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I am sitting on the couch in the wardroom on the USS Blakely, and Tom Harton, one of the other junior officers on the ship, comes running in. He throws something under the couch, under the other couch, and he flings himself into a sitting position and opens a magazine.
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I got no idea what's going on, and I, by about five seconds later,
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wham, I mean, the wardroom door flew open like it had been kicked in, and Lieutenant Manon Earthen, who was the XO, he storms in, screaming, "Who the blankety blank blank was blankety blank blanking around?
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Truly, I'm just dumbfounded. I just sat there. The exo looks at me, and he looks at Tom, and Tom goes, "What? What happened? The exo stood there, glaring at both of us for about 10 seconds. Then he turns on his heel and he storms out, slamming the door behind him.
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I looked at Tom and I said, what was that about?
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And apparently Tom had a water pistol,
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and when the weapons officer was sitting in the exo stateroom, being probably being berated by him, Tom had squirted water through a hole in the bulkhead, which is the steel wall of the XO stateroom, and hit Webster, hit the webs off right in the ear canal.
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Well, of course, you know now there's this big ruckus. Tom comes running into the wardroom, tosses that water pistol underneath the couch, and by the time the XO gets there, he looks, Tom looks like he's been in the boardroom for, for a while,
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and now, unfortunately, that seemed to be how the XO always dealt with people, it was always loud, he was what we called a screamer,
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and
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about a year after I was there, he was relieved, I mean, he rotated out, and his relief was the complete opposite. Lieutenant Commander Nicklin
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was really low key, but he was even more demanding. I mean, if he asked for me, he asked me for something, he always gave me a deadline, and if I didn't get it to him in time, then his response was, well, I guess you don't go home until it's done,
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and it only took me a couple of times. I guess I'm a slow learner until I realized that he expected me to follow through on my assignments, no screaming, no yelling, just expecting that I would rise to the challenge. So I did,
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and he was instrumental
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in the success of the USS Blakely,
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he was demanding.
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He also helped me grow as a leader,
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because he supported me as he challenged me.
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Welcome to The Right Call: Wisdom Simply Applied with Jeff Cockrell. And over the past few weeks, we've been unpacking servant leadership, what is it? How did Jesus actually model it, and how can we apply it today
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to walk our faith and produce results?
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We've really separated servant leadership into two main components: servant and leader. We have to be one before we can truly and effectively be the other.
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On the servant side, we looked at clarity, specifically clarity on who we are and clarity on the mission, or the missions that we're responsible for. Who's the master we're serving,
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and obedience, not begrudging compliance,
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but the enthusiastic, willful, and willing choice to align ourselves and our actions with an earthly master as well as our heavenly master authority demonstrating our alignment with our master's mission by fearlessly exercising exercising the authority that's been delegated to us and humility
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putting our ego to work in service of our master and of the mission,
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so as servants,
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how do we lead? Servant is the identity,
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leader is the role,
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and we've identified some specifics on that as well. First, we have to invite. Stepping into leadership means we've accepted an invitation
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to assume a leadership role,
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and second, as leaders, we teach others to be faithful servants
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by continuing to be a faithful servant. We have to be the role model for our people, so they know how to get into and stay in alignment with their leader,
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and in our last session
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we talked about entrusting
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how to set subordinates up to step into and fulfill successfully
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their leadership role,
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and finally in today's session we're diving into the final aspect, support,
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what does it mean, and how do we truly do it without burning ourselves out in the process?
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So, let's get into
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it. The first thing we have to do is support their identity.
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Most leadership training gets support right on the mechanics, check-ins, one on ones, coaching conversations, but.
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Performance frameworks, the what to do is pretty well documented, and most of us have sat through versions of it, or maybe even delivered versions of it in training. We're not talking about that
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as a servant leader. The people we're walking alongside are not just direct reports in the traditional sense, their fellow servants, even if they don't know it, we know it, we both carry the same identity, and remembering that changes the focus of our support. Initially,
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we're not here to help them perform better in a role yet, we're here to help them realize, remember, and remain who they are, servants,
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because the leader role will keep pulling them towards something else, and it will pull.
