Servant Leadership #1: SHARING

Tonight, you will hear the two qualities of servant leadership.

I learned these the hard way!

I am happier now that enables me to add more value to my company.

The more value I give, the more rewards I get.

— Servant Leadership #1 —

After four years of working in the Philippines, I landed a job in Carribean Island in 2007. I spent two years there and one year in the US.

I transferred from the US to Hong Kong in 2010.

On my first day at work, my boss told me -

“Shiela, you will manage a team of 5. They are from the Philippines. Your goal is to learn the task in one year then transfer it to our branch in the Philippines.”

He added, “As you know, the company spent too much on this.”

He didn’t elaborate, but I know what he means.

For me alone, they paid for my flight and relocation with expensive shipping costs.

For the five Filipinos, they paid for the fights, daily meals, and housing allowances.

It’s too costly that I felt pressured to get this right!

Who’s familiar with stocks?

That’s what we do. We are in charge of placing the orders of the clients — buy this, sell this. Every day, there are more than 2000 orders.

The goal is simple: we have to ensure that we book the orders correctly.

Because the task and the system to book orders are new to my team and me, we booked several orders incorrectly.

I still remember the days when we were in the office until 2:00 am, finding the errors.

It was nine years ago, but it feels that it’s just like yesterday.

I still recall the daily routine -

It’s not busy in the morning — 3–5 orders only.

After lunchtime, the bulk orders start to arrive.

At 4:00 pm, we have to finalize the Japan trades.

By 5:30 pm, we should be reconciling all the trades so we can provide the end of day report to the client by 7:00 pm.

The team leader prints two copies of the orders.

One is to be booked in System A by Employee A and one in System B to be booked by Employee B.

The team supervisor matches the two systems and ensures that the orders match — correct quantity, correct orders.

I was just a Team Manager at that time.

Yes, I was managing processes and people, but I was never involved in management meetings and strategic planning.

Six months had passed already, and yet there was still no good sign that we’re achieving our goal.

The team leader asked me, “Shiela, what will happen to us if we cannot transfer the task to the Philippines.”

I only said, “I don’t know!”

Every day, we had meetings.

The Assistant Vice President would say, “We need to improve. There were lots of errors again.”

Same message every day.

“We need to improve. There were lots of errors again.”

Until one day, the Assistant Vice President went on for a vacation for a few days.

The day before she left, she said, “Shiela, I’ll be out for a few days. Can you please handle these tasks while I’m away? At 10:00 am, check this report. At 4:00 pm, send this report to the Vice President. Every night, send the statistics to the Management Team.”

“Okay, with the reports. But, what about the statistics? What is that?”

“Every day, I run the report on the accuracy of each employee, and I send it to the management team.”

“You are running a report on the accuracy of each employee, and you send it to management?”

“Yes, they use the information in deciding whether we will transfer the task to the Philippines or not.”

I shut my mouth and didn’t ask questions anymore.

The following day, I immediately called a meeting and asked my teammates.

“Do you know that the management teams see your performance?”

In unison, they said, “Really!? We don’t know!!”

I told the guys how they are measured.

I told them about the impact of their work on this project.

I reminded them of the company’s goal, the cost at stake if the Philippines will not win this task.

In those three days, I would forward the email to the management team to my team. And our scores have improved a lot since then. We transferred the task to the Philippines successfully!

Ladies and gentlemen, when was the last time you shared with your team the vision of your company… your department… your team?

Sharing is not just saying words but also ensuring they understand their roles.

They understand the impact of their work on the goal.
They understand the impact if a task is incomplete.
They understand the impact on them.

The first key in servant leadership is sharing:

Sharing the vision of the company,
Explaining the roles they play.