Leadership always got my attention as a young man. I saw a lot of leaders before I turned 21. I remember my athletic coaches by name. Many of the teachers who endured me as a student left impressions on me – some good, some less so.

Jesus’ disciples were also interested in leadership. In fact, we shared a common approach. I believed that leaders were “in charge” and told people what to do. This was modeled to me over and over growing up.

Eventually, I saw that this doesn’t work. People don’t like being pushed around…*I* certainly don’t. Then I was introduced to a new idea of leadership: servant leadership.

Jesus taught and practiced this approach. He washed his disciples’ feet. When they would fuss with each other about who was the greatest, he brought in little children and said, “This is what it’s all about.”

I was enamored. No more yelling. No more berating…just serve the people you lead. It made sense. I practiced servant leadership all my life from my mid-20s going forward.  The theory worked well. Occasionally, however, someone would come along that would take advantage of me. I had a female employee who accused me of being inappropriate with her because I gave her a sympathetic ear and a should to cry on. The accusation was baseless, but not uncommon in the 1990s. Servant leadership in this case led to one of the worst professional crises of my life.

When I worked on my Ph.D in leadership, I learned many approaches. The one that got my attention early on was “existential” leadership. Essentially, it meant determining a leadership approach not on the style the leader liked but rather the needs of the employee. When trust and competency was high, a leader could be more relaxed and laissez-faire. But where trust or competency was low, the leader needed a more active and even micro-managing set of behaviors.

As I was developing a better theory of leadership during my coursework, I had a staff member that received multiple counseling statements for sub-par behavior and performance. Eventually, I made the decision to fire this member of my team because he was so substandard and showed no capacity to learn from mistakes or corrective training.

This experience taught me that a leader must never put the desires or even needs of a substandard member before the mission of the organization. Supervisors have a duty to protect their organizations by not handing off problem people down the line. A good supervisor must look after the whole team, reward appropriate performance, promote those who excel, and (sadly) eliminate problem employees when they become a detriment.

Can a servant leader be an effective manager? I believe that is a case-by-case situation. Two important qualities of the employee make servant leadership appropriate: (1) High motivation and, (2) high competency.

As a leader of a brigade team, I had very competent subordinates. As a result, I did everything I could to simply keep everyone from distracting these teammates and make it easy for them to focus on their jobs. I could be a servant leader easily in this case because I had the right kind of people.

But shortly after my tenure ended at the brigade, I had another situation emerge where I helped send an employee out of the military and into civilian life. This teammate was so racked with personal and emotional problems that there was no way anything could bring redemption. I drove this person to the airport after making sure the out-processing steps were completed by the numbers.

I believe an expansion of servant leadership is important. Yes, leaders serve their teams and help them. But the first duty of a supervisor is to insure the team performs…that the team serves the organization’s mission by providing appropriate service to its customers. Sometimes the best servant leadership is to fire an employee or issue a reprimand or put together a P.I.P. (personal improvement program).

Servant leadership is still my go-to approach to leadership. But now its based in the real world…not in the “pie-in-the-sky” world of my youthfulness.