The Campbell Academy Blog (85)

Servant Leadership

As a family, we go to the pub quiz on Tuesday nights at nine o'clock, and it's a joy.

We never win (anything at all), but it's really good fun. We go with another family who are our friends, and they're cleverer than us, so they help us with the questions.

Last week was great. There were nine on our team. Rosie didn't make it home from university, but she's here this week. Instead, Callum, Grace's boyfriend, was there, and our Callum, too.

However, an interesting conversation came up that shows people's views of leadership, especially when they have little exposure to what leadership actually is.

So, Callum was asking me if I thought that the head teacher of his school was actually worth twice as much money as some of the other teachers in the school and in his mind, it was quite clear that he wasn't, but it then ensued a conversation where Callum was discussing with Kath, who's the mum from the other family about the responsibility that he actually takes.

So it's not really about the fact that on a day-to-day basis, he is proving himself every minute of the day as twice as valuable as someone else; it's the fact that he's prepared to stand in front of everyone else and take a bullet.

This is the concept of servant leadership, and people don't really understand it (my Callum certainly didn't, perhaps until the other day).

Proper leaders get the chance to think about where people are going and to help get them to the best place for them and help them be as productive as possible.

But the most important thing that the leader does nowadays is stand in front of the team when they're in trouble.

This was clearly demonstrated through COVID when people did (and many didn't) do exactly that.

What servant leadership does is it creates a group who are prepared to go over and above, to go beyond what is expected of people who work because they understand that the servant leader will do that too and more and protect them as best they can.

What happens in servant leadership is that the leader protects the people and then in return, if necessary, the people protect the leader.

It's a really beautiful concept and it plays out time and time again. I have hundreds of stories about this if you would like to see them about businesses where the person who was at the top took it in the neck for the rest of the people in difficult times (one of my favourites is the man who built Lyle Hill in Greenock, who was a sugar baron).

But people don't seem to understand this and the people coming up from the recent generations often seem to think that what leadership is, is working through an organisation and getting to the top where you get paid the most and work the least that is, in fact, the opposite of leadership.