right?

So it is important for you, as a servant leader, to make sure that you're doing all this digging, gaining all this information, helping people feel motivated, helping people increase the morale, their productivity.

But as a servant leader, you also need to make sure that you're removing the obstacles, providing the resources for the person to be successful.

So, for example, let's say a team member is struggling with time management.

You got to get in there or a leader, somebody has to get in there and train them on how to use like Asana, you know, for better performance, for better time management, for increased accountability.

If they don't have a process, then what's going to make them better with their time management?

If you don't have somebody who knows how to teach that, if you don't have somebody who knows how to help team members become more productive through time management, then maybe you need to be looking for that.

Maybe you'll find somebody who loves that. Maybe you'll find a great Project Manager that's like, I am all about that.

Let me help our team increase their productivity by helping them with their time management. You need to remove the obstacle. You need to provide the resource.

So you should be offering any kind of training and development that really is tailored to the individual's needs. Again, at this point, I'm not talking about their personal needs.

I'm talking about the things inside of the business that are going to help them become stronger and better?

Well, Chris, I don't want to spend all that money. Well, like I said, if you don't spend that money, and I'm not saying you need to go dump a ton of money in training, make it fit into your current business plan.

But if you don't do it and you don't help them to become stronger and better, what's going to make them better? Well, they should learn on their own.

I bought them a book, you know, a leadership book, you know, two years ago. They should be doing all the things in that book. Listen, books are great. They are fantastic, they're--

Many times they're incredibly inspiring, but it also takes a process to help somebody become better. So what are you going to do to help your team member become better at what they do? I suggest offer training, offer development opportunities.

Cultural Transformation and Business Outcomes (00:22:16)

What does it look like? Spend a little bit of time trying to find out what works best. Also, you need to provide clear expectations on their role. You need to be offering regular feedback.

You need to guide them through the process to make them successful. What is servant leadership? Helping them to become better, serving them in those areas. What's working? What's not working? What do you understand? What do you not understand?

How could this be better? What tools do you need? Whatever it is, jump in there and guide them. But then make sure that you're giving them consistent feedback. Make sure that you're giving them clear expectations.

This is what I want to see from you and this is what I expect to see from you. Right. If you will do that, then that gives them the ability to hit those marks, but it also gives you the ability to hold that person accountable in the process.

Let's say you are developing them and they're not doing such a great job. You need to find out why. Is it you, is it the process? Or is this something that maybe they're just not good at?

Maybe it's above their head, I don't know. But if you're not providing that regular feedback and that accountability, then you could go an incredibly long time before you discover this was not the path we should have gone down. Right.

So you're taking risks, you're taking chances, you're pouring into them. Just make sure you do it with accountability.

Make sure that you do it with, you know, guidance, regular feedback, helping them to know when they're winning, when they're not winning.

Helping them to know what they can do to fix it, what they can do to change it. On top of all of this. Make sure that you are supporting them and empowering them on their individual performance and their team performance.

What am I saying? Help them to be able to make decisions on their own. Guide them and direct them into thinking for themselves and not just waiting for somebody to give them an answer.

Empower them to make decisions to whatever level you're comfortable with. Right. Maybe even a little bit outside of your comfort zone, depending upon what's okay and what's available.

Support them. Empower them. Empowered team members are way more confident. Empowered team members are incredibly more productive when you can allow them.

Gosh, I just, in my mind, I'm going through my team right now and thinking about how productive my team members are because they're empowered.

Like, literally, I'm thinking back to well over ten years of empowerment that has created phenomenal team members and leaders and coaches and entrepreneurs. Right.

So make sure that you're supporting them. Make sure that you're empowering them. Help them to really take a look at their opportunities and ask the question, what if you took a little risk here in your decision making?

Let's, you know, our goal isn't to, you know, make any decisions that create fatal errors. Our goal is to try. We must try. We have to teach our team to try. Take chances, take calculated risks.

Empower your team to do that. The more you do that, the more amazing your team performance is going to be. I mean, just. It will blow you away.

That's one of the things I absolutely love about my team is how much they accomplish because they're empowered to accomplish it. How many ideas I don't come up with because they're coming up with them before I do. It's just powerful.

It's. It's, again, part of our business success. So if you do all of these things, not only are you going to benefit from a team member's motivation, their morale, their productivity, all of that is just a phenomenal outcome.

But I want you to think about this. What is your culture going to look like? What is the transformation to your culture? Because you now have team members that are operating differently.

It's going to be incredibly more positive. It's going to feel, and I. Gosh, I hate to use this term, I need a different term than inclusive.

Nothing's coming to my head right now, but people are going to be working better together, right?

They're going to be involving, it's going to be mutually involved. I don't know, but people are going to be working together better on projects together, communicating better. Right.

Because it's going to transform the culture because you've poured into each individual person, and I'm saying you, your leadership team, whatever you got, everybody needs to be focusing on this.

Not so much that it's taking away from the rest of their job and they can't do their job.

Spend time calculating how much, you know, what percentage of your, your leader's time, your leadership team's time, your time, whatever it is that you can spend doing these things that I'm saying right now.

How much time can you know if this is going to pull the team member away from something, how much time do they have available to them? Right.

And then plug these in as much as you can. Don't take them off important projects that now, that's not going to get done because then there's going to be low morale because then you're going to be upset that they're not getting things done.

When you do this, your culture changes, your team changes. Your team members feel valued. They feel comfortable sharing their ideas because they believe you care.

They see that you've taken consideration of their ideas and their thoughts and, you know, their growth. So they're going to share more information.

They're going to take bigger risks. All of that is powerful. All that's important for your business. And if that's not enough, another fantastic outcome is the higher level quality of the work that's being done in the higher customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

You plug into your team, you lead them as a servant leader, you help them to align their personal motivations and goals with the business success.

You're going to have higher quality work, and you're definitely going to see higher customer satisfaction. So here's what I want you to do. We have some great episodes out there.

More on servant leadership: Episode 451, which is The Heart of a Shepherd, which is where we discuss the keys to grow and develop leaders who love God and love people.

This starts with you as the leader because that's who you're ultimately going to replicate. Right? That's our goal. So check that out. Now, episode 451, Heart of a Shepherd.

And Episode 502, What's the Difference? People pleasing VS Servant's Heart. And that's all about how you can tell whether our motives are genuine.

What I mean is, is how do we know that we're not seeking the welfare of others in an effort to increase our own sense of worth, right?

So it's important thing for you to know we dive into a lot of that on that episode, and you don't want to miss that because it really helps you to understand what you're seeing inside of your team, whether or not somebody is being a servant or they're being a people pleaser.

So, folks, embracing servant leadership, it is all about aligning your team's personal goals with your business objectives and actively setting them up for success.

When you pour into others and you shepherd your people, then you create a thriving and engaging a high performing team, which is exactly what you want.

By focusing on their growth and their well being, you not only transform your company culture, but you also achieve extraordinary business results. Think about it.

Think about how much you do pour into your team members and how well they do compared to times when you haven't poured into your team members right?

So keep serving and supporting your team and watch what happens when with your business. Well, folks, thank you for tuning in. That's all the time that we have got for today.

As always, take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.