Junior Bridgeman had a 12-year NBA career, retiring in 1987.  He was never a superstar but a solid contributor, usually the first player off the bench. During his last three years he was President of the NBA Players’ Association, a labor union. According to Sports Illustrated, July 21st issue, it was in this role that he learned about the business world, mostly by listening to NBA owners. Bridgeman called it, “An unbelievable education” (p.26). 

In 1988 he bought five Wendy’s franchises. Success did not come over night but he figured out what it took to succeed. Today he has 240 Wendy's franchises, 125 Chili’s restaurants, and more. He has built the 2nd largest portfolio of franchises in the nation. There are lessons in his story.

• Know what happens in the trenches. In the early years Bridgeman flipped burgers, worked the counter. 
• Hire good people. It is people who sell the product and provide the service.
• Demonstrate through your actions that you care about your employees. Bridgeman’s interest went beyond the workplace to help his employees have better lives, e.g., paying rent, to having a chance at a good life, e.g., making bail.
• Coach. Coach. Coach. He applied what he learned on the basketball court and spoke of team, “We work together as a team, we win as a team, we lose as a team” (p. 27)
  

My take-aways:

People are the most important assets in any organization. Great employees with great leaders do great things. Bridgeman figured that out and the rest, as they say, is history. There is probably much more to the story but the bottomline is people make a business. 

My favorite definition of customer value is: customer value = benefits - sacrifices * relationship. The benefits are what the customer derives from a product or service. We then subtract the sacrifices the customer must make to purchase, use, or dispose of the product or service.  Then we multiply this by the relationship the customer perceives with people in the organization. Why do we continue to do business with certain people, certain organizations?Relationships we develop and value are key. 

Those relationships come down to people – the people we hire, care about, invest in, grow, and support. Right, Mr. Bridgeman?

Lawrence, A.  (2014, July 21) Junior’s Achievement. Sports Illustrated, 26-27.

Image of Milwaukee Bucks court by Jason Swaby from https://www.flickr.com/photos/jswaby/6844750855/
Used with permission. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en    

What do managers do? We could probably piece together some good answers from our workplace experiences. Surprising only a few management scholars have written specifically about what managers do. Henri Fayol over a hundred years ago laid out the now familiar management functions of planning, organizing, directing, coordinating, and controlling. Henry Minzberg some 60 years later asked when do we actually see managers doing these functions? More likely we see them performing roles – interpersonal, informational, decisional. About the same time Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn wrote of managerial skills, and in the 1980s Fred Luthans studied management activities.

The first three – functions, roles, and skills – can be found in any management textbook. Luthans’s work is less well known. Even more obscure is the work of Elliott Jaques. His Harvard Business Review article from 1990 “In Praise of Hierarchy” was an instant classic and deserving of far more attention from scholars and practitioners than it has received. This article is loaded with nuggets.

So how does Jaques answer the question of what a manager should do?

1. Accountability – The manager must be held accountable for the work of subordinates. 
2. More on accountability - The manager must be held accountable to add value to the work of subordinates.
3. Even more on accountability – The manager must be held accountable for making sure subordinates have the capabilities to get the work done.
4. And even more on accountability - The manager must be held accountable “for setting direction and getting subordinates to follow willingly, even enthusiastically” (p. 130).

Jaques summed it up: “In brief, every manager is accountable for work and leadership” (p. 130).

My take-aways.

1. We don’t talk much about accountability. A key to being a good leader and manager is holding yourself and others accountable. How often do you see the failure of a manager to hold people accountable for their actions or inactions? Holding someone accountable often requires correction, even confrontation, but this is part of the manager’s job. Jaques saw lack of accountability as a major problem.

2. Leaders grow their people and in so doing grow their organizations. If employees lack the training or aptitudes for the work at hand, the leader must act. If they are good at what they are doing, the leader finds ways to build on those strengths and help subordinates be the best they can be.

3. “Follow willingly, even enthusiastically” – in my opinion this results from leadership. Managers can get the job done but leaders get it done willingly and often enthusiastically.

4. I think Jaques’ summation “every manager is accountable for work and leadership” should be read by managers each day, displayed on desktops, written on white boards, pinned to bulletin boards or summarized: "Accountability". 

Leading is a great responsibility. It is not easy. The leader will face challenges. But at the heart of organizational success will be sustained employees and a culture of accountability and trust.

Jaques, E. (1990).  In praise of hierarchy. Harvard Business Review (January-February), 127-133.

Image “Measure”  ©John Ballard, 2014. 

Authentic leadership and servant leadership are leadership approaches frequently written about these days. So what’s the difference? In my last blog I talked about servant leadership and a Journal of Business Research article on servant leadership and creativity. Earlier this year JBR published an article on authentic leadership and creativity. Just as Yoshida and associates found a positive relationship between servant leadership and creativity, likewise Arménio Rego and his colleagues found a similar relationship between authentic leadership and creativity. So what’s the difference between servant leadership and authentic leadership? Or are there differences?

