Navigating the pitfalls of servant leadership | Matthias Grüter

You all bought tickets for the DevOps Conference, - and here I am, talking about leadership. I strongly believe that leadership skills - are an important ingredient in everyone's toolbox, not just managers. You might want to, I don't know, - you might be a tech lead and want to rally your peers - around your new architectural vision. Or you might just enjoy coaching and mentoring others, - or maybe you want to work on your team effectiveness as a member of the team. All of those things are about leadership. At a certain point in your career, as a developer, - you won't improve and impact or grow more - just by coding faster or smarter. You will improve by being better at collaborating - and communicating. That's leadership. So, that's why I'm here talking about leadership, - also I really can't help myself, because it's part of my role. My name is Matthias, I work as an Engineer Lead - for Spotify's Infrastructure Group. And as an Engineer Lead, it's my responsibility to create - a culture environment where engineering teams excel, or can excel. And one of the best ways I found to do that is - through what's called Servant Leadership. Servant leadership is really about putting other people's needs first. It's a leadership philosophy that makes sure that - we empower team members, and that will, in the end, nurture - an environment where people feel included, - but they also have shared responsibility and ownership. That, in itself, will create teams that can highly function, - we have better performance, and people are generally just happier. So, unfortunately, servant leadership is often misunderstood. And there's really two pitfalls I want to talk about. First one is ruinous empathy. If you look at the term servant leadership, the first word, serve, - what does it actually mean to serve someone? How do we best serve others? I've seen so many well-meaning servant leaders, myself included, - just seeing the word serve and think, - I just need to do whatever everybody else is asking of me. I just want to be a nice person to work with. That's ruinous empathy. You're empathetic, you care about others, - but you're not really honest and direct in your leadership. The term's coined by Kim Scott, who wrote a book called Radical Candor. And what she really talks about in the book is that - in order to be radically candid, you need to be both direct and honest - in how you provide feedback and communicate - while being very empathetic and caring and respecting the individual. By the way, radical candour is not the same as being brutally honest. Brutally honest just means you're, it's nice words - to describe someone as being a jerk. In the book, Kim Scott, she maps - the level of how direct and honest we are in horizontal, - versus the vertical about how much we care and respect each other. On the top right, you end up with the radical candour sweet spot, - on the left, where we typically slide into, is the ruinous empathy corner. I'm not going to talk about the lower half, because if you subscribe - to servant leadership, you usually end up on the upper half. So, how do you move from the left to the radical candour, sweet spot? Well, the key really is communication. It is feedback. You're not a servant leader if you shy away - from providing valuable feedback to your colleagues. That's not just for managers, it's for everyone. Which brings me to the second pitfall, - the urge to shield your team, your colleagues, from unpleasantries, - from the politics, or just from everything happening outside. Servant leadership is about supporting others. Shielding and protecting is not supporting your colleagues. Your team doesn't need protection. What they need is exposure to the elements. If you, well intended, try to shield your team, your colleagues - from unnecessary information outside - and the company or the politics, or from customers, - inevitably, you will also block them from very important context - that they might miss out on. And they need that context to flourish. If they don't have that context, they will wither away. Plants don't only need water, they also need fertilizer. So, what I'm saying is, - you shouldn't be your team's shit umbrella. Don't waste the fertilizer. Thank you. [applause] [outro music] [music ends]