Are you a servant leader? 💊

As a leader, you must light the way for your team, so they can move forward, overcoming the obstacles they find along the path. That's what I call: A Servant Leader. Find here what it really means 👇

In 2015 I was working as a CTO in WeFitter, a startup I co-founded.

It was my first relevant experience leading tech teams. The challenge was big, and I was really blocked. I didn't fully understand what was expected from my role. 

I didn't know how to allocate my time, and I had the feeling of moving from one meeting to another without adding real value to the team.

Does it sound familiar to you?

After talking openly about it with my co-founders, they put me in touch with one of the company’s advisors, an experienced CTO who had been in my situation before. 

He was the one that really helped me to land the role properly, bringing the clarity to understand the skills needed to succeed as a CTO, and supporting me during the growth process. 

Step by step, I started to improve at all levels in order to help myself, the team, and the company to meet expectations and achieve goals.

I remember he told me that I needed to lead the meetings with a primary focus on unlocking difficult situations and being a facilitator to get everything my team needed to move forward.

Essentially, I had to lead by example so they could follow me. 

As a leader, you must light the way of your team, so they can move forward, overcoming the obstacles they find along the path.

This is what I call to be a servant leader. 

Have you heard about this concept before?

The term Servant Leader was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf, who mentioned that the servant leader is, above all, a "servant", highlighting the natural human feeling of wanting to serve others.

This type of leadership is more than just an influencing style, it is a way of life that seeks to bring out the best from each member of the team. 

A servant leader is concerned that her collaborators are healthy, feel free and have greater autonomy in carrying out their tasks, putting their needs first, and helping people to shine and reach the top. It’s a facilitator, an enabler.

Now the question: Are you a servant leader? 

Here you are seven characteristics that define a servant leader, so you can find it out: 

🗻 Is the first among equals

She does not feel above others but conceives those who lead as peers with whom she can both teach and learn — Believing that being the leader doesn't make her better than them, they just perform different functions, all of them needed for the mission to succeed.

🗻 Creates specialists 

The servant leader focuses on the strengths of her collaborators, and, when necessary, assumes the follower role, letting everyone do what they do great, thus creating specialists who shine in their areas of expertise. 

🗻 Seeks common well-being

She conceives her position as a means to obtain general wellness and not as a means for personal gain.

🗻 Active listening is one of her superpowers

She is willing to listen and seek opinions and ideas from the team.

🗻 Is flexible, adaptable, and open to continuous improvement

If she is convinced that others are right, she will accept diverse opinions and access those suggestions. 

🗻 Fosters mentorship 

She helps her collaborators to accomplish things they didn't know they could by setting achievable and challenging goals. 

🗻 Inspires others to serve

She knows she can't do it all alone. Even if she could, she wouldn't want to since she wants to work with and for others. So to achieve big goals, she seeks to inspire those she serves to serve others. She creates new leaders.