Servant Leadership Weaknesses Essay

Three Leadership Weaknesses

I have identified three leadership weaknesses of Carl Cooke: competence, listening, and visibility. These weaknesses can lead to poor team cohesiveness and trust, and overall this typically hurts the organization as a whole.

The first weakness, competence, is described as a servant leadership attribute which helps to build trust. (Russell & Stone, 2002) The trust between a leader and followers is partially formed from the followers having confidence in the leader’s abilities and judgement. (Greenleaf, 1970) Carl, unfortunately, suffers in this area. He would often stumble on common office-related tasks such as setting appointments in Outlook, generating reports for the business, and explaining the basic fundamentals

The first recommendation is to attend PLM and Microsoft Office trainings. This relates to the servant leadership theory, because the competence of the leader plays an important role in building trust between the leader and followers. (Russell & Stone, 2002) Being that our organization participates in S.M.A.R.T. goal setting, this would provide an excellent opportunity for setting a goal, such as “to attend and successfully pass 24 credit-hours of PLM & Office training within the calendar year.” With an increased knowledge in PLM and Office tools, I expect that the department would have more confidence in Carl’s abilities and competence. This would lead to better communication between the department and engineering, when discussing technical topics, and Carl would be able to confidently relay department information to upper

While the easiest recommendation would be to simply say “meet with the team more often,” this is not a viable recommendation because it lacks accountability. Rather, I would suggest that Carl appoint one of the more expert and experienced members on the team to accompany him when attending management and engineering meetings. This would provide a second person to caution against moving forward with project criteria to which the team cannot adhere. After these meetings, the Engineering Services department would meet to brainstorm ideas, without fear that the direction has already been decided. This recommendation is more complex than others, but I think following this would strengthen the team considerably. Within the article Identifying Primary Characteristics of Servant Leadership: Delphi Study, Adam Focht & Michael Ponton suggest that servant leaders are “willing to listen because they truly want to learn from others; to understand follower/associates, they have to listen deeply.” (2015, p. 50) Without listening to followers, a leader falls short of being a servant leader, for listening is crucial to building trust and respect among the