Greencastle has 22 Behaviors that help create and maintain our culture. These behaviors are built from our values, experiences and relationships. These behaviors are woven into every facet of our business. They apply to everyone and make no distinction between job titles.
Every week I try to elaborate on our 22 Behaviors to facilitate a greater understanding of what the culture at Greencastle means to me. Below is one of my internal Teams messages.
Servant leadership is about leveraging my experiences to make the team is successful.
Basically, a concept I learned in BUD/S:
TEAM | TEAMMATE | SELF
From training day one this concept was pounded into everything we did. After every evolution, you took care of the team’s gear, then helped a struggling teammate then took your hot shower. The guys that took a hot shower first didn’t last long. The “I got mine” attitude was taken care of by the team and a person either fell in line or they left.
Another important aspect of servant leadership is finding people that are excellent performers that don’t require the fanfare. They are humble, self-aware and know that people are fallible.
They build their teams up with leadership techniques that foster trust and faith in each other. It is not right or proper to tell someone what to do, then do it yourself. If I am unsatisfied with the results, it is my responsibility to share that with the individual. Not to cut them off at the knees and do it myself.
I also believe it is very important to hire people smarter than I am (it turns out that is the easiest part of my job). Being comfortable exploring ideas and thoughts that are more advanced or complicated is a way to move Greencastle forward. It is extremely important to me that when appropriate, we discuss the topic, share our ideas and make a decision. Sometimes, the decision will be made by me and sometimes it will be by consensus. Either way, a servant leader takes that decision and makes it their own. They walk out of the team leader meeting and say “We’ve decided to do…” and not “Joe says we have to do…”
A servant leader is ok with failure, their own and their team. The greatest amount of growth comes from adversity and dealing with failure. I don’t want failure to become a habit, but if failure occurs and it was born out of good and honest intention, we can learn from it and become better at what we do.
A servant leader is doing their job when people barely know they exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.
Your success is my success.
