deServing Leadership
For the past few years, I have attempted to effectively narrate my fundamental beliefs in , leadership and emotional intelligence, and more importantly, understand how they relate to each other. Servitude, leadership and emotions are often considered to be diametrically opposite. But I believe that they are deeply inter-connected and interdependent.
During the formative years of EventEQ (EVENTEQ.com), I felt strongly that while we were in the audio-visual business, everything we did was simply a platform to help our clients influence the emotions of their audiences. I continue to believe this today. In order to be true to this belief, we must not only deliver it on stage and in our productions, but we must exemplify it in every interaction everyday with everyone we come across — clients, vendors, freelancers and each other. It has to define not only what we are as a company or what we deliver as a service — but also who we are as people. For example, a primary reason we continue to purchase best-of-breed equipment is to positively influence the emotions of our employees since we can often deliver the same “Certainty of Outcome” to our clients with much cheaper equipment. Employees that have thrived with us have a natural or learned ownership of this very idea. This idea, formally called Emotional Intelligence, first appeared in a 1964 paper by Michael Beldoch and is defined by Wikipedia as “the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage/adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one’s goals.
More recently, during the process of formalizing EVENTEQ’s mission, vision and values, I have also come to learn a lot about Servant Leadership. The term, coined by Robert K. Greenleaf, is defined as “The Servant Leadership is servant first…It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first”. In order to lead, you must first be ready to serve. I have always believed that the truest measure of any leader is their impact long after they are gone and in the quality and quantity of leaders that they create during their time. That can only be accomplished by actively and intentionally serving the ones you lead everyday. Serving them in being successful, achieving their and the organization’s goals, instilling culture and creating pathways to help them achieve their professional and personal goals. As Richard Branson famously said, “If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your clients.” I also believe that leadership doesn’t necessarily translate to management. You don’t have to manage someone to be a leader.
Even if you don’t manage a team, you are perhaps managing client expectations, colleague relationships, crew or a myriad of other situations. Managing these is as much and perhaps much more about leadership than managing employees. But to effectively lead employees, situations or relationships, you must first be able to serve. I suggest then, that perhaps, servant leadership is a non-negotiable skill for any employee. I further suggest that every employee must strive to become a leader — whether as an individual contributor or as a manager.
The challenge with “Servant Leadership” has been that it seems too ambiguous to put into action. I have to come to learn that the best way to to exercise Servant Leadership is through Emotional Intelligence. Because at the end of the day, behavior is the most transparent reflection of your intention.
And hence the concept of deServing Leadership. The concept, at its core, is simple:
To succeed at work or in life, you must be a leader. To deServe to be a leader, you must be ready to serve. And to truly “serve” is to consistently exercise emotional intelligence to positively engage the emotions of those around you. If every interaction with those around you leaves them feeling positively engaged, even in the toughest of circumstances, then you have inherently served them and that makes you deServing of being a Leader.
I invite you to follow along and share my journey as I dig deeper into this concept.
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Originally published at https://deservingleadership.com on July 10, 2019.