Chick-Fil-A: Servant Leadership

Chick-fil-A is a business known for its excellent customer service and delicious food, but another avenue the company excels in that is not as well known is its servant-based leadership. All 6 of the interviews conducted mentioned Chick-fil-A’s servant based leadership style and training program based off of servant leadership. When asked the question about the company’s leadership training program, each interviewee mentioned the companies SERVE program and model.

S- See and shape the future
E- Engage and develop others
R- Reinvent constantly
V- Value results and relationships
E- Embody the values

Upon further research into this model, we discovered it embodied conceptualization, commitment to the growth of followers, foresight, emphasis
In short, there is plenty of follower influence in decision-making. The majority of the interviewee’s said being relational played the biggest role in the leadership, while the other two said common task orientation towards the shared organizational vision was the biggest role. Regardless, all agreed that strong leaders lead by example and also take part in follower tasks, as Chick-fil-A outlines in their leadership model. When it came to how each interviewee said how followers would describe them as a leader, each of them said relational, though not all said being relational was most important. All of the interviewee’s mentioned how they like that their leaders are involved and ask about their personal lives so they try to incorporate that into their leadership styles as well. Another important facet in their leadership techniques is something that was not as popular in ages past: making the work environment fun. They said they try to do this with fun music and humor, two things I think millennials specifically resonate with. On the other hand however, some said they have to monitor the amount of “fun” they allow because task completion is still of higher