Once at a TED talk, Patrick Awuah delivered a speech on “How to educate leaders?” this talk opened my mind to many issues concerning leadership. He exposed the blind spot of leadership that most leaders find difficult to see or sometimes just ignore it due to many unnecessary reasons. In this paper, I will discussing the role of leaders as guardians of society, servants of society and all the issues associated with the topic with pragmatic examples.
‘Every right implies a responsibility; Every opportunity, an obligation, Every possession, a duty.’
John D. Rockefeller
In this context, what John Rockefeller said is in consensus with what Patrick Awuah aimed at communicating during his speech. When he gave the example of the his friend who worked in a hospital that experienced power cuts during surgeries; he blamed the power cuts on the heads of the health sector and the government, that they fail to see the responsibilities they have. In my own words, what he meant was that with any little responsibility there is some kind of expectation unconsciously that one is to know. Everyone can be a leader, but to be a great leader, one has a responsibility.
“The price of greatness is responsibility.”
Sir Winston Churchill
To be a servant and a guardian are in some way concomitant. In the sense that, being a servant requires you to be a guardian to some extent. When you are a child your house help serves as your guardian and servant and also your parents are your guardians and servants, giving you everything want. Being a guardian to humanity as a Leader entails guarding management, goals and followers. Guarding management is protecting the goals of your clan, this can be done by working to bring the organization's core principles into exis...
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The Servant Leader discusses the importance of leaders who adopt a service oriented attitude in which they care for the needs of others before their own. A servant leader need not be an actual servant or have ever been a servant to become a servant leader. Rather, a servant leader is born with or adopts an “others first” disposition. Climbing through the ranks may help to create a servant leader, though it is not necessary. When leaders choose to see that the needs of their followers or their organizations are the highest priority they become servants.
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.
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Servant-leadership is a way of life that evolves and matures with the passage of time. This way of life transforms spiritual people, with strong and stable emotions, into someone who has a deep understanding of truth and the world around them.
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3). Through the service of others, servants as leaders create positive changes in the lives of others that lead those served to act more autonomously (Block, Blanchard, Wheatley & Autry, 2006). The goal of a service leader is to help others achieve their highest level of functioning. Those served are then motivated to become service leaders as well (Block, Blanchard, Wheatley & Autry, 2006). Thus, servant leadership focuses on commitment to helping the individual served grow in their abilities. In turn this gives the served individual confidence in their work and personal abilities which then transforms into a desire to help others do the
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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 autonomous, and are become more like servants themselves (2005). Leaders and organizations can use the principles of servant leadership to frame decisions, and service that include focus on the community, care of others and quality services (Waterman, R., 2011). Watermen states that working to higher purpose increases standards, integrity and should lead the followers through supports, shared visions and bring followers together in toward a common purpose to provide service to others.
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Leaders is an effective tool for summarizing and inspiring leadership, not in that it teaches tough strategies and manipulations, but that when looking at an overview of its content, Bennis and Nanus are essentially teaching human relations and human decency. All in all, this book highlights strategies for us all to be better in our lives and our everyday interactions.
Even though our world is constantly changing as shown in the video, “Did You Know?”, the way our leaders lead has been fairly constant. The traits and qualities past leaders such as Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King had are the same traits the leaders we look up to today have. Good leaders are aware of our continuously shifting world and have learned to adapt to what works best for those around them. The book, Learning as a Way of Being, discusses how as leaders we must be prepared for the changes that are constantly occurring in our society. We need to always be open to learning new things and how to best adapt to the environment around us. The more experiences we deal with in the past, the more prepared we will be for the changes in the future.
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