The real meaning of stewardship

Long ago, a wealthy farmer was leaving on a long journey. His business was successful and increasingly so. And there was the problem.

In his absence, who was going to take care of his affairs? He saw an opportunity. He gathered a few of his most trusted employees. He told them that while he was gone property would need to be sold, and maybe bought as well. Of course, there was the income from the crops to manage as it came in.He gave each one the responsibility to manage a piece of the farm while he was gone.

This was a great opportunity to ensure the farm was taken care of, as well as see which of these employees was ready for even more responsibility and leadership.

What happened next?

Maybe you already recognized this thinly veiled adaptation of the Parable of the Talents from Matthew 25. And maybe you recall the outcome.

2 employees were wildly successful and doubled the assets they were responsible for. The third decided to dig a hole and bury the money he was to manage.

It is far beyond my capability to draw out the religious implications of this parable. Instead I'd like to focus on the practical. The obvious conclusion is that two people were good "stewards" of the assets, 1 was not.

People love to talk about stewardship. There is a sense of nobility and inspiration associated with the idea of being a steward.

But, there is a dark side as well - stewardship being used as a tool of manipulation. Far too often, stewardship means "I want you to behave in a certain way, my way.”

The implication being that if you fail to do so, you aren't being a good steward, and have failed morally. Heavy stuff.

There is a sense that if being a steward isn’t painful, then you probably aren’t doing it right. It is a heavy weight to bear and an often near impossible ideal to attain.

But is that what stewardship really means?

Per Meriam-Webster, steward is a term that emerged in the Middle Ages to describe the manager in a large household. It is only in recent history that the term has developed the connotation of “carefully and responsible management.”

It is a term of vocation describing a role played, not a moral judgement.

In Towards a Stewardship Theory of Management, one of the earliest academic papers on the subject, Davis, Schoorman and Donaldson contrast stewardship with agency theory.

Agency theory is the dominate theory describing how and why people act. It assumes that people will act to maximize their self interest. In today's world, owners of a business may not be managers any more. This gap between owner and manager creates a risk that the manager may do things in their own self interest, not necessarily for the corporation’s good.

The solution to this problem has been governance to manage and police this.

Stewardship theory posits a different posture. People who are behaving as stewards behave in such a way that the interests of the organization seemingly supersede their own. But importantly as Davis et al highlight "the steward realizes that the trade-off between personal needs and organizational objectives and believes that by working toward organizational, collective ends, personal needs are met."

Do not miss this key academic insight. Stewardship is not a denial of self-interest. Instead, it is an alignment of self-interest with the greater good.

By taking care of the organization, the steward believes that their personal needs will be met.

A simple understanding of stewardship is that it is the opposite of being selfish. Selfish people only pursue what is in their best interest to the exclusion of everything else. Stewards pursue something else, self-interest be damned.

But this is an incomplete definition of stewardship. Good stewards align and embed their self-interest in the greater good.

So, how do you find these good stewards?

Finding these sorts of people is first and foremost a question of alignment. Can the person you are speaking with align themselves with the direction of the organization so that they feel comfortable not having to focus entirely on their own needs?

This requires an uncommon level of transparency on both sides - between the person about their own goals and the organization about theirs. It is about determining whether these mutual goals can be harmonized or not.

Second, with stewards, governance must shift its focus.

Instead of policing bad behavior, boards must proactively ensure that they are taking care of their people. If the stewards are aligning themselves and are risking not being only self-focused, someone must be thinking on their behalf.

Boards should stop discussing how much they can get for how little. They must consider what are the right rewards for an effort delivered.

This requires proactive policies regarding compensation, data gathering about industry average compensation levels, and designing incentive programs that reward the steward when the job is done well.

Getting this right is a massive opportunity.

Finding good stewards is finding people who are / can be so aligned with the direction of the organization that they feel comfortable with de-emphasizing their own-personal needs. When this alignment is in place, you free individuals from the crushing pressures of maximizing self-interest and allow them to actual focus on making an impact.

Done rightly, this can generate a tremendous amount of creativity and leadership.