5 Qualities of Servant Leadership and Leading with a Servant Heart

Real leaders serve subordinates by providing them the tools they need to succeed in their mission. They will also not hesitate to stand in front as a shield to defend their flock for all things moral and just. Most importantly, real leaders will not use their subordinates in a way that enhances their personal gain. To me, that's servant leadership and the philosophy I hold near and dear to my heart as a leader in both the civilian and military world.

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When I was in a leadership job, I tried to act as a shield between the senior officer good idea machine and my crew, team, or office. Sometimes I had to yield to superior authority and accept a tasking that made little or no sense. In these cases, I tried to do most of the work myself and let the subordinates continue with their real work.

Sometimes protecting your team can be difficult, but often works out well in the end. During the yearly civilian employee evaluation cycle, a VADM decided to set up a quota system for the number of top-three rankings supervisors could give. The number of rankings were divvied out to the Staff Directors based on the number of civilians in each Directorate. We were told not to mention the quota system to our civilian employees. The Directors were to decide who received the top rankings. This all happened before email and was never in writing. This was my first time to write civilian evaluations. (There was no on-line Civilian Supervisor Course at this time.) I had two civilian employees, a secretary (GS4) and a program analyst (GS12). When it came time to review the evaluations with the employees, the GS12 noticed all of my writeups clearly supported a top rating, but the overall rating was the second box. He asked me what was going on. I told him the truth. He went to the Union immediately.

The next day after the operations update, the VADM asked me, my boss, and our Director, a MG, to stay after the meeting. The VADM exploded all over me for the Union Grievance he was going to have to answer. He asked me what happened. I told him in short that my civilian employee asked me why his report was rated the way it was and I told him the truth. The VADM blew a fuse! He threatened to court martial me for disobeying a direct order. I politely told him he couldn't threaten court martial. He had to either file charges or not. He told me to get out of his sight. I did. Later both my division chief and the MG director came by my workstation and apologized. They knew I was right. Frankly, I had already been passed over for O6 and put in my retirement papers. What else could they do to me anyway!