Check out iCIMS' latest blog post from iCIMS blogger Clara Brunkhorst.

Growing as a Servant Leader

As a typical high school student, I went through the college selection process weighing all options that would contribute to professional success and personal fulfillment. I thought long and hard about the factors that would optimize my potential: price, academia, athletics, brand recognition, demographics, community fellowship, leadership opportunities, and any affiliated costs … Now, looking back six years later, the deciding factor was that Seton Hall genuinely fostered a community centered on servant leadership. My service-oriented character was able to transition well from high school to college because of this, and I naturally found my groove as an up-and-coming leader. Although I can go on and on about how this was the crucial contributing factor to reaching certain collegiate milestones, my end goal in publishing this post is to share how employees, managers, and recruiters who practice servant leadership can directly impact long-term business success and employee retention.

Servant Leadership in Management & Marketing
 
Servant leadership, often hidden in various sectors of society, is centered on developing a “living for the sake of others” mindset along with making and keeping accountable goals. As an emerging marketing professional, my first reference point for consistent leadership is my direct manager at iCIMS. She has shown me firsthand that employee empowerment, paired with accountability, can directly result in greater productivity, higher performance levels, and better professional relationships. Not only does this help form a positive corporate culture for recruitment advertising, but naturally results in a higher degree of organizational loyalty and  lower employee turnover.

In the realm of marketing, this tenant of servant leadership can be employed when applying advertising tactics, increasing prospect engagement, and creating a content strategy. Regardless of an organization’s industry, sales and marketing efforts that reflect “why” a company does what it does will naturally attract prospects that believe in its core values- and will feel called to purchase a product (or suite) not only as a want but as a need. These potential customers become more engaged in what the company stands for and are thus more likely to perceive this organization as an industry disruptor and educational leader.

Long-term Impacts of Servant Leadership in Organizational Development

Whether your organization is an innovative industry trailblazer or in a constant battle with competitors, according to Simon Sinek, great organizations think, act, and communicate in the same way: the complete opposite way of everybody else. In his TED talk viewed over 14 million times, Sinek shares how organizations disrupt industry norms by hammering the following point home: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.  iCIMS does business based on a “why” with core values of drive, passion, innovation, customer orientation, communication and adaptability at the center of how and what we do (reference the golden circle for better context). Whether we are selling talent acquisition products or plush Ikes (fictional example), iCIMS stands on foundation of integrity and service- and the industry can feel that. This orientation results in positive and long-term impacts on all aspects of the organization- customer training, product development, C-level decision-making, sales strategy, top talent attraction, employee retention, etc … Even if it can’t be seen or felt initially, servant leadership changes the direction of an organization. It’s long-term and short-term results can be seen and even motivate an entry-level Marketer to write about an intrinsic value that can only be known firsthand by working in a culture of true success based on the “why”.