Servant Leadership Mastery

Strategies, Stories, and Stimulus for Leading with Respect Along with Results

Chapter 10.

What Do Team Members Want from Their Leader?

Accountable

Servant Leaders show accountability by taking responsibility for their actions and decisions, and by holding themselves and their team members accountable for meeting their goals and objectives.

Some examples of when servant leaders demonstrate ACCOUNTABLE actions include:

1. Leading by Example – By modeling the behavior expected of their team members. This tends to demonstrate a strong work ethic and commitment to delivering high-quality results, as they hold themselves to the same standards of accountability expected of others. Nevertheless, those standards and expectations need to first be communicated to the team members for alignment and clarity.
2. Promote Transparency – By openly sharing information about the organization’s goals, challenges, and progress. Encouraging team members to ask questions and to share their perspectives, while admitting when they do not know something.
3. Set Clear Expectations – By outlining goals, performance standards, and evaluation mechanisms. Provide feedback and coaching to support their teams to stay on track and improve their performance.
4. Take Responsibility for Mistakes – By admitting the errors of judgment and decision mistakes. Such experiences are valuable self-learn moments and teaching opportunities for team members to emulate and learn from.
5. Hold Team Members Accountable – For meeting their goals, with consequences, when those expectations are not met. Yet, done in a supportive and constructive way, using failures as opportunities for learning and improvement.

TIP: Servant Leaders humanely model accountability, as they believe in development and foster environments of modeling with purpose through learning and collaboration. The mindset is the essence that begins the act of service! Serving is about helping others elevate, yet, benefiting the organizational goals when team members succeed. Starting with ‘myself’ and being a reflective observer of ‘my actions and behaviors, thus, I model’ is a great way to start!

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Dr. Maria Pressentin is a Servant Leadership Strategist, a multi-award-winning behavioral scientist, and a leadership development professional, Maria helps people shift their mindset and apply serving-leader skills to their daily interactions. Her work involves incorporating competencies of servant leadership in organizational functional and strategic roles to build long-term vitality in businesses. Her latest book is titled “Key Factors and Use Cases of Servant Leadership Driving Organizational Performance”, IGI Global, 2021.