Leading Across the Extra Mile: A Case for Kindness in Business
Bruce Gibson
CoachingbyBruce.com
Is there room for kindness in business? With eyes on the prize and success measured through achievement, is caring for people just a distraction? What makes one leader see employees as a means to an end while another leader sees human beings worthy of connection and inspiration?
The first type of leader is called many names—none of which can be repeated here. The second type of leader who is willing to go the extra mile is called a servant leader.
For one of my coaching clients, her entire office is closing soon. Due to a merger, her employment is coming to an end. As you can imagine, all of the employees are going through this change in their own way. One senior leader at the company used his network connections to schedule a meet-and-greet with the similar department at another local company. He didn’t have to. Other leaders had checked out and were making their own connections, looking out for number one. But he went the extra mile for people who may not ever see him after another few weeks. He alone decided to go alone; hence the quote "Go the extra mile; it's never crowded."
Why do it? Why lead through service to others, with kindness and generosity? What’s the pay-off? First of all, service is offered without a pay-off in mind. Leadership author Doug Dickerson writes that “extra mile leaders by and large are selfless in that their motivation, and their proactive ways are done with the intent of benefitting the team.” He continues that these are leaders who “are out front on understanding the culture of their organization and the needs of the people they serve.”
Leading through service goes beyond reaching company goals and putting flags on hills. This type of leadership reaches to the heart of human connection, inspires others, and creates movements. The phrase “servant leadership” was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, an essay he published in 1970. In that essay, Greenleaf described the care taken by the servant-first leader to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served.
According to The Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership, a servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid,” servant leadership is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first, and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.
While service to others is offered without expectation of anything in return, the irony is that the pay-off is huge for the workplace. A 2015 study by Deloitte Digital and MIT Sloan Management Review found that the highest level of growth (between 10% and 15%) occurred at companies whose staff were highly engaged. Furthermore, a recent Gallup report, State of the American Manager, reveals that employees who feel as though their manager is invested in them as people are more likely to be engaged. The Harvard Business Review article “What Great Managers Do to Engage Employees” builds upon the Gallup report:
“A productive workplace is one in which people feel safe – safe enough to experiment, to challenge, to share information, and to support one another. In this type of workplace, team members are prepared to give the manager and their organization the benefit of the doubt. But none of this can happen if employees do not feel cared about.”
Kindness appears to be good for business. A caring servant-leader gets to know the people in her or his team, builds them up, and makes them feel safe at work. This creates high-performing individuals and high-performing teams. U.S. Veteran leader and executive coach Jonathan Silk writes that “the ability to influence is based on trust between a leader and team member and is the foundation of all relationships. Leaders have to know and understand those they lead. This will build trust with them, and in my experiences when it is time to execute operations, things tend to move smoother if the leader and team members of the organization have relationships built on trust.”
As a leader, pause and ask yourself one question: “Am I a credible steward of kindness, trust, and engagement to those I lead?” Engagement largely falls on managers’ shoulders, yet Gallup research shows that a strikingly low percentage of managers are themselves engaged. In a study of 2,564 U.S. managers, Gallup found that just 35% are engaged, while 51% are not engaged and 14% are actively disengaged. Where would you categorize yourself as a leader? Are you among the 51% of managers who have essentially checked out? Your level of engagement as a leader contributes in a directly positive or negative way toward creating what Gallup calls the “cascade effect.”
Greenleaf Center CEO Larry Spears writes that “we are seeing traditional, autocratic, and hierarchical modes of leadership yielding to a different way of working—one based on teamwork and community, one that seeks to involve others in decision making, one strongly based in ethical and caring behavior, and one that is attempting to enhance the personal growth of workers while improving the caring and quality of our many institutions.”
The core truth is simple: going the extra mile and leading through service is about seeing your employees as human beings and caring about the team as much as caring about company goals. Employees are engaged and committed when they know they are valued for who they are as much as what they can do. The result, according to journalist Thierry Godard, “is not only a more collaborative work environment, but one that’s driven by healthy productivity instead of fear.”
Works Cited:
Photo credit: http://gaiasgardens.ca/blogArticle.php?7
Dickerson, Doug. “Five Traits of Extra Mile Leaders.” https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-traits-extra-mile-leaders-doug-dickerson
Gallup: http://www.gallup.com/services/182138/state-american-manager.aspx
Godard, Thierry. “How Going the Extra Mile for Employees Pays Off Big.” https://www.geteverwise.com/human-resources/how-going-the-extra-mile-for-employees-pays-off-big/
Harter, James and Adkins, Amy. “What Great Managers Do to Engage Employees.” https://hbr.org/2015/04/what-great-managers-do-to-engage-employees
Silk, Jonathan. “Leadership Lessons on the Road to 94.” http://www.coachagora.com/home/2016/6/4/leadership-lessons-on-the-road-to-94
Spears, Larry C. “The Understanding and Practice of Servant Leadership.” The Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership. https://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/sl_proceedings/2005/spears_practice.pdf