During challenging times, whether a global economic crisis or declining quarterly sales, employees look to their leaders to motivate and support them. Additionally, to weather challenging times, companies need to rely on innovation to properly adapt to changing circumstances. One type of leadership style that particularly excels at motivating teams, engaging employees, and inspiring innovation during challenging times is “servant leadership”. The principle of servant leadership has been touted everywhere from HBR articles to books such as Simon Sinek’s “Leaders Eat Last”. Famous leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela are all examples of servant leaders. Business leaders who adopt a servant leadership style will create teams who are more motivated, committed, engaged, and innovative. When hiring for servant leadership skills, there are specific values, in addition to technical skills, that we want to look for throughout the interview process such as empathy, empowerment, coaching, humbleness, and integrity.

Empathy is a key quality of servant leadership as it helps create safety and trust amongst the team. Additionally, by being able to fully listen to your employees and understand their challenges, it enables leaders to more successfully find solutions and resolve issues. The principles of servant leadership imply that caring about your employees will enable employees to care about their work and that will lead to the company’s success.

Empowering employees is the key to success for any leader, but particularly servant leaders. Servant leaders are skilled at encouraging and motivating employees to take ownership over their work. However, in order to motivate your employees, you need to acknowledge that what works to motivate one team member may not work for another. Understanding the differences between each individual on the team and picking the right approach for each person is an advanced skill that is well worth the effort.

Servant leaders are skilled at coaching their teams, which means taking the time to invest in the development of their teams. We all know that recruiting is challenging and as a result, it can be difficult to find the perfect candidate. Not only that, but the pace of business is changing so rapidly that your perfect candidate today may not be perfect candidate 6 months down the road. The antidote is to invest in developing your team through feedback, skill development, recognition, and empowerment. These are all core skills of effective coaches and so we need to hire leaders who can flex those muscles.

One of the key tenets of servant leadership is the ability to put your followers first which demonstrates humbleness. One of the best ways to determine if someone is humble is by understanding their relationship to admitting mistakes. Humble leaders aren’t afraid to admit they make mistakes and in return are less punitive when their direct reports make mistakes. This doesn’t mean they don’t hold themselves or others accountable, but rather they create an environment where psychological safety is present and a growth mindset is paramount. Mistakes are inevitable, but what we can control is how we handle mistakes and learn from them.

Quite frankly, ethical behavior and integrity should be a requirement of all leaders. For servant leaders, it's even more imperative because these leaders are leading by example. As a result, demonstrating any type of lapse in ethical behavior could spell disaster for a company. Companies like Enron are perfect examples of how a lack of ethical behavior at the top pervaded through the company and was their ultimate downfall. Servant leaders demonstrate they will not compromise their ethics to achieve results and their team follows suit.