6. Principle

Servant leadership and principle-based self-organization before rule-based hierarchy

Because rules are yesterday’s news, but principles are needed

Support those who do the real work. Provide a space for development based on principles.

• Servant leadership is characterized by active listening, empathy, a sense of responsibility, actively promoting the growth of others, a sense of community, and persuasiveness.
• Servant leadership does not need rules, but is guided by principles, thus creating a positive environment and supporting teams.
• Servant leadership empowers employees, strengthens competence, listens to competence, and ensures a culture of error and continuous learning.
• Servant leadership is guided primarily by those principles that grow bottom up from self-organization.
• Servant leadership leads and directs top down when bottom up does not seem efficient, but in principle gives preference to bottom up.

Servant leadership means

To create an environment in which work can be done in the best conditions, thus improving the quality of the work done. Provide an atmosphere conducive to the creativity and growth of employees. Rules narrow the space for development, thus hindering creativity and should be eliminated. Principles define the space for unfolding and thus give room. Space for creativity. Space for continuous learning. Room for improvement.

The regents of old pretended to serve the people and not infrequently ended in royal chaos. Often described by Shakespeare. The kings of the industrial age therefore omitted serving and concentrated entirely on leadership. Their instruments of leadership: power, rules, punishment for disobeying rules.

The kings of the industrial age directed armies of workers to perform predominantly manual tasks that required skill but not a high level of education.

The requirements in the digital age are highly complex. Instead of manual skills, intellectual expertise is required. In order for this competence to be optimally developed, unfolded and put to use, servant leadership is fundamentally necessary.

Today’s employees are knowledge workers with a very high level of education.

If you want to govern them according to the classic pattern with rules and top down, don’t be surprised if they quit. Knowledge workers are guided by principles that they constantly improve through self-organization.