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- I always want to support my students and be their biggest cheerleaders!

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-I always want to reflect positive things onto my students and let them know that I am happy to be where working with them

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-Truly serve my students

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Cheryl Williamson

Cheryl Polote Williamson helps female entrepreneurs build business and personal relationships built on honesty, integrity, and trust.

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"The servant-leader is a servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first." - Robert K. Greenleaf

If I took five minutes to talk to your team about their thoughts of you as a leader, what would they say? Would they say that you were a servant leader?

For as long as I can remember, I have had an extremely strong and uncommon desire to serve others. As I have grown and developed as a professional and leader, I have realized that my innate desire to serve has catapulted my career to astronomical heights; all because I have always followed my desire to serve first. A leader with a servant's heart is a truly invaluable asset, and everyone in a leadership position should seek to adopt this type of mentality.

Often times, we confuse leadership with dictatorship. A dictator barks out orders and does not take into account the wants and needs of others. A servant leader is the complete opposite. A servant leader works tirelessly to develop his or her people and is focused on what they can do for others.

I have compiled a few examples of what it means to be a servant leader, and most importantly, ways that you can establish a culture of servant leadership within your organization.

1. Let others see you serve and encourage them to join you. It is of the utmost importance that my employees and clients alike witness me in service. For example, this past holiday season I organized a book donation drive to provide books to the residents of one of my favorite charities, Martha's House, which is a local transitional facility for women who are reentering society post-incarceration. I donated copies of my own books and encouraged other authors and people on my team to do the same. Collectively, we donated over 50 books. I simultaneously gave back to the community while showing my team what it means to embody service.

2. Make sure they know that you care. We've all heard the famous quote, "They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." It is crucial that leaders know and understand the message and meaning behind this quote. Being knowledgeable does not make you a good leader, being caring does. A leader who shows his or her team that they care will not have to worry about loyalty or poor customer service. Place the importance of taking care of your people above the importance of your bottom line. When you take care of your people, they will take care of your customers. Get creative with finding ways to show your team that you care. It could be something as small as a $5 gift card to their favorite store or offering a kind word when they have experienced a personal trauma.

3. Invest in your people. The biggest investment you can make in your people is your time. Your team wants to spend time with you. Giving your time is a surefire way to let them know how much you care. Spending quality time with your team will impact their job performance directly and will, therefore, have great impacts on your bottom line. Spend time connecting with them as often as you can. Talk to them about non-work related topics and show genuine interest in them as a person. You'd be surprised how much this will mean to your team.

4. Don't place restrictions on your willingness to serve. For a servant leader, no job is beneath their pay grade. A true servant leader is willing to clean toilets if necessary. If you are in leadership, do not make the mistake of feeling or thinking that you are above grunt work. Your team can sense this type of attitude, and it is off-putting. It also puts distance between you and your team. Never be afraid to roll up your sleeves and go to work.

Successful leaders maintain a servant's heart and thus encourage their people to do the same. Imagine what your business's culture would look like if you and all of your team became servant leaders. What impact would this have on your customers' experiences? Only good can come from you showing your people what it means to serve first. I challenge you to explore ways to foster servant leadership in your own leadership style and among your team as well.

Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only, fee-based organization comprised of leading business coaches and career coaches. Find out if you qualify at forbescoachesc...

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Servant Leadership: How To Put Your People Before Yourself

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Forbes CommunityVoice Connecting expert communities to the Forbes audience. What is This? Forbes allows professional fee-based membership groups ("communities") to connect directly with the Forbes audience by enabling them to create content - and participate in the conversation - on the Forbes digital publishing platform. Each topic-based is produced and managed by the group.

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Be able to provide resources to students when needed

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Be able to provide resources to students when needed

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- I always want to have a solution for my students and provide them with as much help as possible

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-Provide students with follow up emails to make sure that they're doing okay

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-I always want to be honest with my students and show transparency

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- Attending University events and programs to get to know students outside of just the advising center

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CONTACT US Icon label Icon label Icon label Icon label Icon label Car and truck accidents can be life-changing events, often leading to serious physical injuries, emotional trauma...

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-Understanding students and their challenges

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Photo by Tom Parsons on Unsplash

Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives

Empathy is the essential skill for building trust with prospects. Yet it is rarely discussed, much less taught. But it can be learned - and I've developed an approach that quickly develops empathy for advisors who are willing to embrace a radical process.

The importance of being empathetic can't be overstated. Some consider it "your most important skill." The benefits of those who develop this skill transcend success in business. They include "greater success personally and professionally" and higher levels of happiness.
Understanding empathy
All you need to know about empathy can be gleaned from this line in Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird (quoted here): "You never really understand another person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

Defining empathy is straightforward. Practicing it is challenging.
Understanding hormonal differences
Men need more training to increase empathy than women. This has a scientific basis. Men, on average, produce more testosterone than women. One study (discussed here) found that administering testosterone sublingually to female volunteers reduced their empathetic abilities.