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The more we move up in leadership, the stronger and more seductive that pull becomes. Titles change, calendars fill with important appointments, important people know our names, our opinions matter more. People come to us for decisions, and gradually, almost without noticing it, the center of gravity shifts.
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It shifts from I'm a servant leading to I'm a leader serving,
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same person, different identity.
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And if we don't recalibrate, if we don't check that shift, we undermine everything else. Remember, support identity first, support the role, second support the servant, then support the leader.
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So, step one, we have to check ourselves, we're the lead ox,
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same creature, but greater accountability than the oxen that are yoked to us.
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If there's drift, the first thing we have to ask is, did it begin with me,
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am I still a servant leading,
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or have I been seduced by the dark side and been pulled away from my servant identity?
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So we ask ourselves two questions. Question 1am, I a servant leading? This is the identity check. Am I intentionally, willful, enthusiastically submitted to my boss,
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i.e. the master I'm serving. Am I devoted to the success of their mission?
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Am I being a good and faithful servant? I'm not just executing tasks,
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I'm also aligned in purpose, and I'm producing the results that prove it.
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If we've drifted from our master's mission, we'll see our fellow servants mismatched through a distorted lens, and we'll either miss it entirely, or we often will address the wrong thing.
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Now, as Christians, we start with a higher master, Jesus Christ. His mission, go and make disciples of all nations, shapes how we enter
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every conversation. It shapes how we enter every interaction.
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We are accountable to draw
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all others to Him.
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This mission shapes how we interact with everyone else,
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and it should add wisdom and gentleness to our approach,
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and ironically should make us fearless, because we're not approaching from frustration or even our own authority, we're approaching in love, and we're grounded in something larger than both of
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us. And ultimately, whether or not we begin with Jesus, this question doesn't just check alignment, it changes posture,
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because it reminds us we are also
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a servant.
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Now, the second question,
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am I aligned organizationally?
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Do we genuinely believe in the organization's vision and values, not just comply? Believe this is the attitude layer
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drift. Here is is quiet, and it's easy to rationalize,
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but it does show up eventually.
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Do we support our supervisor's direction, or are we working around it? Are we giving it lip service and doing what we want, because you know, are we being outwardly compliant and inwardly resistant?
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The misalignment at this layer undermines everything we're about to ask of someone else.
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And then, are we focused on our key result areas,
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the specific things we're accountable to produce, not just busy, focused?
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Are our time and energy pointed to where they're actually supposed to go to,
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and are we meeting our performance standards? And this is the most visible layer. It's often a symptom of what may be misaligned upstream.
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And underneath all of this, the big question is, are we fruitful? Are we just compliant?
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We can clear every checkbox and still not be serving the mission, still not be serving the mission, compliance is the floor, fruitfulness is the point,
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and if we are living in alignment for honest about our own attitudes, consistent in our own example, this check is pretty quick, but if it feels like a lot, that's worth sitting with
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before we say anything,
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so.
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After we've checked our servant identity for alignment,
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we're positioned, we're positioned to support their servant identity,
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and this support runs on two tracks, formal and relational. The formal track is the scheduled, structured, intentional stuff. I mean, the research, Gallup, you know, Gallup's done research and tells us that employees whose managers hold regular meetings with them are nearly three times more likely to be engaged, three times,
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and that's for the generic check-ins. The conversations we're describing, built around, built around alignment, not just activity, can carry even more weight.
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I mean, in a typical one-on-one, the questions sound like this. So, how are things going?
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Are you on track? What do you need from me
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now? The added subtext is to achieve your goals. How are things going in relative to achieving your goals? Are you on track to achieve your goals? What do you need from me to achieve your goals?
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The foundation for this conversation is results, outputs, metrics met
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in servant support. The questions may be the same, but we're actually assessing something different. How are things going? We're looking for, are we still aligned?
