Five Leadership Styles for Business Growth: Servant Leadership

If you think “leadership” is a title, this conversation will challenge you fast. We’re continuing our Five To Thrive leadership pillar by digging into servant leadership, not as a feel-good concept, but as a repeatable system for record growth. Our goal is bigger than any single style: we’re taking the best parts of multiple leadership styles to build what we call iconic leadership, a standard that helps your team stay ahead of where the market is going.

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Brian Wright works closely with executives, entrepreneurs, small business owners and executives in five areas essential to thrive in the new economy: Leadership, Culture, Sales, Hospitality & Marketing. You have come to the right place If you want to grow your business and surpass goals unlike ever before

In this video you'll learn powerful business growth and efficiency strategies broken down into five categories that transform:

✔ Leadership
✔ Culture 
✔ Sales 
✔ Hospitality
✔ Marketing

"Brian Wright is the Tony Robbins in the new economy." Stephanie Solomon - Author 

"Brian Wright is a combination of Marcus Lemonis from the Profit and the entire Shark Tank Team. You must partner your business with his mind and his companies." Dr. Stacy Frankowitz

More about today's episode:

We walk through the core pillars of servant leadership, starting with self-awareness and humility: knowing your strengths, admitting your weaknesses, and surrounding yourself with people who fill the gaps without letting ego get in the way. We also tackle bias in business, including why “virtual consults don’t work” is often a story leaders tell themselves instead of a process problem they can fix with better questions and better execution. If you lead with consumer data and constant self-reflection, you stop making decisions based on feelings and start building a culture that adapts.

Then we get practical with active listening and empathy as trained skills, not personality traits. You’ll hear why “the number on paper is a liar,” how the stories behind your metrics shape referrals and repeat buyers, and how role-play and accountability create the kind of customer experience that turns people into fans. We also connect psychological safety, stewardship, and long-term vision to performance, with a Phil Jackson example that proves “people development” is not a cost, it’s a return.

If you want your culture to improve, your team to execute, and your business to grow without chasing vanity metrics, press play. Subscribe, share this with a leader on your team, and leave a review with the one leadership habit you’re committing to next.

Transcript

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Five To Thrive Series Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, welcome back inside the studio, and we are rolling along with our five essentials for record growth, which I call the five to thrive. And we are still in our first pillar of that five to thrive, which is leadership. We're coming off some core pillars of leadership. And now we're currently in part two of a new series, and we're calling it the five leadership styles. But remember the goal. So if you're just tuning in and you haven't watched this, I'm gonna pin it below, link it below. Make sure to go back to part one. What we're trying to do is take the positives from all of these leadership styles and create a brand new leadership style called iconic leadership. Okay, so I want all of you as the listeners, all my clients out there, all of you have a chance to become something really special that hasn't even been coined before. And that's the goal. Now we're not gonna get there from these five courses that we're going through, podcast series we're going to, but it's a start to start getting your mindset in the

Why Servant Leadership Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:53

right place. Coming off part one, which is transformational. And now we're gonna be diving into something that I call servant leadership. There's a lot of similarities between transformational leaders and servant leaderships. You'll see servant leaders, and you're gonna see some of that as I dive into this if you've watched part one. Now let's look at what a servant leader does. They prioritize supporting, enabling, and serving the needs of team members so they can perform at their very best. All right, so let's dive in now to some core pillars of servant leadership. As we go, maybe recognize, hey, this is me. I've got some of these traits. Or maybe this is the opposite. I need to start adopting some of these traits,

