Servant Leadership In Business: Will Omar Harris’ Relentless Crusade Become The New Normal?
Today’s prevailing business leadership model tied to command and control is outdated. It’s ill-equipped to ignite sustained employee engagement amid the most diverse workforce in history.
This according to Omar L. Harris, author of a new book entitled “The Servant Leader’s Manifesto.” He asserts that the global engagement crisis taking place in the business world is signaling the need for a new leadership normal, one capable of inspiring, engaging, aligning, coaching, and fueling new levels of individual and team performance.
Through his book as well as the advisory work he does for companies worldwide, Harris believes that he is ideally suited to champion this Servant Leadership Manifesto.
Says Harris: “My main personal aim for this book is to help people evolve, all the while ending toxic leadership practices and eradicating the proverbial boss archetype from organizations.”
Improving employee engagement, he notes, is a deeply personal calling for him, having seen and experienced the damage that toxic leadership does to people every day.
“With only 15-30% of the global workforce engaged at work—it’s time to start talking about this well-publicized issue so that we can advance towards practical solutions. The good news is that the servant leadership model offers a proven roadmap for fully engaging, activating, and enabling the workforce of today and tomorrow.”
Harris continues:
“After publishing “Leader Board: The DNA of High-Performance Teams” in 2019, I utilized the feedback I captured to make the case for change in leadership style. My thought was was cannot continue to wait for C-suite executives to respond appropriately to this crisis of employee engagement. Managers responsible for the people who directly create value for their companies--must do this for themselves and their people.”
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of Florida A&M University, a historically black college where he received a Masters's degree in Marketing, Harris has lived and worked throughout the world. He joined the pharmaceutical industry with stints at well-known industry players like Pfizer, Schering-Plough. Merck, and Allergan.
“I had the opportunity to work in the U.S. Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Latin America extensively. So about half my career has been in the U.S and half out of the country. While in the pharmaceutical industry I was able to move up to from marketing positions to those involving more operational or organizational-enterprise leadership.”
Harris says that it was this experience that provided him with a really unique vantage point in terms of operating with different cultures along with seeing how leadership theory applies all over the world.
His big insight? Teams are now much more important than the old school view targeting the cultivation of A level talent.
“It used to be that if you hired the right players then your company was going to have success. Now it’s not about A players it’s about A teams. And one of the key insights around creating a high performing team is applying servant leadership principles. Readers of my book Leader Board wanted to know more about my perspectives pertaining to servant leadership. That’s why I embarked on writing this manifesto.”
On a personal note, Harris says that his mother’s stage-4 cancer diagnosis last November was another inspiration behind the book.
“Reflecting on her life and my parents' impact on my own inspired me to write this manifesto as kind of a homage to them. Because they served me so well as parents, I am able to give my gift of writing to the world.”
Ask to define and offer some context around the concept of servant leadership, Harris had this to add:
“First of all, servant leadership is not a new concept. It was defined by someone by the name of Robert Greenlief back in the 60’s as a result of his examination of different styles of leadership and seeing that there was an alternative to the top-down hierarchical leadership model that had been prevalent for many years.”
He says that Robert Greenlief then began to identify people as servant leaders:
“In the 60s the command and control and top-down model was considered the best way to get productivity out of employees. Today a standard hierarchy persists, one where there’s a CEO at the top along with a suite of executives and middle managers. And then you have employees who are doing the work. Unfortunately, this top-down structure really doesn’t inspire and engage people in 2020.”
He says that today’s diverse workforce replete with a melting pot of races, ages, genders, sexual orientations, nationalities, and the like makes the top-down approach a very difficult one for engaging people. Harris, in fact, cites statistics which indicate that only 30 percent of employees report being engaged at work as a clarion call for action.
“What all of this is saying is that 70 percent of employees indicate feeling disengaged from the company they work for. This is why I believe servant leadership is the anecdote to top down leadership”
He says that this new paradigm involves the emphasis being placed on a driving force mission that is far bigger than the servant leader on anyone else within an organization:
“No one works for a servant leader. Everyone works for the mission in pursuit of whatever it is that we’re trying to achieve. That’s what we are all working together on. And because we are all working for the mission, and not for the servant leader, the leader's job then becomes one of ‘how can I support you and how can I develop you’ so that you can reach maximum performance in helping to achieve the mission.”
Harris said that this change in perspective led him to view people he led differently. His intent then became to help employees understand that they are not a role but a person first.
