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Personal experience of volunteering
Personal experience of volunteering
Community role and function
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A servant leader is a person who makes serving a priority in their life. I grew up volunteering in my community on a regular basis; however, it wasn’t until college that I was able to understand the impact of serving your community. Thanksgiving, my dad a law enforcement officer would volunteer at restaurants serving the homeless so service has always been a part of my life. With that being said, there is a huge difference between being forced to do community service and wanting to serve your community. A lot of times we become so consumed with ourselves and our egos that we forget about those who helped formed who we are today. As humans, we should strive to work and exist together at equilibrium. This year my honor society, Phi Theta Kappa, and I participated in the Martin Luther King Day of Service Project. This project offered awards to organizations that positively impact the community. In addition, the project honored Dr. King’s legacies of non-violent activism, racial equality, service to others and social uplift. This was a 10-week project in which we served our community for eight weeks. Although I’ve participated in this project for …show more content…
Two years ago, I worked at this very school as an employee of the Healthy Out-of-School Time (HOST) program. This was an out-of-school time program that empowered students to develop in a safe, caring, and educationally rich environment. Seeing the students I taught my first semester of college, who essentially helped me want to serve my community two years later; made me realize the true definition of a servant leader. I was honored to come back to the place that served me when I was in need. From here, I was able to sow a new seed into those very students. Anyone can do community service, write down the hours and get a signature but a servant leader is a person who makes serving a priority in their
Servant leadership is a designation coined by Robert Greenleaf in 1970 in an essay entitled The Servant as Leader. In this essay, he describes the servant leader and a servant first contrary to one who is a leader first. The difference is the servant chooses to put others needs before his own while the leader first may later become a servant from the promptings of a sense of right and wrong or simply because they are coerced in that direction (Greenleaf, 1991).
Growing up, my parents and other influential figures around me modelled the importance of community service through their continual volunteer work and dedication to improving the world around them. Whether it be participation in a well-attended project or persistent contribution to a helpful organization, those aforementioned individuals were formative in guiding me towards a path filled with opportunities for having an impact on my community.
Serving for the community and the school without compensation or recognition is a defining characteristic of the National Honor Society. I believe that I provide plenteous hours of service to my school and community. In my school, I am a member of Interact Club- a club that encourages volunteer work regarding the school and the community. I have participated in many Interact activities such as Make a Difference Day- cleaning trash at the Wildlife Refuge, Martin Luther King Day at Stockton University- helping organizations such as Circle K, and Project Green- cleaning trash and planting at the Atlantic City beach. In addition to these activities, I have volunteered at Seashore Gardens over the summer before my junior year. There, I was able to engage and interact with the elderly by coloring with them, distributing their lunches, and getting to know them. During my first day volunteering there, I had made a friend instantly as we bonded over gossiping and each other’s daytime activities. It was definitely an experience I will never forget. In addition, I volunteered my time by bagging groceries at ShopRite and washing cars to help fundraise for the Absegami girls soccer team as well as making Valentine's Day cards for the elderly, decorating classroom doors for Christmas, and helping my class with a cookie fundraiser. Helping the environment, aiding the elderly, bagging groceries, helping my class, and being
Primary service is the key. Many view this as a contradiction because the leader is leading and serving. How can a person do both? Good servant leaders are good listeners. The communication between the leader and the follower being served allows the leader to listen to the follower first, in order to understand what the other person has to say and to understand their needs. These leaders practice empathy as well. Understanding what the follower is facing or feeling is comforting to the follower because it validates their importance to another person. The ability to heal a person through care and the concern for a person’s well being is another quality of a servant leader. These are only a few of the characteristics that generate a strong servant leader. Mother Teresa said, “The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.” Her words describe exactly what servant leaders do. Servant leaders serve others willingly because they find joy and pleasure in doing so. The outcome of serving others in this manner is growth and social impacts for a greater good. When there is an improvement in self-actualization, followers improve in their goal reaching or task completion by understanding their full potential to do
Servant leadership consists of leaders helping their followers become leaders themselves. The use personal skills such as empathy, compassion and listening to help their followers succeed. It is not necessarily the most popular form of leadership but, it has been proven successful b those leaders who implement it in their work practices. Servant leaders typically have a strong bond with their team. They are the base and the foundation of their teams.
