The best manager I ever had didn’t make me a better employee. While I know that sounds contradictory, I’ll explain.
I was working as an executive at a fast-growing startup and we had a new C-suite executive join above me. Although he was accountable for the whole organization’s revenue growth, he invested an amazing amount of time in individual employees.
One of the things I remember him doing was challenging me to clarify my personal values. He didn’t ask where I wanted to be in five years or how I could reduce friction in my role. He went way deeper and asked me to reflect on my life: What was important to me? What brought me joy? What was I optimizing for?
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Back then, I was at a crossroads. I didn’t know whether to double down on the executive career track, step backward to investment or strike out on my own.
This manager didn’t make my decision for me, but he helped me build the decision framework. He helped me define the things and highlighted that they didn’t line up with regular employment. He helped me work out that my journey lay elsewhere. Ultimately, he inspired me to quit and start Lattice.
Praising a manager who inspired their employee to leave might sound unusual, but it’s the perfect embodiment of servant-style leadership. It’s an ethos that I’ve carried with me ever since. It’s how I approach my role as CEO and it’s how I encourage Lattice’s executives, managers, and leaders to work with their teams. A manager’s job is not to extract value from their direct reports, but to ensure their team members are successful. Unfortunately, new managers often slip into the former mindset. You can often see how someone’s thinking by listening to the language they use.
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A manager who thinks their direct reports work for them might say things like, “I have resources on my team who will help execute my plan.” The implication is that the employees are tools.
The alternative is a manager who believes their direct reports are the ones doing the work. In this case, the manager is their champion, steward or enabler. Their job is to make their team members successful, rather than the team members making them successful.
The first thing a manager should do is get to know the people they’re supporting. What are your direct reports’ hopes and dreams? What are their career aspirations? What do they want out of life? What brings them fulfillment?
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You set the foundation and then build from it. You work out how to make each employee successful in whatever way they view success. Perhaps it’s as simple as helping someone transition from sales to marketing. Or maybe it’s doubling down on professional development to accelerate their promotion. Occasionally, you might even help people develop the skills necessary to quit and start a business of their own.
If you’ve recruited and hired right, these goals should roughly align with your company goals. When that happens, helping each employee succeed means helping the company succeed.
How to build your own servant leader culture
Building a servant-leader culture isn’t easy.
To find great servant leaders, look for competencies like empathy, people skills, communication and information sharing. Listening, such a crucial skill, is notoriously rare. Remember that servant leaders rely on persuasion, not authority, to drive change. Stewardship, community building and a fundamental commitment to the growth of people round out the core attributes to look for.
When you’re looking for servant leaders, you need to almost entirely decouple individual contributor performance from managerial potential. If you're going to promote somebody into management, conceptualize their skills and abilities, not in the role they’re in now, but in a managerial context.
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Servant leadership is not unique to Lattice and it wasn’t invented by the executive I mentioned earlier, either. It dates back to the 1970s when retired AT&T executive Robert Greenleaf first used the term in his essay, The Servant as Leader.
He has a great test for all would-be servant leaders facing tough choices or decisions. When you’re unsure of your actions, ask yourself the following: “Do those served grow as persons: do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”
It cuts through all the noise to the person underneath. Does the person grow healthier, wiser, freer and more autonomous?
If your answer is yes, you’re on the right track. Keep serving, growing and helping those around you.