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Are you on track? We're asking, are we still serving the same mission? Are we still serving the same mission the same way?
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Are we still serving the same mission the same way for the same reasons?
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I What do you need? What we're really asking is, what do you need to succeed in our master's mission?
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It's a different conversation,
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and the foundation for this conversation is aligning identity.
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And by the way, I understand some people may look askance at the term master's mission because it seems too authorized through a too authoritarian or antiquated or biblical, and I get it. I use the term because, as we talked about earlier, we're all serving something, we're all servants to something, even if it's our own ego.
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Now, the parallel track, the relational track, doesn't need a calendar, it's what we communicate through our own consistency. It's how we show up under pressures, whether what we say and what we do match.
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And our fellow servants don't just learn from the conversations we schedule,
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they're reading us all the time. Our steadiness and our own servant identity, or lack of it, is always teaching something,
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and what we're watching for on both tracks is drift.
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Think of it like the wheel alignment on a car. When a car is out of alignment, it pulls, usually just a little, and we steer against it without really thinking.
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Over time, we adapt to it, but that misalignment creates wear and friction that shouldn't exist. And when the pull increases, usually again, just a little, we adapt again.
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It's when we take it in for regular maintenance, so we find out that it's not just the tires that have been affected, it's everything related to steering.
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Now, in similarly, when a team member gets out of alignment with their identity and begins to drift, the rest of the team often compensates for it.
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Now, when we're paying attention, we can make, we can make the small corrections necessary early. We can, we can have that, have the alignment fixed,
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but we're not paying attention, or something diverts our focus.
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We can very easily get used to compensating for it. Things like, well, listen, they're just, they're difficult to deal with, so I'm going to give this task to someone else.
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Here, let me reward my best worker with more work, and I'm just going to avoid dealing with this guy who's a guy or gal who's a problem child.
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Or here's the other thing, we let our team compensate for it.
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They, they take up the slack
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because they, because we're doing a good job for them, and they want to take care of us, but what happens is we've let additional stress go on to our team that didn't need to be there,
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and this damage compounds if we don't catch
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it, and unfortunately, unless we're looking for it, we may not even see it at the annual reviews at the regularly scheduled formal
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review sessions,
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and the drift we're watching for most isn't, isn't really mission drift, it's identity drift.
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I mean, a fellow servant who's drifting away from the mission has already begun drifting from their identity, but it is possible to stay on mission while losing their identity.
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Organizational drift and identity drift, they don't always arrive separately,
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but the doorway to the deeper question is in the observable. Ultimately,
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our people are going to answer the same questions we've just answered ourselves,
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but we're going to take them in a different order. The direction is different for ourselves, we go inside out, identity and attitude first. For them, we go outside in, the observable first, because that's all we legitimately have access to. We see the results, the patterns, the behaviors. We don't have access to their interior, and truthfully, we shouldn't pretend to the observable.
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Cool is our only honest entry point
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now. Because we've grounded ourselves into our own servant identity, we can come alongside a fellow servant as a fellow servant, accountable to the same master.
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We can ask them the same questions we just walked through
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in a different order.
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We start with what's visible,
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are they meeting their performance standards? Not an accusation, an observation.
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We speak to what we can see without presuming to know what's driving
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it. Are they producing results in their key result areas?
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Where are they strong? Where are they thin?
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And is the pattern consistent with where they should be focused,
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are they aligned with our supervisors' direction,
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there you know, me as their supervisor or us as their supervisor,
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and also what are they aligned with our supervisors, not just executing the tasks but pointed in the same direction,
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and as we move deeper, are their decisions reflecting the organization's vision and values.
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I mean, this is where the observable starts shading toward the attitudinal.
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We may not know their heart, but we can see their choices.
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So, these questions asked with care from a servant posture
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often open the door on their own.
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People usually know when something's off, they may not have named it, and they may not have had someone to ask. They may not have had someone ask
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if the relationship allows, if trust is present and the moment is right.