Mirror Work On Strengths And Weaknesses

SPEAKER_00 1:33

okay? Self-awareness and humility is where I want to start with the core pillars of servant leadership. I think we always could get better. All of us could be more self-aware, have some more humility in our life. Right now, these leaders are able to recognize their own strengths, weaknesses, and biases. Now, even though that's a pretty short, compact sentence, there's a lot there, okay? Well, start with their own strengths. Look, I think a lot of times, right, we don't quite look in the mirror the way a servant leader does, right? A servant leader looks in the mirror and is able to truly analyze themselves. They self-reflect a lot. So a lot of times we think our strengths, other people may look at that and go, nope, that's not your strength. You're not good at it like you think. But servant leaders are really good at analyzing themselves, right? So they know their strengths, they know how to build upon their strengths, right? They know how to use their strengths to their unique competitive advantage. Also, their weaknesses, and this is probably more important, is a lot of us, right, we're not looking in the mirror and really identifying our weaknesses so we then can get better at them. Servant leaders are brilliant at identifying their weaknesses, admitting fault, right? Admitting those weaknesses, and they do two things. The very first one is they are committed to improving upon those weaknesses. Okay, so they identify it and they improve upon it. They're not like, well, I'm not good in that area, that's just the way it is. Okay, and unfortunately, that's how a lot of humans are, right? No, servant leaders identify the weakness and they strive to improve it. What they also do, right, and this is putting your ego aside, because for a lot of you out there, this may be difficult, but what they also do is they surround themselves with people that have what their weakness is, those people that they surround themselves, that's a strength, right? I'm not good at organization, so I'm gonna make sure there's people around me that are good at or good at organization, that kind of thing, right? I want to, I'm not, I'm not good at eating healthy, I'm not good at lifting weights, but I want to be better, right? So I'm gonna surround myself with people that are really good in those areas, okay? That's what they do. They do not let their ego get in the way, and they're not afraid to put people around them that are smarter than them in certain areas, right? And have strengths that they're when they're having the current weaknesses in that same area. Now, biases,

Bias Can Break Your Business

SPEAKER_00 3:50

same way. I mean, as human to be human, we have bias. Let's just admit it. And I think the quicker we can admit that and self-reflect on what those biases, the better. And a lot of you out there, and I see this helping businesses all over the world, is you run your business with your own unique bias, right? You you from your lens, it's like this is the way it should be. And you could see all these leaky holes all over your business because of it. And for a lot of people, it's really difficult. And I think whoever you're listening to, who at whatever content you follow out there, you need to be very careful and you need to make sure that they are delivering content not in a biased way. Meaning a lot of speakers, a lot of podcasts, a lot of consultants, a lot of coaches, they're they're coaching you and they're teaching you content based on how they feel. Everything here in the Brian Russia, everything I teach is based off of consumer data. And then we are self-reflecting constantly to make sure that we are keeping you in your business two, three, four, five years ahead of where it's going anyway. I'll give you a perfect example of this, and this is when we're helping orthodontic practices, right? A bias in that particular industry is that the virtual consult won't work. Right? They say they're bad patients, they just want a cheap price, they're shopping around, they no-show a lot, right? And because that bias exists inside a lot of the practices, they're never going to be good at it. Right? Instead, the question should be what are we doing wrong? Clearly, we're not doing something right. Our conversion's low, we're not making sales, the no-shows are high. What are we doing wrong here? And you see how that question, right, is a different way of looking at it and it makes you self-reflect. Serving leaders are brilliant at that. Because if you're self-reflecting, it'll keep the bias out. And the reason I bring up the virtual consult is I myself would not want the virtual consult. Okay, but I teach it and I teach it really well, and our clients thrive with it. But I'm not letting my bias, the fact that I wouldn't pick it, stand in the way of coaching it at a really high level. Okay, and that is a trait of a servant leader big time. And that is really important. All of you know that what you learn on this show is always gonna keep you ahead of everybody else, because nothing I teach is from five, 10 years ago. We are constantly gutting out the content, reorganizing the program, coming up with new ideas based on all the consumer data that we have.

Collective Success Over Personal Status

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Okay. Now they also prioritize collective success over personal ego and status. And that's kind of what I'm talking about, right? If you put people that have strengths around you that are your weaknesses and you have ego, right, you're gonna be like threatened every single time they do something really well around you when you struggle. Right? This is a problem for a lot of people. I see this a lot in corporations where it's like you're trying to move up the ranks and you want to get promoted. So God forbid somebody else takes the credit. Oh my God. Right? But great leaders, servant leaders, and again, all of you can be servant leaders, all of you can be leaders, doesn't matter your rank or title, right? You have to find a way to help each other and be servant leaders with one another and find ways to help each other and be happy when someone else thrives. And this is what using a sports analogy, right? Servant leaders do not put up with the basketball player that's great in the court, but pisses everybody else off in the locker room and demoralizes them and drives down their performance, right? So that's straight from our Navy SEALs team six training, right? And a lot of other stuff and a lot of other coaching we do, but they don't put up with that for a minute. And they will fire that person, they will trade that person, they will release that person, whatever it is to not have those people around because they know those people are never going to be happy for the collective whole. They're all in it for themselves. Okay, they're threatened when somebody else succeeds, they're threatened if somebody else's idea may be better than theirs, right? They're threatened if someone's strength is their weakness. They don't let those people stay around, right? And they themselves don't become one of those people. Servant leaders are some of the most coachable, lifelong learners you will ever meet. So, what they're looking for is how does the team succeed? How does the team thrive? Okay, now some of the players may have to sacrifice, some of the employees may have to sacrifice, but the goal is to succeed, right? Achieve our vision, advance our cause, those kind of things. Servant leaders are obsessed with it. Now, active