In non-scientific terms, men are hormonally programmed to be less empathetic.
Traditional ways to teach empathy
Most of us have the ability to empathize, but its full potential lies dormant in our brains. That's where training can make a meaningful difference.

The traditional ways of teaching empathy are discussed here and include:

Radical listening: Listening intently to what is being said, without making judgments, proposing solutions or interrupting.
My radical approach
Increasing awareness: Think about all the people who affect your life every day, but who you never consider. Examples include those who make your clothes or pick the beans for your morning coffee. The point is to expand your thoughts from the tendency to focus on ourselves to others. This exercise is called "looking for the human in everything."

Expand your communications: Try to make every interaction a positive experience. Talk to the barista, the librarian, the train conductor and the salesperson. They all have something to offer and will appreciate a pleasant interaction. Doing so will make you more sensitive and caring.

After much experimentation in my workshops, I've developed a radical approach to teaching empathy, which is very effective and enjoyable. In a nutshell: I create a scenario and ask participants to compete to see who can provide the most non-empathetic response.

In one example, I asked advisors to deal with a client who comes into the office visibly upset. His dog died yesterday and he is grieving. He's not sure he's ready for his quarterly meeting to review his holdings. I challenge attendees to come up with the least sensitive response. Here are some of the "winners":

I'm a cat person.
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Think of how much you'll save on dog food and vet bills.

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While these responses are funny, they clearly make the point about being empathetic. Before I did this exercise, I would ask advisors what they would say to a prospect who was "terrified of even a temporary loss" of their money. Most advisors responded with a brief platitude acknowledging this fear, but then explained how markets worked and extolled their ability to "protect" the prospect over the long term. This is not an empathetic response.

After training using this approach, advisors could articulate an empathetic response: "I completely understand your concern. These are scary times."

Recognize the importance of empathy. Be open to my radical approach for learning it.

Dan Solin is a New York Times best-selling author of the Smartest series of books. His latest book is The Smartest Sales Book You'll Ever Read. His sales coaching practice includes helping advisors convert prospects into clients and generating leads through videos and other elements of marketing. Dan is not affiliated with any advisory firm.

Get Dan's investing insights by signing up for his free, weekly newsletter .

Subscribe to Dan's YouTube investing channel .

Read more articles by Dan Solin

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A Radical Approach to Learning Empathy - Articles - Advisor Perspectives

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Empathy is the essential skill for building trust with prospects. Yet it is rarely discussed, much less taught. But it can be learned - and I’ve developed an approach that quickly develops empathy for advisors who are willing to embrace a radical process.

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Celebrate Accomplishments (small & large)

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Celebrate Accomplishments (small & large)

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-Celebrating the success of my students

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Have you ever heard someone say, "I'll be so happy when I lose these 25-pounds?" Well, if you have not heard this statement, there are people out here trying to lose weight whose happiness is contingent on them losing 25-pounds.

What the person does not tell you is they have actually lost 2, 3, 4 or even 5 pounds. Yes, the weight is coming off, but they believe the time for celebration is only when they lose 25-pounds.

With anything in life, be it losing weight, making healthier dietary choices, or loving the skin you are in; you must celebrate accomplishments, no matter how small they are.

Celebrating Small Things

This inspiration for this post is from my daughter, Hannah and her wonderful Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP), Ms. Linda.

I have observed some amazing stuff in Hannah's speech therapy sessions. It is through these observations that I see, how important it is to celebrate accomplishments, no matter how small they are.

Celebrating the small things lead to bigger and greater things happening. When Hannah mispronounces a word, the SLP motivates and encourages her to pronounce the word clearly with positive reinforcements.

The SLP never focuses on what Hannah cannot do or does not do, she simply focuses on where Hannah is, while helping her go farther with her speech.

The interaction that Hannah receives from the SLP, motivates her to do what she thinks she cannot do. Ultimately, Hannah gives the SLP clear pronunciation.

We cannot celebrate the big accomplishments without first celebrating the small accomplishments. For if we only focused on that which is big, how would we ever appreciate the small things. It is the small things that truly help us do great things.

Stop Focusing on the Big Things

You got a glimpse of speech therapy with my daughter. But what you may not know is that Hannah is home educated. Yes, I teach my daughter and it is one of the toughest jobs I have ever had in my life, but it is probably the most rewarding job thus far.

When I started teaching Hannah, I had to figure out her learning style. I have had exposure to K-12 in a public and Christian educational settings in the past, but I never had direct experience with teaching a child with special learning needs.

There were many days, I wanted to give up teaching Hannah, but there was something within that would not let me give up so easily. I held on and things eventually got better.

One of the most important things I had to learn was that I had to stop focusing on my daughter doing big things. I had to also stop comparing her to other children, because no two children will ever be the same. When this finally clicked in my mind, Hannah began doing amazing things and I became a better teacher.

These days, I praise Hannah for the little things. The smile on her face is priceless when she receives praise. It is big to me, but I think it is even bigger for her.