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The deeper question is, is this a role question or an identity question?
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Is this about performance or who they believe they are right now?
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We don't necessarily have to push that question or push to that question. We, our goal is to create the conditions for it,
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and when the door opens, we work out together how to realign. Now, notice the language - it's how do we realign, not how do I fix them.
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We're servants of the same mission. The drift belongs to both of us to address
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the organizational track. We name what we're observing specifically, not globally, we invite their read on it. We return to the mission together, not as a standard they failed, but as the thing we've both signed up to serve.
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And then we ask, How do we close this gap? We agree on concrete steps, and we own our part, including whatever in our own example may have created the conditions for the drift
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and the identity track, if the relationship allows
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it. Are you still operating from the same place you started?
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A fellow servant can drift into compliance
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while the servant in them goes quiet, technically aligned on paper
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underneath misaligned on identity,
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and well, that's what's happening.
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It's not always a performance conversation that they need.
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Sometimes they need someone to remind them who they are and help them identify the master they should be serving,
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and that's what we're here for. At this point, we're not here to manage their output yet,
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we we're here to hold their identity as servants when the role keeps pulling them somewhere else,
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so to support the servant, that's point
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one. Now, point two, we support the role,
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and surprisingly, before we look at how our fellow servant is leading their people, we need to stop and do something first. We got to look in the mirror,
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but what we observe in our team is often a direct reflection of the example we've been setting, not always, but often enough that it has to be our first stop.
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Some questions we might ask is, are where am I falling short in what I'm modeling?
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Am I consistently inviting people into leadership? Am I identifying people and then inviting them into a leadership responsibility?
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Am I role modeling for them the servant identity I want them to emulate?
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When I entrust people, am I handing off real responsibility with real support behind
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it? And we don't get to skip this,
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you know. I was thinking about Peter Drucker, said the purpose of a business is to create a customer, but we're not a business, we're a servant leader,
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and the purpose of a servant leader is not necessarily to create more leaders, it's not even to create more servants.
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I think the most important distinction is our purpose is to increase faithfulness to the mission.
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As a servant leader,
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our purpose is to increase our own faith.
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Fullness to our master's mission, and as Christians, our master's mission, big M, as a servant leader, our purpose is to increase the faithfulness of our fellow servants to our master's mission.
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Now, the fruit of faithful servants is results, its performance, its achievement, and when we're invited into a leader role, our responsibility becomes helping our subordinates align with our boss and his or her mission as deeply as deeply as we are,
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and when they're invited into leadership, we teach and support them as they do the same for their people, and that's not a pipeline, it's a covenant replicating itself.
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So, how do we actually determine whether our fellow servant is leading well. We watch their people,
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not their reports, not their dashboards, their people.
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So, what are we watching for in their people?
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Are they inviting?
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Is our fellow servant actively identifying and bringing people alongside them, not just assigning tasks, but genuinely inviting others into identity and responsibility into a different role.
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The tell
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when it's stalling,
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they're doing everything themselves.
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Their team may be capable, but dependent.
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Nobody's being developed, and that's not servant leadership, that's just that's just being good at your job. And if they're not leading in their role, they've been fighting to, been invited to, they're actually stealing from our boss,
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because we're not paying them to do what they used to do,
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retain them, we're paying them to lead people who do what they used to do.
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Second, are they being an effective role model for their people?
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Are there teams being led by example.
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Are there teams seeing here's what it takes to be a servant? Does the team reflect their posture?
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We can see a servant culture in how people talk about their work, about the how they handle conflict, how they treat each other under pressure.
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When it's stalling, we see a gap between what they say and what the team does,
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and the gap often indicates drift, and it can point back to the consistency of the example that's being set.
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We've heard the expression that to be a good leader, we have to have to be a good follower. Well, so often people get into leadership and they stop showing people how to follow. That's our job as leaders. We, the more effectively we show people how to follow, the more effective they're going to follow, which ultimately makes our job easier.
