Servant Leadership And The Rule Of Seven (2024)

John’s team was small and tightly knit. As time went by and more and more people joined, he found himself at wits’ end. He left his previous job in Big Corp as he hated company politics, and vowed to prevent this kind of drama in his new team. He was fond of a flat structure, but that wasn’t working anymore. People were unhappy and starting to leave. He couldn’t figure out what he was doing wrong.

Then one day his mentor asked him a question: what are your guys’ needs?

John didn’t have an answer.

New managers often struggle with maintaining efficiency and team satisfaction when facing sudden growth. This is more common in startups, as rounds of funding often translate to quick hiring sprees, but can happen in any kind of business.

First things first though, what is the role of a manager in a modern company? What are they actually expected to do?

Traditionally, the job of a manager was that of a supervisor. They assigned tasks to their direct reports, and supervised their work to ensure it was done to a set standard of quality. They hired, they fired and they measured. Perhaps, they even saw themselves are the experts in the field of their team’s operations. And their team served them.

This antiquated conception of management is better suited for the office of the mid-20th century, a smoky office of made men, rife with stifling processes and inefficiency (and inequality and unfairness — truly horrible times, but I digress). It’s in complete antithesis to what modern management is about, especially in the context of a technology-driven startup.

The modern manager is an enabler, not a controller. She knows that the experts in the team are those on the front line, and she tries her best to enable them to achieve their fullest potential. The team doesn’t serve her, she serves them.

This system only works when there’s reciprocal trust between the team and its manager: she needs to trust them on their expertise and professionalism, and in turn they need to trust her to steer the team in the right direction, for the success of the business.

Trust isn’t born overnight. It requires a conscious effort, especially from the manager’s part, to materialize. It can’t be forced, but it can be enticed, and the best way of enticing it is through mutual understanding. The manager has to work out what makes each team member tick, and smooth out their daily ride as much as possible.

There are different ways to achieve this, here are some ideas to get you started:

• Talk to your team members individually : Set aside 30 minutes to 1 hour a week per direct report to sit down together in private and see what their needs are and what they’re struggling with. Depending on the person, the conversation doesn’t need to be limited to their work. If they’re struggling with personal issues, it’s better that you know and see if the company can accommodate, and maybe even help.
• Talk to your team as a group : Setup a weekly meeting with your team so that they can share what they learned and their struggles with each other. This is a good way for you to “take the temperature” of the team as a whole, and meanwhile ensure alignment between individual and organizational goals. You can also use this time to share news and insights into the company’s operations and upcoming projects.
• Provide growth opportunities : Once you know your people’s needs and aspirations, try to get them on projects that give them an opportunity to grow. Or create such projects in the broader context of your company’s mission.

Trust is also dependent on credibility, integrity, stability and consistency. As a manager, you want to adopt a persona that projects these qualities at all times in front of your team. Also, try to steer away from projecting self-interest, as this is a major trust killer.

After reading this, you might think that being a servant leader is a daunting task. You are not wrong. It requires a lot of time and patience to execute it well, which is a good segue into the other concept I wanted to cover today: the rule of seven.

The rule of seven is a basic axiom of management which states that a manager is most effective when the maximum number of people reporting to them doesn’t go beyond a handful, the sweet spot being around a ratio of 7:1.

This is born out of the concept of span of control, in the context of supervising the work of people in the old style of management which we saw earlier. However, it takes on a fresh meaning when applied to a servant leader.

There are two main reasons for an enabler to avoid looking after more than seven people:

• Time : It takes time to run one-to-one meetings, to work out people’s needs and help them with their development. On top of that, you want to be available for impromptu questions / sessions, so that trust can be built up further.
• Details : You need to know your people and their needs inside out, especially when scoping out work with other departments / teams. Looking after too many people at once means cutting down on the details you can remember for each person, conversely increasing the chance of letting them down by forgetfulness.

Therefore, as the team grows it’s a good idea to identify potential deputies as early as possible and train them to become the next management tier within your team.

When training these new managers, you should ensure that the servant leadership spirit is kept alive. People learn by example, but there’s always the risk that new managers, most likely due to their own insecurity, end up micromanaging or retreat into doing hands-on tasks themselves.

A good way to mitigate this risk is to get the deputy to “shadow” you on some tasks, such as the one-to-ones with their would-be direct reports. This can start a few months before the delegation of line management duties takes place, and gives you a chance to observe the new manager in action before you pull the trigger.

Of course, in the spirit of servant leadership, the selection of the direct reports to shift under your new manager is also something that should be done with your team’s input. Some people naturally work better together than others, and some are less inclined to be led by a junior manager than others. These are important factors to be taken into consideration when making the selection for both deputies and potential direct reports.

The key point to remember here is to look out for candidates early. You don’t want to be doing this when you’re up to seven or eight reports already and you’re short on time available to train them.

If no suitable candidates can be found, you can look outside the team, or even recruit from outside the company. In these cases, it’s better to get the person in as a direct contributor first, even for a short period of time, so that they get familiar with the people and the team’s operations. The goal here is to build trust, again, and ensure the principles of servant leadership are implemented by the new manager.

Management is a vast topic that cannot possibly be covered in a short article. However, I hope today’s introduction is useful to steer a new manager towards servant leadership and provide enough of a heads-up to avoid them spreading themselves too thin as the team grows.

The key takeaways are indeed quite simple:

• If you want to be an effective manager, be a servant leader. Enable your team to succeed while encouraging them from behind the scenes.
• Flat structures only work to a certain team size. If you have more than seven direct reports, you should really consider finding a deputy and shifting some people over. If not, you might end up eroding the trust you’ve worked so hard to build, as you are more likely to let down some of your guys due to lack of time.

Being a manager can be an extremely rewarding experience, especially when you see your direct reports being successful. This is even more true when you end up training effective servant leaders as a pay forward. The more the team grows, the more rewarding the experience of seeing a fresh graduate just out of university finding their feet and becoming a skilled professional thanks to the support of positive leaders at all levels within your structure.