Leading to Serve: Taking A Servant Leadership Approach

“Our purpose is to impact the world by guiding others to unleash their potential with a servant approach.“

Our purpose here at OrangeBall is the “why” that drives our work. As we tell clients when they come to us for work on their mission and vision statements, understanding your purpose drives both. For us at OrangeBall, our purpose is a measuring stick. We can look at it in the morning and use it to guide how we show up, and then at the end of the day, ask ourselves how well we lived it out.

When we wrote this together, we could have ended it with, “… to unleash their potential.” As our team worked through this, we had shared conversations about what our core values were and what really mattered to us. The concept of servant leadership stuck. It stuck so much that it became something that defines OrangeBall and our approach.

So, what is “servant leadership”?

The Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership states, “Servant Leadership is a non-traditional leadership philosophy, embedded in a set of behaviors and practices that place the primary emphasis on the well-being of those being served.”

Brian Tait wrote for Forbes, “The main focus of a traditional leader is to improve the business position of the company or the organization in the market. Servant leadership occurs when the leader’s main goal and responsibility is to provide service to their people. A servant leader focuses on the people that are directly below them, rather than the company as a whole. In servant leadership, the leader ensures that the followers are growing in all areas — their profession, knowledge, autonomy and even their health and physical development.”

At OrangeBall, our approach to servant leadership not only focuses on our team but also on our clients and our community. Here’s what that looks like…

Team

If the team isn’t healthy, nothing else is. Unhealthy teams deliver sub-par service, don’t collaborate well, and are not invested in one another. You’ve either been on a team like this, or you’ve experienced one. With that in mind, we’ve invested in our people and their well-being and worked hard to create spaces that are safe, supportive, and serve the individuals who serve our clients. As leaders, we are committed to our business’s success, but first and foremost, we care about our people and their families.

Clients

When our team is healthy, we can bring servant leadership to our clients. Each relationship represents an opportunity to serve them. Sometimes this means putting their needs above our own. More often, it means helping them see opportunities they aren’t unaware of and providing the support they need to unleash that potential. There are days when this requires a little more from us, and as an organization that values serving as a way to lead, we step into those moments without hesitation.

Community

As a business, we have the opportunity to serve our community as well. Each year, OrangeBall does work to serve non-profits who wouldn’t normally have access to agency-level marketing. Bringing them strategies, planning, and execution, we stand side-by-side with them to help elevate their work to improve our communities. No matter your business, you have similar opportunities if you look for them; this is another way to put servant leadership into practice.

Call-to-Action

None of this happens without intentionally making it a priority and backing it up with action. Today, you have the opportunity to bring servant leadership into your organization in big ways and small ones. Look for those opportunities, and grab on and do something with them when you find them. Serve people… the individuals on your team, your clients, and your community.