Leadership App And Free Consult

SPEAKER_00 8:03

listening and empathy is another one, everybody. Brian Wright, let's step away. And because we talk so much about leadership being a trained skill set, it goes way beyond position of rank, authority, and title. In our app, we have our new Transformational Leadership Series. This is all about how becoming an iconic leader can transform your culture, and it really applies to everybody in your organization, whether you're a small business or a corporation, going through this journey, hours upon hours of leadership curriculum. We're always adding more. This is our brand new one, by the way. This just was launched. There's hours upon hours we're in the midst of shooting many more on-demand courses, and as we load them, they automatically populate in the app. This is the perfect way to onboard employees. It's the perfect way for repetition, and it's the perfect way to make sure your leaders are running your organization in an innovative way, creating psychological safety and taking your culture to the next level. We'll link it in the description below. Just click it to schedule a free consultation. We'll go over the app and how we can apply it to your particular business. Look forward to meeting with you. And now let's get back to today's episode. And you

Active Listening As A Skill

SPEAKER_00 9:08

know, active listening, you've seen that. If you followed my content, you've you've heard active listening come up a lot. You know, we're taught how to read, write, think, speak, and act. Nobody teaches us how to listen. Now, active listening's taken it to a whole nother level. Now's not the time. You should look up the psychology of active listening that is embedded in a lot of our sales and hospitality scripts that we help with and personalize, depending on what type of practice you have, business you have, what industry you're in, things like that. But active listening is a real skill set. It's a coachable skill set that we work on because you can't have empathy without active listening. And really the premise of active listening is listening with intent and then responding in a way that showed that you listened and that you were engaged. I can't tell you how many times I've called places, 800 number or local business, and you all will be able to relate to this, right? Where you tell them a problem, right? And then they're like, well, I'll try I can't help you, I'll transfer you. They don't even say sorry, right? So the empathy isn't there either. More than that, just a second, on empathy being a trained skill set, even for the nicest of people. I've got a story from one of my own companies for that, but then they transfer you to a department that answers and they can't help you either. Right. So they didn't even listen, nor did they care, but they certainly didn't listen and then send you at least to the right department. And I can't tell you how many times that's happened to me. And I guarantee you, all of you have had that experience once. You know, you talk to Joe, Joe can't help you, Susie answers in another department. Susie's like, I don't know why Joe transferred you to me. There's nothing I can do either. Right. And that just shows poor active listening. And this is why numbers are full of crap. Because I've seen in all of your businesses that I help, and I've been in out there, I've seen scenarios while monitoring and taking notes where there's a customer complaint, a patient complaint, right? An objection, right? Somebody's frustrated that they can't get an appointment when they want on your schedule, right? They're frustrated they didn't like the food, whatever it is, and the active listening is not there. And you can tell based on the response. Now, the reason why you can't have empathy without active listening is kind of this story right here represents why active listening and empathy are trained skill sets. And like I said, all of these times your people are, and this is why you grow your people and let them grow the business and really grow the brand. That's really more how you should look at it. But I just can't tell you how many. This is why the number on paper is a liar, because the number on paper is not telling you the story on how Nancy interacted with your customer wrong and pissed them off. And now that customer is not going to refer, that customer is not going to be a repeat buyer. That customer is now either, whatever, a satisfied customer because your product's good, or they're a regretful buyer. But they're not part of your sales force. They're not your marketing team, which should be the goal is to create fans, not customers, fans not clients, fans not patients. Those are two totally different things.