Robert Greenleaf  introducing the term “servant leadership” to the leadership lexicon. After retiring from AT&T, he published an essay, The Servant as Leader, in 1970 that was followed by the book, The Servant Leader, in 1976. Servant leaders:

•  Are self-aware
•  Are empathetic, listen, promote healing and wholeness
•  Serve others, committed to stewardship, build community
•  Persuasive
•  Good foresight and conceptual skills

As best I can determine, Bill George, now of the Harvard Business School, introduced the term “authentic leadership” into the leadership lexicon with his 2003 book, Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value. Afterwards management scholars advanced the concept in research and writing. In 2013 Kevin Kruse offered a concise summary of this work in a Forbes article. Authentic leaders:

• Are self-aware, have good self-esteem, are genuine
• Are empathetic, lead with mind and heart, revealing both through actions and emotions 
• Service before self; mission and the organization supersede self-interest
• Focus on long term

My take-aways:

1. Neither of these leadership styles is new. They have been around for centuries. What is new is naming, conceptualizing, and researching these approaches. My look at Google trends (see above) shows "servant leadership" is by far the more searched for term. Reasons are speculative. Authentic leadership is the newer term.

2. There does appear to be some overlap in the characteristics above, such as self-awareness and empathy. My guess is the overlap may not be as telling as it appears to be. For example, while important to both, my guess is that self-awareness is more critical to authentic leadership than servant leadership.

3.  Both authentic leadership and servant leadership are hard. The authentic leader’s creed must be “be myself.”  The authentic leader is authentic, not playing games, not trying to be someone else’s idea of what a leader should be. For the authentic leader, there is no gap between the role of leader and the role of self.  This is tough. The authentic leader must have the confidence to be vulnerable.

4.  The servant leader may be authentic wholly, in part, or not.  For example, one may appear self-aware and empathetic but not be. These perceptions may be cultivated as part of the leader image but not necessarily reflect the inner life of the person. Even in this situation, the servant leader can do great good. My guess, however, is that most leaders who choose this style do so out of a commitment to their fellow human beings.

5.  My thoughts here on authentic leadership and servant leadership are just that. My thoughts. Research could clarify. Regardless, I am drawn to the underlying strengths of these approaches. 

Rego, A., Sousa, F., Margues, C., & Cunha, M. P. (2014). Hope and positive affect mediating the authentic leadership and creativity relationship. Journal of Business Research, 67, 200-210.

Becker, D. V., & Srinivasan, N. (2014). The vividness of the happy face. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23 (3), 189-194. 

Image of trends for these leadership approaches made using Google Trends™ tool. Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.  http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=authentic%20leadership%2C%20servant%20leadership&cmpt=q

© John Ballard, PhD, 2014. All rights reserved.    

Servant leadership is about growing your employees by being of service to them. The servant leader puts development of others ahead of personal interests. If you grow the capabilities of your employees, you grow your organization’s capabilities. But is servant leadership really practical?

James Heskett, an emeritus professor, Harvard Business School, posed this question last year in an HBS Working Knowledge blog, “Why Isn’t ‘Servant Leadership’ More Prevalent?”  He noted servant leadership is an ancient idea, that Lao-Tsé wrote about the ideas of servant leadership in 5 B.C. Heskett summarized and shared replies he received from readers to his question. The comments to this article are well worth reading (as I have tweeted recently @johnballardphd). Several noted the difficulty of being humble, of putting others before self, the inconsistency with business cultures, inconsistent with human nature. If you elevate others, how do you get visibility needed for promotions? Heskett noted, “servant leadership is only one approach to leading, and it isn’t for everyone.”  But servant leaders can make a difference. Heskett quoted a reader who stated servant leaders “leave a huge legacy to those around them.”

In an article published in 2014, Diah Tuhfat Yoshida and her colleagues posed the question, “Does servant leadership foster creativity and innovation?”  Here are insights from their literature review and discussion:

• Servant leadership is not unique to one culture but can be found in many cultures. 
  
• Followers of servant leaders “enhance and grow their capabilities, as well as develop a greater sense of their own worth” (p. 1395).
  
• Servant leaders subordinate “their own goals for the greater good of the team and organization” (p. 1395).
  
• Servant leaders promote a workplace climate of “psychological safety, trust, and fairness.”
  
• Followers view servant leaders positively, identify with them, trust them.

In their research Yoshida and her colleagues found that servant leaders fostered individual creativity, probably because employees felt more comfortable and willing to take risks.

My take-aways:

1.  Servant leadership is tough. I agree with Dr. Heskett that it is not for everyone. My guess is that you need a personality that fits with the idea of a servant leader and attitudes that so align. Also there are probably organizational or task-related factors that may affect the effectiveness of a servant leader.

2. With that said, in my opinion, growing the capabilities of employees is a major responsibility of leaders. I have heard people say, “Why should I develop them? No one developed me. I did it myself.” I agree that many people do have the initiative and drive to enhance their capabilities, but others do not. Some capabilities may be organizationally specific. Employees may need to grow specific capabilities.  Leader support can be key. Even where individual initiative is foremost, the leader can be an encourager, sounding board, mentor, coach. 

Heskett, J. (May 1, 2013). Why isn't 'servant leadership' more prevalent? HBS Working Knowledge. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7207.html

Yoshida, D. T., Sendjaya, S., Hirst, G., & Cooper, B. (2014). Does servant leadership foster creativity and innovation? A multi-level study of identification and prototypicality. Journal of Business Research, 67, 1395-1404. 

Image of Lao-Tsé by widodo obtained from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ThaySangLawCin.jpg.  Source: D:\Photo's\thaysanglawcin.jpg  Used with permission:  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en