“Simple Truths of Leadership” is a book written by Ken Blanchard and Randy Conley , published in 2022. It serves as a guide to leadership and building trust through 52 simple lessons on servant leadership. The book has received positive reviews and is recommended for anyone looking to improve their leadership skills.
The book is a collection of timeless principles that are easy to understand and apply. The book is filled with practical advice, real-world examples, and inspiring stories that will help you become a better leader.
The authors emphasize the importance of being a servant leader who builds trust through open communication, honesty, and transparency. They provide 52 short chapters, each focused on a specific lesson, that serve as a guide to developing these essential leadership skills.
Servant Leadership
Servant leadership is the best way to achieve both great results and great relationships.
Organizational leaders often have an either/or attitude toward results and people. For example, leaders who focus only on results may have trouble creating great relationships with their people, while leaders who focus mainly on relationships may have trouble getting the desired results.
Praise progress!
Leaders should not wait until their employees do something exactly right before praising them because good performance is a moving target, not a final destination. If the leader waits for perfection, they could be waiting forever.
Praising progress and efforts lets the employee know they are going in the right direction. For instance, when teaching a toddler to say, “Give me a glass of water, please,” you start by encouraging them to say “water” and then progress to “please.” The same process works with adults, and everyone can use encouragement on the journey to success.
Not just about the money
Some leaders worship the bottom line. They think the only reason to be in business is to make money. They don’t understand that the best-run and most profitable organizations know their number one customer is their people.
If you train, empower, and care about your people as your organization’s number-one most important customer, they will go out of their way to take care of your organization’s number-two most important customer—the folks who buy your products and services.
When that happens, those customers become raving fans of your organization and, in many ways, part of your sales force. This takes care of your company’s bottom line and the financial interests of the owners or shareholders. Now that’s a winning environment!
People who plan the battle rarely battle the plan
In most organizations, leaders get behind closed doors, hatch a change initiative to fix a problem they think exists, and then roll out the plan to their teams. But people have a hard time getting behind an organizational change effort they had no part in creating.
Too many leaders think all the brains are in the executive wing and they don’t need the input of others.
Great leaders understand they are only as good as the people they gather around them. They know involving people early in a change initiative is critical to its success.
When they can play a part in implementing the plan and are allowed to express their concerns and contribute their ideas and feedback, they are more likely to align behind the plan and help accomplish it.
The two parts of servant leadership
You can get both great results and great relationships if you understand the two parts of servant leadership:
• The leadership aspect focuses on vision, direction, and results—where you, as a leader, hope to take your people. Leaders should involve others in setting direction and determining desired results, but if people don’t know where they’re headed or what they’re meant to accomplish, the fault lies with the leader.
• The servant aspect focuses on working side by side in relationship with your people. Once the vision and direction are clear, the leader’s role shifts to one of service—helping people accomplish the agreed-upon goals.
Servant leaders love feedback
Self-serving leaders hate feedback because, to them, negative feedback means you don’t think they should lead anymore. That’s their worst nightmare because they believe they are their position.
Servant leaders love feedback. The only reason they’re leading is to serve—and if someone has suggestions on how they can serve better, they want to hear them. They don’t allow their ego to get in the way. They look at feedback as a gift.
Giving and receiving feedback without judgment is one of the best strategies for servant leaders who strive to achieve both great relationships and great results.
All good performance starts with clear goals
Leadership is about going somewhere. If you and your people don’t know where you’re going, your leadership doesn’t matter. Although most managers agree with the importance of setting goals, many do not take the time to clearly develop goals with their team members and write them down.
As a result, people tend to get caught in an activity trap where they are busy doing tasks—but not necessarily the right tasks.
To manage your team’s performance, have one-on-one meetings with your people to establish observable and measurable goals around their key areas of responsibility. Then you and they will have clear performance indicators to help determine whether they are making progress or need coaching to improve.
Servant leaders don’t command people to obey; they invite people to follow
The reality is that most people don’t like to be told to do something. They like to be involved in decisions. That’s why I talk about servant leadership as a better way of leading than top-down, command-and-control leadership.
Servant leaders know people want to be part of the team. They invite their people to follow them in a side-by-side working relationship that the people have had a part in creating.
Trust is leadership
Leadership begins with trust. Trustworthy leaders demonstrate competence, integrity, and care and honor their commitments.
Trust doesn’t happen by accident. Leaders must make the first move to extend trust.
As Ernest Hemingway said, “The way to make people trustworthy is to trust them.”
In the workplace, it’s your job as a leader to extend trust to your people first. It’s not their job to have blind faith in you simply by virtue of your power or position of authority.
Forgiveness is letting go of all hope for a better past
When someone breaks our trust, it can be hard to forgive—especially if it was a major betrayal. It’s easy to believe that by refusing to forgive, we somehow hold power over the person who disappointed us.
We think our refusal to grant forgiveness will make us feel better because we’re withholding something the other person values and needs to move on—our forgiveness.
But whether or not you choose to forgive won’t change what happened. You can’t revise history to make it better. Choosing forgiveness allows you to reconcile the past with the present. It allows you to let go and move into the future unencumbered by the pain of past disappointments.
Always be different!
To be an effective servant leader, it’s important to use different leadership styles not only for different people but also for the same people in different situations. Some managers make the mistake of using the same leadership style with all their team members, which can lead to frustration for both the manager and the team.
This is because individuals may have different levels of competence and commitment for different goals or tasks within their overall job knowledge.
For example, a self-reliant achiever may usually be delegated to and left on their own, but if given a new task where they have little experience, they may need clear direction and close supervision. Servant leaders understand this and take a situational approach to leadership.
You get from people what you expect
When people don’t understand what their leaders expect of them, they feel lost. They have no compass, no boundaries, and no agreed-upon standards of conduct to follow. They’re not sure how to please their boss, how to behave around their teammates, or what a good job looks like. All they can do is wait for someone to tell them what to do and how to do it.
As a servant leader who works side by side with your team members, you must let your people know exactly what you expect from them. This gives them a mental picture of how to be successful under your leadership.
But expectations aren’t just about words—they are also about you modeling the behaviors you expect. You must walk your talk, or your words are meaningless.
Never assume you know what motivates a person
Some leaders think their people are motivated by money or responsibility. However, people have personal reasons for what motivates them.
For example, you might give a raise to someone who wants more responsibility, or give more responsibility to someone who wants a raise.
To motivate people, you need to understand what they want.
Ask them what motivates them, and listen to their answers. Then, give them what they want, or as close to it as you can.
By understanding what motivates people, you can better motivate them and help them achieve their goals.
