Leaders in Corporate America have a problem. Employees are not feeling heard, valued, and understood. They don’t feel valued in the workplace, which leads to organizational issues such as a lack of innovation, high turnover, and stalled growth. Leaders who want their companies to thrive have a responsibility to ensure employees thrive as well. Especially with the holidays approaching, employees want the opportunity to spend time with their families. Thankfully, there is a management style guaranteed to help your company flourish while maximizing the humanity of you and your team: Servant Leadership.  

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Servant leadership is a philosophy grounded in treating others the way you want to be treated. This includes compassion, kindness, active listening, and empathy. Giving employees the emotional support they need is the key to success. While treating others the way you want to be treated may sound simple, it takes excellent coaching to change behavior, earn trust, and break through to your team.

Earning trust

Servant leadership boils down to earning your employees’ trust. Practicing empathy, active listening, and empowering team members all help build trust. It can be expedited and accelerated through alignment. If your thoughts and feelings match your words and actions, you’re bound to improve employee-leadership relationships.

Trust is rooted in behavior. Empathy alone isn’t going to create team empowerment. There has to be genuineness to it. It has to be consistent, not sporadic. If you’re only empathetic sometimes, it comes off as hollow. Actively listening, showing compassion, consistent communication, and being transparent have to become a part of your everyday behavior.

While it’s essential to display positive behavior year-round, the holiday season provides the perfect opportunity to start changing habits. The holidays bring joy, but also frustrations from planning gatherings and holiday travel.  Giving your employees flexibility and compassion during this time of year is crucial. It shows that you truly care about their home life and well-being outside of work, which helps you earn their trust. Additionally, employees are more likely to perform better after taking family time away from the office.

If you want to earn their trust, it’s also important to provide employees with the space to open up about problems and concerns. Leadership must offer their truth, failures, and worries, and give others the courage to be vulnerable. Being able to have difficult conversations about employee problems is one of the most significant signs you’ve created a great work environment. If people have a space to talk about difficult things and feel safe doing so, this means that you’ve broken through to them. Once you’ve broken through and have your team’s trust, you can truly accomplish anything. 

The Breakthrough

Servant leadership is a powerful philosophy for helping you connect with your team. This is the moment when communication moves from surface-level to a genuine emotional connection. A breakthrough won’t happen overnight. It’s similar to riding a bike. When you first learn how to ride, you’re not going to be successful by trying every couple of months. You need to commit to practicing every day, and after a certain amount of time, you’ll have a breakthrough, and it’ll become natural.

Being a great leader and business owner isn’t just about meeting your bottom line.

There are two bottom lines: the bottom line itself and the path to get there. Life is said to be about the journey, not the destination, and yet business leadership is too often about numbers, outcomes, and results. A commitment to changing your behavior and constantly ensuring your team feels heard and valued is what is going to lead to breakthroughs and better outcomes.

Servant leaders understand that when your team is given a chance to grow, the financials will follow.

Servant leaders build better cultures by committing to helping team members navigate difficult situations. Not just intellectually and strategically, but emotionally too. A large portion of leaders aren’t actually leaders. They’re just people in positions of authority. Leadership isn’t the exercise of authority; it’s the exercise of influence. That’s what gets people to want to be their best and perform at their highest level. Consistently work to influence employees by modeling behaviors you want to see. The key to breaking through to your employees is listening deeply and reflecting, being vulnerable, and consistently communicating. Exercising your influence in this way will ensure better outcomes for your team and your company. 

This, however, is no easy task. We are creatures of habit; it takes a lot of coaching, consistency, and willingness to confront your weaknesses and poor behaviors. A great coach can help you get there.

Coaching Leaders

The average human has about 60,000 thoughts per day. A high percentage of them are repetitive. Humans are creatures of mental habit; however, through good, thorough coaching, it is possible to change thoughts and break poor behaviors.

Every great leader you meet has been coached and mentored. A good example of this is athletes. Great athletes have great coaches. If an athlete doesn’t have a good coach, they’re not going to perform at their highest level. They’re going to repeat poor habits that need to be broken to enhance their performance.

Yes, training is important, but coaching is more personal. As a new leader or somebody striving for leadership status, it’s essential to have a seasoned professional whom you trust in your inner world. Coaching unravels false narratives and old habits by creating structure, awareness, and accountability. A good coach can spot patterns they can’t see in themselves and the triggers behind those behaviors.

A great coach does this by identifying a few behaviors to focus on, creating measurable action steps, and establishing accountability check-ins to review progress. Doing this helps ensure old habits are broken, changing your behavior to be more kind and empathetic, and improving your servant leadership skills.

There’s a misconception that servant leaders are soft because they practice empathy. However, that is not the case. A great leader is somebody who can put their foot down when needed. Servant leaders aren’t authoritarian; they’re balanced and aligned. Creating a safe space for your employees to be vulnerable through kindness and compassion, while also knowing when to put your foot down, is bound to lead to a better work environment.

The real measure of leadership isn’t found with sayings on a chalkboard or quarterly results. It’s measured in everyday behaviors that build trust, shape culture, and change lives. This holiday season, commit to enhancing new positive behavior by providing flexibility and compassion. With the right mindset and coaching, anybody can become a better leader. You just have to be willing to change bad habits. Everything else will flow from there.

Author: Andrew Kolikoff, the founder of Kolikoff & Company and The Secret Sauce Society, is a leadership coach who elevates company cultures. He has been helping businesses grow through leadership for over 25 years.