Servant Leadership: Does the Army do it?

http://ncojournal.dodlive.mil/2013/10/04/the-nco-army-leader-servant-leader/

I wrote this article a couple of years ago... But its what I've been practicing and teaching for 25 plus years. Its not dead... just not practiced as often as it should.

LTC (Join to see) ...I read this article yesterday and agree with it, but I also believe that it runs deeper than haircuts and PT tests.

In my experience, I believe appearing "good on paper" has become the standard. Leaders who exceed the expectations (and should, by the way) are held in higher regard than the leader who has Soldiers that are exceeding the standard, even if this "high-speed leader" actually couldn't lead troops out of a wet paper bag. I have witnessed this first hand on numerous occasions.

Another issue is that servant leadership is almost non-existent. The higher the echelon in the command, the more this holds true. Too many senior leaders are exercising what I call "Do as I Say, Not as I do" leadership. My beef is how so many Soldiers get left by the wayside as these leaders continue to rise in the ranks.

The Army is a large organization. There are certainly leaders that practice a servant leader approach, but not as many as should be. The key to servant leadership is not only that you care for your team members as individuals, but that they know it. For your direct reports, that requires a relationship. In a relationship, you are going to know the things that matter to your team member. Ask yourself, do I know the name of the spouse/significant other of every direct reporting member? Do you know how many children they have (and age, gender, name)? If we can agree that their family is probably the most important thing to them - if we do not know the basic facts about them, then how are we going to have a relationship with them. I admit that there were times when I had a large number of direct reports and I had to study this information on a nightly basis for long time to learn it. I also freely admit that when doing a promotion, reenlistment, or other event with a skip-report, I only committed this information to short term memory. The funny thing is that after discussing the honoree for a few minutes, that knowledge often slipped into long term memory and I could recall it later when I saw them on the job. But, being a servant leader does not mean you cannot hold people accountable for their mission and it does not meant that there will always be the time to explain the whole picture to every member of the team. But in my admittedly blessed (it is acceptable to read that as lucky) career, I found that the time spent building relationships up front paid huge dividends down the road.