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And finally, are they willing to entrust? Are there people growing in responsibility and confidence
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when it's working? We see people being stretched, given more supported through it, and growing as a result. And when it's stalling,
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it often goes one of two ways: either they're hoarding, they won't let go, or they're abdicating. They hand off stuff without support.
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And
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when we abdicate it, then it's just - it's dumping. Just, hey, here's what it is. Figure it out,
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and we want to make sure that doesn't happen, and that's why this episode is so important.
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Now, we also measure their team's performance, not instead of watching their people, in addition to it, because ultimately results do matter. We are accountable to our master, to our boss, to our supervisor, to our heavenly master for outcomes, but here's the key distinction: performance is a confirmation,
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not the primary diagnostic. If we see the people flourishing, but the numbers are lagging, we have a conversation to investigate. If we see the numbers strong, but people drifting, we have a problem that hasn't shown up yet.
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People tell us what's coming. Numbers tell us what's happened.
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The metric that matters most is
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the alignment trajectory. Is the alignment increasing? Is the gap between
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where they're headed and where they should be headed getting smaller? Are there people more aligned with the mission today than they were six months ago?
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In this case, direction matters more than the current position.
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A team that may not be fully aligned but is moving in the right direction is being led well.
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A team that looks aligned today but has been quietly drifting is a problem waiting to reveal itself,
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so we coach to increase alignment
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as the avenue to impact performance, not to enforce compliance.
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We move the needle on alignment
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in both directions, toward the master's mission and toward the Master's mission
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for us, for Christians, these two usually travel together,
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and when they diverge, that's a conversation worth having,
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and then the final piece, the one that completes the cycle and multiplies our capacity rather than adding to our burden, we teach them to support.
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It's not just how to lead,
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how to support
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the self-examination sequence, the alignment conversations, the way we watch their people instead of their performance, the way we measure trajectory, all of it. A fellow servant who's been supported well, corrected well, and taught to support others, they don't just grow, they become someone who carries weight alongside us
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instead of adding to it. That's the covenant replicating itself. That's how the yoke stays easy and the burden stays light.
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Now we also, we also have to remember that when we talked about stepping, stopping, look in the mirror, and asked ourselves whether we're inviting role modeling and trusting the way we want our fellow servant leaders to do the same. We have to remember
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we are always setting an example.
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While we've been learning how to support our fellow servants, how to maintain alignment, how to watch their people, how to measure trajectory, how to teach them to support others,
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something else has been happening the entire time,
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we've been setting an example.
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I remember standing in front of my department head's desk at the time I was stationed on an aircraft carrier. I was two months into a new job assignment in charge of a troubled division.
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I looked at him, I said, How am I doing? He looked up at me and said, You're doing a great job. There were a lot of problems when you went down there, but you solved them
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all, and truthfully, I was a little taken aback, pleased, but taken aback. I, and I said, "Well, I appreciate that, sir, but there were a lot of good people when I went down there when I took over, and I mean, truth, I was trying to deflect some of the credit onto my people, because I didn't think I'd really done that much, and he thought for a second, and he then he replied, you know, that's true, but they were all there before you got there,
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and that's when I realized the impact of leadership,
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that even when we don't think anyone's watching, they are
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not just when we're intentional about it, not just in our formal check-ins or our coaching conversations, all of it, every interaction, every moment of consistency, and every moment of inconsistency,
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every time we've examined ourselves before, drift addressing drift, and every time we didn't, we're always broadcasting. We don't get to choose whether or not we're on the air, we only get to choose what we're transmitting.
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And research on organizational culture tells us something most of us already know in our gut, culture isn't what leaders say, it's what leaders do when they think nobody's paying attention.
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Our fellow servants aren't just learning from what we teach them, they're absorbing how we live.
