Required Qualities The responsibilities of the servant leaders go beyond organizational goals and development of subordinates, responsibilities extend into all stakeholders, internal and external, towards the corporate and societal community (Peterson et al., 2012). The qualities reach into ethical and moral values of the CEO as a person and their reflection of the corporate entity (García-Sánchez et al., 2013). The movement between ethical and moral decisions transcend level of consciousness reflective of organizational and personal experiences; CEOs operate at lower levels of consciousness when engaging in decision involving self-fulfillment (Young, 2002). Therefore, one quality is for a CEO involves the development of a much wider and expanding view that moves away from any self-views on the spectrum of consciousness (Young, 2002). This is a difficult position for narcissistic leaders. Additional qualities previously researched include abilities to trust, listening, team building, sharing of vision and purpose, motivation, and delegating. These qualities become more critical the higher up the corporate ladder an individual progresses. Neglecting anyone of these qualities or attributes will eventually burn necessary bridges through negative perception of subordinates and peers. Trust and sharing vision and purpose combine aspects of interactive resources and structured network that employees rely upon to navigate corporate hurdles together (Frisina & Frisina, 2011; McLeod & Young, 2005). Servant leaders build relationships that encompasses the cooperative relationship of shared vision, shared values, and mutual goals through faithfulness and dependability (Frisina & Frisina, 2011; McLeod & Young, 2005; Rodríguez-Campos,... ... middle of paper ... ...ctice on Organizational Leaders (Doctoral dissertation, Antioch University). Smith, J., (2013, December 11). The best companies to work for in 2014. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com Washington Business Journal (2013, December 6). Most admired CEO awards 2013: Full coverage. Retrieved from http://www.bizjournals.com Yahoo Finance (2014, Apr 13). Key Statistics. Retrieved from http://finance.yahoo.com Young, J. E. (2002). A spectrum of consciousness for CEOs: A business application of Ken Wilber's Spectrum of Consciousness. The International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 10(1), 30-54. doi:10.1108/eb028943 Zona, F., Minoja, M., & Coda, V. (2013). Antecedents of corporate scandals: CEOs' personal traits, stakeholders' cohesion, managerial fraud, and imbalanced corporate strategy. Journal of Business Ethics, 113(2), 265-283. doi:10.1007/s10551-012-1294-6
Servant leadership, as defined by Kretiner and Kinkicki (2015, p.486), is putting the needs of others, including employees, customers, and community ahead of one’s own needs. This management style requires selflessness and humility from management so the organization can focus on serving key stakeholders. There are ten characteristics of a servant-leader as identified in the text
William Evan and Edward Freeman, in their essay “A Stakeholder Theory of the Modern Corporation,” argue that the objective of a company and its managers is not only to maximize profit for its owners and stockholders, but also to balance the benefits received or losses incurred by other stakeholders—employees, suppliers, customers, and the local community, all of whom may be influenced by company decisions. As the owner of MSO, your aim is ostensibly to maximize profits for yourself, but unlike most other indicted CEOs, you have not tried to obtain personal gains at the expense of the stakeholders of your enterprise. Rather, the charges that have been brought against you are for your dealings with another company; in this day and age where investors bemoan the lack of ethics of CEOs who use the power of their position in the boardroom to achieve selfish gains at the expense of their own company and its stakeholders, the charges of insider t...
Several traits and abilities contribute to the making of the servant leader and are discussed with equal importance in the essay. However there are some that seem to stand out more than others, not only as advice to leaders but also as advice in living a high quality life.
Servant leadership is a philosophy and set of practices that augments the lives of individuals, builds better organizations, and creates a more just and caring world, they put the team first, and themselves second (MindTools, 2015). Servant leaders are able to demonstrate their traits through interaction with followers and other leaders within the organization. The characteristics of servant leaders include their commitment to the growth of people, stewardship, and building community, and provide leaders with the opportunity to experience change and to invite followers to change (Savage-Austin & Honeycutt 2011). Servant leadership encourages leaders and followers to ‘raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality’, and set their leadership focus: follower’s first, organizations second, their own needs last (Sendjaya, Sarros, & Santora, 2008). The servant leader focuses on the needs of others to include team members. They acknowledge people’s perspectives, and give them the support needed to meet their goals. Servant leaders involve members when decisions are appropriate helping build a stronger commitment within the team. Strong qualities of servant leadership are trust, appreciation for others, and empowerment. Honesty and integrity form the moral foundation of effective leadership through the four values of truth telling, promise
To apply this system of moral values effectively, one must understand the structural levels at which ethical dilemmas occur, who is involved in the dilemmas, and how a particular decision will affect them. In addition, one must consider how to formulate possible courses of action. Failing in any of these three areas may lead to an ineffective decision, resulting in more pain than cure.” Ken Blanchard states, “Many leaders don’t operate ethically because they don’t understand leadership; these executives may have MBA’s from Ivey League schools or have attended leadership training; they may routinely read the best-selling management books, however, they don’t understand what it means to be a leader.” They don’t model a way of ethical behaviors.
