What happens when there isn’t a boss on a project? You might think everything would descend into chaos or that people would never do anything. But we want to live in a world that isn’t driven by dominance and coercion. How can we run projects where no one is the boss of anyone else?
The answer is Service Leadership. No one person has power over anyone else, and we are all responsible for the success of the team on the project. We actually increase accountability when each person agrees to be responsible for the outcome of the whole project and to make clear agreements about what they will do by when.
Service leadership is the capacity to support others and common goals without losing yourself. When we are showing up to give, paying attention to our capacities, and not expecting other people to take responsibility for our own experience, we’re practicing service leadership.
Everything changes when we all become leaders. To make it work, people with deep experience don’t command, they teach and nurture others who are just getting started. We are peers sharing our collective energy to meet our goals.
If you’re getting an uncanny valley feeling about the term, you may have heard people talk about “Servant Leadership”. The term ‘servant’ is supposed to distinguish this kind of leadership from dominance-based leadership. While that underlying message is the same, Service Leadership is a better description in a world in which many of us have experience being marginalized or expected to “do what we’re told.” Offering service feels more aligned than “being a servant”!
Service leadership never asks us to abandon ourselves or our own dignity. It asks us to recognise the inherent dignity of everyone we’re working with and the collective wellbeing of our teams and communities.
Working on an empowered, service-leadership team can change the way you think about work. Every member is choosing to commit to their team and to the project so that work can be both effective and meaningful. Our own attitudes are essential to the overall health of the project. How we work with others can make our time at work to be amazing or challenging.
When it comes to building tech, there is no “right way” to do anything all the time. It will always depend on the team, the project requirements, who we serve, our business goals, and many other circumstances.
If you’ve learned how to do something in another context, share that knowledge in a way that supports the team to learn. Don’t assume the way you learned it was “right” or that you’re an expert. Consider how the approaches you’ve found successful in the past might translate to this particular project, and when you might be able to improve on these approaches to fit a new situation.
Alignment is essential on empowered teams, because for all of us to succeed, we have to become really clear about what is going to get done, who is going to do it, and by when. We get to choose what we agree to do, and we have the skills development framework to help us define what our functions and commitments are in our projects. Planning, when we’re agile, means we know how we will do things, even as we continuously update what we will do.
To have work without dominance, we need a lot of clarity and structure, as well as trust in the people who are taking on tasks and making decisions about how they are doing the work. Trust comes from both evidence of commitment and competence, and from clear criteria for what makes a task done well.
A RACI chart can be used as a service-oriented tool, or a weapon. On a service leadership-led, empowered team, we’re not trying to police one another or hold other people to account. Instead, we’re looking to see if people are able to do what they signed up for, offering assistance, and holding ourselves accountable to the work we agree to do.
If someone isn’t able to do the work they agreed to, either because they don’t have the necessary skills or they have conflicting commitments, it is the responsibility of the whole team to solve the problem. Sometimes that may even eventually mean finding a replacement for the person, but if that is necessary, it can come from a common acknowledgement that the agreements consistently are not being met as opposed to “failure” or blame.
Service leadership obviously won’t work if members of the team are committed to practicing dominance, blame, or flakiness. In his classic article on Empowered Teams, Marty Cagan points out, “it doesn’t matter how exceptionally skilled a player or coach may be, if he’s an asshole, then he will be toxic to the team overall.”
Bob Sutton cites these behaviours as “The Dirty Dozen” - indicators of assholeyness:
Insults
Personal space violation
Unsolicited touching
Threats
Sarcasm
Flames
Humiliation
Shaming
Interruption
Backbiting
Glaring
Snubbing
The dilemma we often encounter is that most people do not think of themselves as assholes. In fact, assholes are generally people who have a million justifications for their behaviour. On the other hand, it’s helpful to note that very wonderful non-assholes will probably exhibit un-service-oriented behaviours sometimes.
Tells other people what to do without openness to disagreement
Blames other people regularly, especially in a way that implies a deficit in them
Reacts to feedback or criticism with personal attacks or
Regularly says negative things about other people when they are not present
Leaves the team feeling less positive energy to collaborate whenever they are in a meeting
In a world where so much bad behaviour feels like it is rewarded, how do we actually practice service leadership?
Recognise your own skills and use them to foster learning for other people on your team, not to enforce your will. Sharing your knowledge and skills in ways that help others understand and grow will make the experience more valuable for everyone.
Honour other people’s skills and seek to learn from them. In Tech Fleet, people come in with all kinds of skills. Sometimes people are learning a new discipline but have years of experience with a different function. We can all benefit from a learning mindset.
Appreciate people’s contributions. Everyone benefits from having their work feel like it was recognised. Sometimes these contributions are deliverables and sometimes supporting others to get their work done well. All of it matters!
Be patient. Many of us have other jobs, family commitments, and other life situations to manage. Don’t assume you have more to deal with than other people, and be honest with the work you can actually take on.
Constantly look for the internal patterns that come from your own experiences. Are you the type of person who tends to take charge? Or the type that will just agree with other people to avoid conflict? We often have stories that behaviours are necessary to get things done that end up breaking trust and lead others to feel defensive. If you start to feel like you have a negative story about someone else’s behaviour (”they aren’t listening,” “they aren’t communicating,” “they are bossy,” “they aren’t capable,” etc) take the time to see how these stories might be serving to justify your own ways of being.
We live in a world where bosses have enormous power over others. Some of us have benefited from these kinds of power dynamics, by taking charge or seeking approval. Some of us have felt as though we were given little in the way of choice or respect when it comes to work.
In empowered teams, we have to learn new ways of working together, where we are 100% responsible for whatever we take on, and also 100% responsible to our commitment to the success of the team at large.
Though it might seem like power comes from being dominant, the reality is that teams perform better when they are empowered and people who are great to work with get hired and promoted. We can spread the positive effects of service leadership just by practicing ourselves.
How have you practiced Service Leadership? Share your experiences in the comments! And if you’d like to be part of a community of practice, join us at Tech Fleet.
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