The Stories Behind The Numbers

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Now, the the the story for you. So one of my companies, RightChat, we we answered for this arthritis relief center, big, a lot of practices in the state of Texas. And and this was, you know, you would listen to the mystery calls when some of these receptionists would first start. And this was really before we dove into heavy training. Like we were just kind of initially seeing how they would react, how they would take the initial training. So listen to some calls and you would hear things like, My shoulder's killing me, I can't lift my arm, my knee hurts, I can't walk, things like that. And the response would be, Well, do you want to schedule? And you may chuckle at that, but that's exactly what your people do, whatever business you have out on the phone, unless you are repetitively role-playing with them over and over again, they are not gonna active listen and they are not gonna show empathy, period. And these receptions were some of the sweetest people. And you would think it would be, and this is the mistake business owners make. Now, servant leaders don't, because servant leaders, just like transformational leaders, they're not worried about the numbers. It's not that they don't care about them and it's not that they're not important, but they know if the focus is on the number, right, they can't get people better, right? The focus has got to get people better and to enhance the numbers. And they fully get that. So they know that these leaky holes exist everywhere. You don't have to convince them, right? They know just because you're not gonna be able to print it out on your practice management software, your CRM, whatever business software you have out there, you're never gonna print out how Nancy just interacted with one of your customers or how Judy interacted with that initial phone call. Like that's the stuff that matters, but you can't put your finger on any of it. But those are the stories behind the numbers, right? And the stories are what you can control. And servant leaders are brilliant at this. Like I said, many of you take for granted, and because you don't see these things happening, the complaint that happened yesterday, how Susie handled it, like you don't feel it because you don't even see it, right? And because you don't see it, you don't feel it. But it's embedded in all of your numbers, whether you're happy with them or not. These things, again, going back to developing your people are imperative because you would think in that right chat arthritis relief center scenario, you would think it would be normal for people to go, I'm so sorry you're in pain. You've called the right place. Our doctors are amazing. We have advanced tech, we're gonna get you out of this pain. Let's get you in as fast as we can. We can see you later today at three o'clock or tomorrow morning at nine. Which would you prefer? You know, that kind of thing, right? But it's not normal. If you don't role-play that with your people repetitively and hold them accountable to the execution of it, like great leaders do, like remember the previous series we talked about execution and accountability. Okay, if you don't, they're not gonna do it, even if they're nice. And servant leaders know that. But it all starts though, if you want that to be delivered to the customer, client, patient, it all starts with you delivering that to the team. See, the key here is focus on understanding team members deeply. Right again, so many of you know your numbers, but you don't know squat about your people. The people that represent your brand and are responsible for the numbers, you don't know a damn thing about, right? You know the numbers that you can't control, but you don't know and care about the people responsible for them. And it's ridiculous. You've got to get, you've got to get better at that. Period. Interactions are approached with intent to understand rather than validate their own opinions, build deep psychological safety. And you've heard the term psychological safety many, many times. Your people must feel empowered, right? They they if they come up with an idea, the idea may not be implemented, but it should be embraced, never looked down upon. If a mistake is made, it's looked at as a learning opportunity and a growth opportunity, both for your business and them as a as a as an employee and also for the team they're amongst, right? And they know how to ask the right questions and get people to open up with them, right? So asking questions, interacting with intent, that's a big part of our sales training, right? And our hospitality training is learning how to ask the right questions to get the right answers, right, to help you move that needle to closer to sale, right? But that also is important with your team, right? So going back to if you won't active listen with your team and team members watching this, we have a lot of team members that let to listen to the podcast, watching these courses, uh, watching the YouTube station, look, you've got to do this for each other. How is it ever gonna translate to your patient, customer, or client, right? If you aren't doing this for each other and showing each other empathy, if Susie's down, maybe her boyfriend broke up with her, right? Maybe she's having a tough time with her finances, maybe her cousin's sick and dying of cancer. Whatever it may be, the old school way is like leave it at the door. And if you think that those things work today, you're nuts, right? You're nuts. You're never gonna get your business where you need it to be. You've got to show empathy to each other. You leaders out there in that position of rank and title I'm