“I don’t necessarily need to know what makes a person tick in order for them to achieve your highest potential. Nor do I need to resort to just giving orders by saying ‘listen, do this, do it like this, do it when I want you to do it.’ That mode simply doesn’t connect with people anymore. If you are a leader today, you are not going to be able to get the most out of your people, with the top down command and control approach. People are tuned out of that entire mode of leadership these days.”
Asked about the implications of servant leadership amid the pandemic driven business downturn, Harris had this to offer:
“Well, it's more important than ever before because of the heavy emphasis these days on virtual teams. Because many managers can no longer be in the office face-to-face with their teams, things become a bit more challenging. This is where trust becomes such a big factor. In other words, if I, as a manager, am empowering my team to do the work, trust goes along with the flexibility I’m offering.”
Continues Harris:
“In a virtual environment where people are working from home and managers don’t have a sightline of what employees are doing at all times, a servant leader mindset becomes essential to keeping everyone on the same page when they are not physically together anymore. While the organizational mission remains the same, the way you lead in terms of how the job will get done will be a little different.”
This theme flows into the concept of influence which Harris expertly covers in Chapter 3 of the book, Influence vs Authority.
“First of all, the definition of leadership is influence. And this is from John C. Maxwell one of the gurus of business leadership and he says over twenty years ago. So if leadership is just influence, then what is influence? Influence is inspiring or influencing people to do something that they may want to or not want to do, correctly. That’s what influence is.”
According to Harris, there are two ways to get people to move. The first is to tell them what to do which is one way of getting things done, some would argue the easiest way. But then there is a second approach, namely, using your influence by connecting and building understanding with each individual. With the latter, the key is to have them see that you are deeply invested in their success which results in a deeper level of engagement.
Harris points out that we’ve all had bosses where our only reason for fulfilling a duty or responsibility is because we were told to do it even if we didn’t believe in what we were doing. He encourages us now to imagine a scenario where you did the work because you truly believed in what you were doing. Being influential says Harris is where you’re getting people to actually buy into what needs to be done versus them doing it simply because it’s a part of their title or job description.
Because servant leadership is constantly needing to be adapted to today’s rapidly changing landscape, I asked Harris about what sort of activities he engages in to stay ahead of the curve. Here’s how he responded:
“Honestly, I read a ton, a little bit of everything in terms of topics and themes. I love examining what’s being said to determine whether I’m aligned or not aligned with a particular author’s point of view.”
He cites the book Infinite Game by Simon Sinek as a very well written and thoughtful guide to business. He says that he was drawn to how Sinek reframes the business world as one of perpetuating the game versus winning or losing.
Harris says that the fiction world also appeals to him:
“I’m re-reading some of my favorite Stephen King books as well. I’m re-reading “The Stand” because I wanted to take it in again before the mini-series comes out on television in a couple of months,” he says with a slight chuckle.
Harris says that he is particularly a fan of digital books:
“I only use a Kindle e-reader, that's how I read most of the time. I only just started listening to audiobooks. I listened to Hal Elrod, The Miracle Morning in December. That was the first audiobook that I had ever listened to. It was actually an amazing book. So I’m starting enjoying audiobooks a lot more.”
Pivoting the interview a bit, Great Books, Great Minds then asked Harris about what sort of emerging trends he was seeing in terms of teams and organizational development during this time of seismic change facing company’s worldwide. He offered this:
“So the biggest trend that I see especially from the top of the business world is that companies can no longer ignore issues around social justice. The implications of this especially for American businesses are going to change everything.”
Harris goes on to talk about a concept that’s emerging in the corporate world called Jedi, an acronym for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
“The next book I have planned is going to elaborate further on these trends. Jedi says that as a leader it is now incumbent upon me to make a real impact on social justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Through this leaders have the best ability to deliver positive returns for all stakeholders involved.”
With the interview coming to a close, Harris offers some final thoughts on what his greatest hope is for his new book “The Servant Leaders Manifesto.”
“The reason I wrote the book was for middle managers in the hopes that they would step up and take more ownership in terms of how work is being dictated to employees. I believe that if employees are approached from a Servant Leader perspective, where they stop commanding and controlling and begin empowering, trusting, and connecting then were are going to see even better business results.”
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Omar L. Harris can be reached via his website at OmarLHarris dot com and on Facebook. And his book can be purchased HERE