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So, when we look at our fellow servant and something's off, when the inviting is stalling, when the example isn't being followed, when they're not entrusting people with things,
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before we ask what's wrong with
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them, we've got to examine what have we been showing them,
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and we have to ask what have we been showing them, not accusing, just asking, because often, not always, but often what we see in them is a reflection of what we've modeled.
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Now that's sobering, but it doesn't have to be crushing.
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Remember, we don't model faithfully in order to produce certain outcomes. We model faithfully because that's what faithful servants do.
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The fruit other faithful servants align teams results that honor the mission
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may come.
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It may not come as quickly as we'd like. It may not look exactly as we imagined,
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but our obligation to model faithfully doesn't depend on the outcome.
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That's what keeps us from becoming just one more thing to manage.
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And here's the grace that holds all of this together.
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Even a perfect example
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doesn't guarantee a perfect understanding. Think about Jesus, He modeled servant identity perfectly for three years up close in real time, 00
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inconsistency, and His disciples still didn't get it. They argue about who among them was the greatest. They fell asleep when He asked them to watch and pray with him. Peter, who watched Jesus raise the dead, denied knowing him three times before sunrise. The perfect teacher, imperfect students.
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Now that's not a reason to be careless with our example, it's a reason to be faithful with it and release from the burden of controlling what others do with it. We are responsible for what we broadcast.
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We're not responsible for what others receive.
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Faithfulness is ours to carry, and the rest, the rest belongs to the master, and that right there
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is why his yoke is easy, and his burden is light.
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You know, in this episode, we started with two very different executive officers, two very different exiles, Lieutenant Commander Nerdin, Lieutenant Communit, same ship, same crew, same rank, same role, completely different impact.
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Lieutenant Commander Nerdin was exhausting for everyone around him,
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and he was exhausted
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and.
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Sadly, no matter how much harder he worked or how much louder he screamed, he was never going to get the results he was expected to.
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The environment he created produced anxiety. It didn't produce growth.
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I mean, Tom Harton didn't pull that water pistol stunt in a healthy environment. That prank was a symptom.
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Now, Lieutenant Commander Nicollen, ironically, was more demanding, and yet
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nobody was hiding on the couch. People were growing, the ship was succeeding, because his demand came wrapped in something
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that Commander Nervins never did, and it was support,
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not the kind that softens expectation, not the kind that lets people off the hook, the kind that says I believe in where we're going, I believe in your ability to help us get there,
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and I'm not going to disappear on you while you figure it out.
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And that's what we've been talking about today. We support our fellow servants by staying in alignment with our master, with our boss here and above, we watch for drift. We examine ourselves first, and we realign together. When the mission starts to blur,
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we support their growth as leaders by watching their people, measuring the trajectory, and teaching them to support the way we support them. The covenant replicates itself, and when it does, the weight gets distributed rather than multiplied, and remember always that we're setting an example, whether we intend to or not. Faithfulness is ours to carry. The outcome belongs to the master.
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And here's what I'd like to leave you with today.
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If supporting your people has felt like one more thing draining you, one more obligation on an already long list.
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I'd invite you to ask a simple question.
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Am I doing this the way Jesus did this,
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or the way I've been taught by modern servant leadership?
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Jesus didn't promise that following him would be easy in the sense of requiring nothing. He promised something better than that.
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He said, 'Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
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Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 1128 30.
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Support for a servant leader is not the cause of exhaustion and burnout, it's the antidote.
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If today's episode is your first time joining us, I'd encourage you to go back to episode one and walk through the whole journey. We've been unpacking what it actually means to be a servant who leads instead of a leader who serves, and this episode is the final step in that arc.
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If you've been with us from the beginning, thank you very much. We've covered a lot of ground together,
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and the first part we establish who we are as servants, and the second part shown us how that servant identity
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can empower us to step into the role of a leader, and today we close that chapter. The question going forward isn't whether you're a good leader,
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it's whether you're a faithful servant called to lead. That, my friends, is the right call. Thanks so much for joining us. If this can help somebody, please send it on, like us, subscribe, and I will see you in the next episode, you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