Psychological Safety Starts On The Team

SPEAKER_00 16:40

talking to, you need to show empathy by active listening to your team. And then and only then can it translate to your customer. Now, stewardship and commitment to growth views the team, organization, resources as a trust to be nurtured rather than assets to be exploited. Boy, corporations out there, you could learn a lot from this. You've got the uppers, right, that don't even talk to the ground floor people, don't know a damn thing about them, yet you'll say, Oh, care and experience and all this stuff, right? And you don't even know the people on the ground floor representing your company. They're real people with real issues that bust their butt for you every single day, and you don't even get their opinion on what the next move in your corporation should be. Now, this mistake is made in small businesses all the time, just in a different way, right? You've got to look at your people as real humans. These are the people that you trust with your brand every time you turn your back, right? And when you're looking. And that's what so many of you have to understand is literally every interaction your people have before sale and after, right? That is what we do. That is what we do. We apply the five to thrive to all of that, right? Every interaction, right, leads to you turning people into fans or just a satisfied patient or satisfied customer or a regretful buyer. Everything you do goes into that, right? And you could count for all of you out there, restaurant, orthodontic practice, plastic surgeon, dentist, hotel, plumber, lawyer, I could go on and on. Think about all the interactions you and your team have with people before they buy and after every day that have nothing to do with your product or your service. There's hundreds upon hundreds, and your people have to be trained how to handle those situations in a great way. And that is another reason our clients dominate everybody in their respective industries because this is where their focus is. In the masses, it's so hard to convince. So, again, they look at resources, their team is a resource to be nurtured rather than be exploited. A lot of you out there could gain a valuable lesson from that, right? And they actively invest in the personal, in the personnel, professional, personal, professional, and emotional development of every individual on their team. Long time ago, when Phil Jackson took over for Doug Collins with the Chicago Bulls back in the Michael Jordan days, he was a big believer in this. Phil Jackson was a huge servant leader for sure. And when you talk about the personal and professional and emotional development, a lot of things that they would do is they would go do yoga

Invest In People Like Phil Jackson

SPEAKER_00 19:08

together. They would do health and well-being stuff, they would do psychological counseling, right? And those kind of things that have nothing to do with basketball. And basketball is a people business too. What do they sell? They sell tickets and merchandise and advertising, right? So the better the product is on the court, the more those go up, right? But the humans playing basketball, they're people, okay? And Phil Jackson looked at that and understood. Like if I could get them in the best psychological state and I care about them personally and professionally, right, and we do things, it's gonna, it's gonna perf, they're gonna perform better on the basketball court. Even those things have nothing to do with basketball, but everything to do with the performance. And this is the goes back to all of your businesses out there, right? How many things go on every single day that have got nothing to do with basketball, right? Get the analogy. Whatever you sell, this is the exact same thing, right? So they're investing in their people. They understand that their people are worth an investment. That's not a cost, there's a return on that, and they are obsessed with developing their people. Now, conceptualization and vision, I try to avoid that word on stage. Sometimes I can't, sometimes I can't spin it out. I gotta like slow it down into all the all the syllables and stuff. But I said at that time, we made it, we made it through. So they they balance the day, and they're really good at this, they balance the day-to-day operational execution with long-term strategic thinking. And they look beyond the immediate problem to use it as a learning and growth opportunity for every member of the team. You know, this goes back to psychological safety, it goes back to autonomy, it goes back to a lot of the things we've discussed in prior episodes. And and this is important because you know, business is just like life. It's an infinite journey. There is no winner. You're not going to cross the finish line one day and say, my business won. Right? It's not like it's not like basketball where at the end of the year you wear a ring, right? We won, right? The championship, we were the best for this for this year, right? But even in sports, you've got a next year. So it doesn't mean you're the best of the next year. So even in sports, in a weird way, it's kind of like life and business, where it's this infinite journey, right? You're not gonna really win. Right. So again, that's always you're advancing your

Long Term Vision And Next Style

SPEAKER_00 21:10

cause, advancing the why, advancing the vision, right? And that's really how you can, and servant leaders are brilliant at this because they also know along the way there's gonna be a lot of road bumps, like a baseball season. There's lots of up and downs, but the best coaches in this economy that last, they're even keel. You would never know if they're on a 10-game winning streak or a 10-game losing streak. And that is brilliant leadership, by the way, because even in your business, and that's really what this is talking about, right? They understand there's gonna be some day-to-day hiccups, right? But looking at this, looking beyond the immediate, just because there's some hiccups now, right? If you look at those hiccups or the mistakes and you look at them as learning opportunities, that can advance your cause and your vision forward, right? If you just look at them as mistakes and you scold your people and you're like, why'd you screw up? And you have that kind of culture, is bad leadership. It doesn't work in this economy, and servant leaders absolutely know that. So that went through the servant leadership. Now we've knocked out the transformational leader, the servant leader. We've looked at the positives of both of those. And I want you to be taking notes. I want you to really be looking at these positives because at the end here, I want you to become the iconic leader. Brand new coin term that we're going after here, taking the positives of all of this. And now we're gonna be moving into part three the autocratic leader. And I'll see, I'm gonna link it below and I'll see you over there.