Tying it All Together (healthy living)

We live in an instantaneous world. We expect instant weight loss success, instant dietary success, instant fitness success, and instant healing. I can go on and on about how we want things fast, but things don't really happen fast, things actually happen slow. Fast and quick change doesn't stick around long. It is here today and gone tomorrow. It takes time, patience and sticking with your journey for change to manifest.

If you are working on living a healthier life, you have celebrate the small accomplishments. Yes, the big accomplishments are major milestones, but if you overlook the small/little things you will not appreciate the journey.

Celebrating the small accomplishments helps you look back and see just how far you've come. It helps you learn and be thankful for the journey. Living a healthier life is challenging, but if you are willing to take one day at a time, get up when you fall, keep climbing up the mountain even with it gets rough, and focus on moving forward, then you will succeed.

It may not happen now and it may not happen today, but keep learning, growing, moving and celebrating your accomplishments no matter how small they are. One day you will reach your healthy living goals, just you wait and see.
Small accomplishments make a big difference too! You May Also Like....

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Celebrate Accomplishments, No Matter How Small They Are

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Have you ever heard someone say, "I'll be so happy when I lose these 25-pounds?" Well, if you have not heard this statement, there are people out here trying to lose weight whose happiness is contingent on them losing 25-pounds. What the person does not tell you is they have actually lost 2, 3, 4 or even 5 pounds.

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-Being a role model to advisees

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People often ask me about the importance of mentorship - do they need a mentor? Why? How valuable is it to their career growth? On the flip side, potential mentors often have a desire to pay it forward, but want to get more out of mentoring relationships. Similarly, organizations will debate the importance of supporting informal and formal mentoring programs.

Having been on both sides of multiple mentoring relationships over the course of my career, I am a big proponent of mentorship. In an ode to one of my favorite hip-hop artists DJ Khaled, mentorship in my mind leads to this: "All we do is win, win, win!" Good for the mentee, good for the mentor and good for the entire organization.

The formal dictionary definition of a mentor is an experienced and trusted advisor. I define it as someone you can tell "the good, the bad and the ugly" to and who expects you to do the same for them in return.

The pay off? A triple win for everyone involved when mentees and mentors are able to form a relationship based on trust and honest dialogue.

Feedback is a gift, and oftentimes the feedback from mentors is the most real you will ever receive. At every job and at every juncture in my career, a formal mentor or informal peer mentor has given me the "non-sugarcoated" version of feedback I may not have received otherwise. To this day, I remember these feedback conversations as turning points in my career - where I took the feedback, put it to work and started seeing the results.

Mentors have their ear to the ground on your behalf and know your hallway reputation. As a marketer, I always think I have a sense of my own "personal brand" in the workplace. Mentors, however, have always helped me understand my blind spots.

Mentors have always led to me expanding my network both inside the company and outside its wall. Beyond the basics of affording me new knowledge to do my job better, these networks always served me well, especially early on in my career.

Being part of a mentoring duo means that you as the mentor get the inside scoop on what's working and what needs work within your organization. Open conversations with my mentees have oftentimes provided me with early warning signals of cross-functional dissonance or morale issues on teams. These discussions provided me with the opportunity to follow up and dig deeper before bigger issues could potentially arise.

Relationships with mentees have allowed me to refine my ability to develop my "plan of attack" for my direct reports and my business areas at a faster and more efficient clip. Business leaders at all levels need to assess situations and opportunities, and then provide succinct and clear feedback on action items and next steps.

Early on in my career as I became a manager of employees and functional areas, ongoing relationships and meetings with my mentees became the early training and practice ground for sharpening my "plan of attack."

At the company level, beyond the clear ways that mentorship helps to develop and grow talent across all levels of an organization, formal corporate mentoring significantly improved employee retention at the organizations I've worked. Research has also shown that two-way mentorship helps to better transmit corporate cultures and values.

So if you're thinking of becoming a mentor, seeking a mentor or starting a mentorship program at your company, do it. The wins for each are definitely worth the effort.
Dhanusha Sivajee serves as Executive Vice President, Editorial and Marketing at XO Group Inc. She previously held roles at AOL Brand Group, Bloomberg, and HBO, and received a BS in International Management from the University of Manchester, England and an MBA from Duke University.
"Shark Tank" star Daymond John mentoring an entrepreneur.

Patrick Harbron | Getty Images

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3 reasons mentorship leads to winning for all involved

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People often ask me about the importance of mentorship - do they need a mentor? Why? How valuable is it to their career growth? On the flip side, potential mentors often have a desire to pay it forward, but want to get more out of mentoring relationships.

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-I want to be able to truly be me in my position as an Academic Advisor

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-Getting to know advisees and who they are

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- Listening
- Being attentive to needs
- Consistent

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When your job hinges on how well you talk to people, you learn a lot about how to have conversations -- and that most of us don’t converse very well. Celeste Headlee has worked as a radio host for decades, and she knows the ingredients of a great conversation: Honesty, brevity, clarity and a healthy amount of listening. In this insightful talk, she shares 10 useful rules for having better conversations. “Go out, talk to people, listen to people,” she says. “And, most importantly, be prepared to be amazed.”

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-Always have fun with my advisees