Leading by example is the main idea. Servant leaders do not want to be in the first line and they prefer to guide their employees from a distance. They distinguish because of their personality, their behavior and their values. The only disadvantage is that in a competitive financial environment it is difficult from them to be recognized.
In 2007, famed psychologist Howard Gardner was interviewed by Fryer (2007) to discuss this topic in detail. As is common knowledge, to say that trust between corporations and the public is feigning would be an understatement with unethical behaviors being perceived as the status quo thanks to the calamity of scandal plaguing Corporate America. Howard Gardner feels that with the pressure for employees and management to succeed at all costs in today’s ultra-competitive market-place, it can be easy to lose one’s way if they do not hold what he calls the ethical mind, helping people to make morally sound choices especially in work involving entities, colleagues and society as a whole (Fryer, 2007). This also serves as the author’s definition of ethics: To make morally sound choices regardless of influence of pressures or consequence even at the risk of forced resignation or involuntary termination (Fryer,
Systematic research on leadership began in the early 1930s (House & Aditya, 1997). Researchers were interested in identifying leadership traits that might differentiate leaders from non-leaders. Despite of devoting so much effort to this area, only a few leader traits were found to be positively related to leadership effectiveness such as intelligence and Self-confidence.(Mann, 1959).After this leadership researchers turned their attention to leaders’ behavior. Two types of leadership behavior were identified in different studies (1) Initiating structure that includes task related behaviors such as organizing work, defining role responsibilities, and setting up work activities. (2) Consideration includes relationship oriented behaviors such as building trust, respect, and liking between leaders and followers. The University of Michigan group also identified two types of leadership behaviours. (1)Production orientation means that how much leader is concerned with achieving organizational goals and tasks and (2) employee orientation means that how much followers’ needs are important to leader (House & Aditya, 1997). (Song Heyi and Mao Na Guo Dan, 2007) inspect the relationship between the traits and the performance of the leader in different organizational cultures and found that in today’s dynamic world the negative traits are directly related to the performance, leaders play significant role in every organization. As the competition between the service oriented organizations is very high and continuous change is needed here and growth of these organizations where the only possibility to survive successfully is due to the effective and productive leadership. Leadership is process of social interaction where leaders try...
Introduction Through identification and ongoing assessment of her leadership style and ability, this leader is able to develop and understand her own strengths and limitations in order to grow and develop into a more effective leader. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of servant leadership, contingency, and path-goal styles of leadership to gain an understanding of current leadership models, identify this author’s style of leadership, and explore why leadership is important to organizations, society, and this author. A Personal Model of Leadership Servant leadership was a term that was first used by Keifner Greenleaf (1970) in his first essay, The Servant as Leader (as cited by Crippen, C., 2005). Greenleaf based his essay on his belief that a servant leader is a servant first, and explained that it would begin with the natural urge to serve and then the leader would make a conscious choice to become a leader, in doing so he makes the choice to ensure that others needs are met first (2005 ). As a servant leader develops he should always keep aware of those who he serves and strive to ensure that they are becoming healthier, wiser, freer, have an increase in autonomy, and become more like servants themselves (2005).
The quality of any organization that uses servant leadership improves, because of the organization’s continuous efforts on development. These efforts help create more efficient, content, empowered and innovative teams to generate more profitability (Schmidt, 2013). Starbucks’ employee satisfaction rate has increased and they have markedly grown since 2014 with their attempt to build a community by offering the free college tuition (Business Wire,
Deutschman, A. (2004, August). Inside The Mind Of Jeff Bezos. Fast Company, 85, 52-58. Retrieved from: http://www.fastcompany.com/50106/inside-mind-jeff-bezos
The first factor is level 5 leadership. A leader is the soul of the company. Base on the research, every good-to-great company had level 5 leaders during the pivotal transition years. In the book, level 5 leaders embody a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will (Collins, 2001, p.13). Darwin E. Smith is an example of lever 5 leasers. Smith transforms Kimberly-Clark into the leading paper-based consumer products company in the world within twenty years. Generated cumulative stocks return 4.1 times the general market, furthermore beating its direct rivals Procter & Gamble and Scott Paper. Level 5 leaderships’ ambition i...
Organizations are constantly tested with various moral and ethical problems and dilemmas. Organizational leaders are the key to establishing an ethical climate in the workplace. By understanding and improving their own moral reasoning, and the biases that affect moral judgment, they enable themselves to make better decisions. This has a catalytic effect that positively increases organizational climate, ultimately improving all organizational behavior.
Carroll, A. B. (1996). Business & Society: Ethics and stakeholders management. Cincinnati: South-Western College Publishing.
Melchar, David and Susan Bosco. “Achieving High Organization Performance through Servant Leadership.” The Journal of Business Inquiry 9.1 (2010):74-88. http://www.uvu.edu/woodbury/jbi/volume9/journals/achieving_high_organization_performance_through_servant_leadership.pdf