Bernie Borges [00:00:00]:
Have you ever felt like servant leadership is actually just another way of saying that you do everyone else’s work, you’re trying to be the good leader, you’re supporting the team, you’re removing obstacles, but somehow you’ve ended up over functioning, rescuing people and carrying the emotional weight of the entire organization. You know, I call this the doormat syndrome. It happens when you have a powerful engine but no steering wheel. In this video, I’m going to show you why servant leadership alone is dangerous and how authentic leadership is the missing piece that prevents you from burning out. Hi, I’m Bernie Borges and I’m the founder of Fulfilled at Work Academy. Here’s the problem that most CEOs and leaders face. We’re told that to build trust, we must serve. And that’s true.
Bernie Borges [00:01:02]:
But if you serve without boundaries, you don’t build trust, you build dependency. So I’m going to repackage two concepts that are often confused. Servant leadership. Think of this as the engine. It provides the power, the lift and the energy. And authentic leadership. This is a steering wheel. It provides the direction, the boundaries and the.
Bernie Borges [00:01:29]:
No. If you have the engine without the steering wheel, you’re going to crash. I learned this the hard way. Not in the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company, but of all places, in a high school board chair role. Let me take you back a few years. It’s 11pm and I’m sitting at my kitchen table staring at a spreadsheet and a stack of event planning documents. My eyes are blurry. I’m frustrated and actually I’m angry.
Bernie Borges [00:02:03]:
But I’m not angry at my employees. I’m angry at myself. You see, at the time, I was the board chair for a high school business academy. Now this was a volunteer role. My job was to lead a board of about 10 parents and partner with the teachers to help students learn vital business skills. Hey, a worthy cause. I had taken the role because I wanted to serve. When the county executive asked me, I remember the conversation.
Bernie Borges [00:02:34]:
He asked me to take the chair position and he gave me this pitch. He said, bernie, your role is to provide inspiration, gratitude and oversight. I thought, great, I can do that. I’ll be the ultimate servant leader. Fast forward to that night at 11pm at my kitchen table. We had a major initiative that was due and one of the board members, let’s call him Bob, had committed to delivering the data that I was currently staring at. Now, Bob was a volunteer, like all of us on the board. And Bob was busy, like all of us on the board.
Bernie Borges [00:03:17]:
But Bob didn’t get it done. Now here’s where the doormat syndrome kicked in. Because I viewed myself strictly as a servant leader. I told myself, well, Bob’s a volunteer, so I can’t demand things from him. I need to be understanding. I need to remove obstacles. The servant thing to do is to pick up the slack so that the team doesn’t fail. Sound familiar? Anyway, there I was at my kitchen table at 11pm Doing Bob’s work.
Bernie Borges [00:03:52]:
I wasn’t leading, I was rescuing. At the time, I thought I was being noble, but actually I was robbing Bob of his accountability and I was robbing myself of peace. I see this with CEOs constantly. You hire a VP, they struggle, you step into help. Two months later you’re doing their job. And your job, why? Because you have the engine, the desire to help, but you lack the steering wheel, which is the authenticity to hold the line. So let’s break this down, because understanding the distinction is the only way to escape the doormat syndrome. Servant leadership is the engine.
Bernie Borges [00:04:46]:
It’s about listening, coaching, empowering ownership, treating authority as stewardship, not status. In my story, the engine was me caring about the mission of the business Academy. I wanted the students to succeed. Of course, that drive is essential. Without it, you’re just a bureaucrat. But here’s the catch. An engine without a steering wheel just drives fast in the wrong direction. Authentic leadership is the steering wheel.
Bernie Borges [00:05:21]:
It’s about self awareness, knowing your values, and most importantly, integrity. Now, integrity is not just about not lying. Integrity is being the same person in every situation. It’s having the courage to say, this is the standard. And we missed the standard. We need to talk about that. If I had applied authentic leadership that night with the board, the conversation would have looked very different. Instead of silently doing the work, I would have called Bob.
Bernie Borges [00:05:58]:
I would have said, bob, I value your contribution. That’s being a servant. But you committed to this and you didn’t deliver. That’s because being authentic and I can’t do this for you because that hurts the board’s integrity. So how do you want to handle this? See the difference? Servant leadership says, I care about you. Authentic leadership says I respect you enough to be honest with you. I want you to visualize this matrix. Quadrant one is low servant, low authentic.
Bernie Borges [00:06:39]:
This is the absentee leader. They don’t care about the people and they stand for nothing. The culture here is apathy. Quadrant 2 is low servant and high authentic. This is the tyrant or the ego leader. They’re very authentic. They tell you exactly what they think, but it’s all about them. It’s my way or the highway.
Bernie Borges [00:07:04]:
They have a steering wheel but no engine to lift others up. Quadrant 3 is high servant low authentic. This is the doormat or the rescuer. This was me at that kitchen table at 11pm on a Tuesday night. You care so much about being nice or supportive that you sacrifice standards and your own well being. You create a culture of entitlement because there are no consequences. Quadrant 4 is High Servant high authentic. This is fulfilled leadership.
Bernie Borges [00:07:43]:
This is where you have the engine and the steering wheel. You care deeply about people, but you care enough to hold them to a standard of excellence. You don’t rescue them, you challenge them to perform. So how do you move from being a rescuer to a fulfilled leader? How do you install that steering wheel? Well, it starts with one self awareness. It’s actually two words, but you get the point. A Harvard study reports that only 15% of people are sufficiently self aware. That means 85% of us are fooling ourselves. So if you want to stop being a doormat, you have to audit your yes.
Bernie Borges [00:08:30]:
Next time you’re about to step in and save a team member or take on a monkey that belongs on someone else’s back, pause and ask yourself, am I doing this to serve the mission or am I doing this because I’m afraid of the uncomfortable conversation that comes with holding someone accountable. Authentic leadership requires you to be comfortable with the discomfort. It means looking a volunteer or a VP in the eye and saying, I can’t accept this work because it doesn’t meet the standard that we agreed on. That doesn’t mean that is leading. We need your heart. We need your servant mindset. The world has enough ego driven leaders, but your team doesn’t need a savior. They need a leader.
Bernie Borges [00:09:18]:
They need someone who loves them enough to tell them the truth and respects them enough to let them carry their own load. Servant leadership is the engine. Authentic leadership is the steering wheel. Put them together and you get fulfillment for you and for your people. I’m Bernie Borges, your fulfillment architect. And if you recognize yourself in the doormat story today, do me a favor. Drop a comment below with the word steering wheel. It’ll be our code that you’re ready to take control back.
Bernie Borges [00:09:56]:
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