Robert Greenleaf defines a servant leader as someone who “is a servant first” (1). This means that the person is helping others before he helps himself or herself. He created the term to explain a person who is in a leadership position but makes “sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served” (Greenleaf 1). President John F. Kennedy, in his speech Ich bin Ein Berliner, demonstrated qualities of being a servant leader by using his power for the greater good. To understand this, one must know the events that led up to the speech, and the reasons why he gave the speech.
Servant leadership is an approach that goes against most leadership styles because it has the lead being the servant to their followers. This style of leadership wants the leader to be focused on the needs of their followers, empower their followers, and help realize their full capabilities.
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
Servant leaders are willing to take responsibility and go to service instead of just controlling. It is the Stewardship character that servant leaders have.
People’s lives are changed every day by their actions and experiences. This past summer, I participated in a community service project, an experience that opened my eyes in many ways. I was a volunteer at the County Memorial Hospital. In my time as a volunteer at the hospital, I was able to meet patients and staff members from all over the world and learn about their life experiences. Listening to all of their stories has made me truly appreciate everything which I have.
Servant Leadership, found in Chapter Ten of the text Leadership: Theory and Practice, is a paradoxical approach to leadership. It begins with the innate desire to serve first, and then lead through servant hood. Servant Leadership, originating in the early 1970s, is similar to the skills and styles approach, focusing on leadership from the leader’s viewpoint and his behavior under the leadership. Under this style of leadership, the leaders are considerate of the followers needs, empathizing with and having compassion for the followers. A servant leader feels a social responsibility to the less privileged and is concerned with inequality among the followers. Through servant leadership, a servant leader will attempt to correct these social injustices and by enabling and empowering the followers while helping the followers in developing valuable personal skills. Servant leaders are ethical, projecting strong moral behavior towards the followers, taking leadership paths that serve the greater good of an organization, the community and even society as a whole.
In order to be a servant leader, one needs to develop and know their inner characteristics. It is the inner qualities of the person that determine the quality of his or her performance (Page and Wong, 2000). At the heart of these characteristics should be a genuine desire to serve others for the common good. These leaders will motivate followers through investing in them and empowering them to do their best (Page and Wong, 2000). There are several characteristics that one can have. In The Servant, James C. Hunter lists the characteristics of patience, kindness, humility, respectfulness, selflessness, forgiveness, honesty, and commitment (pg. 24). Another set of characteristics are given by Spears (2010), these are listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community (pg. 27-29). Out of these characteristics there are more that can probably be named. Looking at these, the three key characteristics are patience, humility, and selflessness. These three can be used to not only achieve a good balance but also achieve all of the
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.
I’ve always known to be the best follower but not necessarily a leader. Prior taking this course, my philosophy of leadership was anyone who is in charge of a group in order to give out instructions or order. This type of leadership has been adopted by various cultures around the world for centuries. Thank to new emerging leadership styles such as contemporary, followers actually have the opportunity to voice their opinion. I’m hoping to learn new skills that will eventually help me in the professional realm and as well as my community. I found servant leadership to be the most important type of leadership. Komives, Lucas, and McMahon (1998) mentioned that people who dedicate themselves to building communities so they become better places for others (p.170). This is the type of leader I’m striving to
A community leader expands their collective experience, skills and energy to drive positive social change and enable their communities to thrive. Throughout elementary school and high school, I engaged in school clubs and special classes, volunteered in my community, took on leading roles for fundraising and acquired many jobs. I have become a leader in my community because of references from jobs or activities, connections with other leaders and by achieving high academic grades and excelling in sports, I have chosen to share my abilities with others and proceed to make a change.