YYoung and Profiting
← All frameworks
Leadership

Servant Leadership Three-Step

Grow your people as humans, then as professionals, then help them reach their goals, and they'll want to help you.

Difficulty
Moderate
Time to result
~ongoing to results
Steps
4
Confidence
95%

Behar built his entire leadership philosophy on Robert Greenleaf's servant leadership, which he distills into three sequential moves: first you help your people grow as human beings, second you help them grow as professionals, and third you help them achieve their own goals in life. When you do that well, they want to help you back. Serving others, in his view, is the single most important thing a person can do, and it is the essence of leadership. This was the model that let Starbucks grow 'with' its people rather than 'on the backs' of them.

Origin

Behar was introduced to Greenleaf's work by Jim Jensen, his boss at Grantree furniture rental in his mid-to-late twenties, whom he calls the single most important mentor of his life.

Core principles

  • 01Leadership begins with serving the people you lead, not extracting from them.
  • 02Personal growth precedes professional growth.
  • 03Helping people achieve their own life goals earns their reciprocal commitment.
  • 04Serving others is the single most important thing a leader can do.

How to run it

  1. 1

    Help them grow as human beings

    Start by caring about the person's growth as a whole human, not their job function. This is the foundation everything else rests on.

    Pro tip Coach people to believe in themselves; belief precedes performance.

  2. 2

    Help them grow as professionals

    Invest in developing their craft and career capabilities so they get better at what they do.

  3. 3

    Help them achieve their own life goals

    Learn what each person wants in their own life and actively help them get there.

    Watch out Do this for genuine care, not as a manipulation tactic; people can tell the difference.

  4. 4

    Receive their reciprocal commitment

    When you serve people well through the first three steps, they want to help you, and that is where organizational strength comes from.

In the wild

Growing with people, not on their backs

Behar and the two other leaders, all from lower-income backgrounds, insisted on growing Starbucks with their people rather than on their backs, applying servant leadership as the company scaled.

→ The people-centric culture became the reason the company caught on and scaled across five continents.

Common mistakes

Skipping straight to professional output

Trying to develop professionals without first caring about them as human beings breaks the sequence and the commitment never forms.

Serving to get, not to give

Treating servant leadership as a manipulation for reciprocity corrupts it; the reciprocity only comes when the service is genuine.

Is it for you?

Best for

Managers and leaders who want durable loyalty and a culture that sustains growth.

Not ideal for

Leaders unwilling to invest time in individuals or looking for a quick transactional productivity fix.

From the transcript

“you help your people grow as human beings first you help them grow as professional and then you help them achieve their goals in life…”

Howard Behar · 13:00

“serving others was the single most important thing I could do in my life”

Howard Behar · 15:30

From the episode

Howard Behar: Former Starbucks President Reveals How Starbucks Grew to 15,000 Stores

→