Review for Journal of Management A Study of Servant Leadership and its Synthesis Serving is being selfless, meaning that lifting others is the only way for a servant leader to rise. Servant leaders are unique, they serve before they lead and they work on building strong relationships for a better work environment. As Greenleaf published in 1970 " it all begins with the natural feeling that one want to serve, to serve first. Then the conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead". According to a journal published by Dirk van Dierendonck (Dierendonck, 2011) , the concept of a servant leader is giving up all the usual leadership powers and gaining the support of the employees. By that the leader will have much more reliable team to work with. …show more content…
As Dierendonck stated in his journal " the power lies in the hands of the followers". Servant leaders tend to be distinguished by the general attitude toward the people, they treat each individual with respect and they care about their team. With such a charisma their goal is to influence followers to grow and become successful. A clear definition for servant leadership is still inaccurate, but there are many characteristics that makes it different from any other type of leadership. (Dierendonck,2011) journal listed many of those characteristics that were collected from different writers. Some of those are: Listening: it emphasize the importance of communication and seeking to identify the will of the people Empathy: understanding others and accepting how and what they are. Healing:the ability to help make a whole Persuasion: seeking to influence others relying on arguments not on positional power Building community: emphasizing the local communities are essential in a persons' life. And according to what he published, servant leadership is about virtues. It describes the person's attitude toward excellence, this theory can be traced back to the ancient Greek. This type of leadership always aims to build self-confidence among followers, which motivate their powers and help them achieve their goals. In (Dierendonck, 2011) journal, he included a model that shows how servant leaders are made (Figure 1) it is a six key characteristic that gives a good overview of servant leadership behavior as experienced by followers. The model explains how the leaders develop people and accept them for who they are. Servant leaders also provides direction and steps towards success. Image Empowering leadership includes aspects like coaching for a better performance and sharing information to come up with decisions. Servant leaders recognize each individual performance and acknowledge it. Based on what Dierendonck published in (Dierendonck, 2011) "it is all about recognition." The second characteristic is Humility. It is when Servant leaders admits that they benefit from the expertise of others and they will give the credit to whoever successfully accomplished the task. Servant leaders also have the Authenticity character.
They like to express their feeling and inner thoughts to everyone, they gain trust from their followers which makes them stronger. Interpersonal acceptance is one of the most important characteristics that servant leaders have. It is the ability to experience the feelings of others and the ability to let go of things and not carry a grudge into other things. Providing direction for Servant leaders does not mean telling followers what to do, but providing the right degree of accountability. Dierendonck explained in his (Dierendonck, 2011) " A servant leader takes on providing direction is to make work dynamic based on followers abilities, needs, and input" Servant leaders are willing to take responsibility and go to service instead of just controlling. It is the Stewardship character that servant leaders have. To compare Servant leadership with other types of leaderships, Dierendonck discussed in ( Dierendonck, 2011) many other leaderships types. None of them had the character that servant leadership had, the one that stood out was true-self. Servant leaders will show humility by acknowledging that they do not have all the answers, and by that they create a working environment where followers feel trusted. It is the relationships with the followers that build the leader. Servant leadership has a unique position as none of any other type of leadership puts all six characters …show more content…
together. The operational of servant leadership behavior couldn’t be studied as there was no reliable instruments to use.
Many have tried as Dierendonck explained in (Dierendonck, 2011) but regretfully there was no accurate results to relate to. Because of the six characters in servant leadership they were only able to test one or two dimension of each of the six characters at a time. In (Table 1 & Table 2) it will be clear how all the studies did not give reliable data. ImageImage The need to serve combined with a motivation to lead is the base of servant leader. Self determination has been positioned as an essential condition to be able to act as a servant leader (Dierendonck, 2009). It is expected that the power comes with a leadership position is used to provide others with the opportunity to become self-determined. servant leadership is also based on culture, countries with strong human orientation tend to have more servant leaders. As it is common for citizens to serve. At the core of the relationship between the servant-leader and the follower stands the leader's belief in the value of each individual. Without a strong relationship between the leader and the follower, there will be no such thing as servant-leader. Servant leadership recognize the value of the relationship and people follow servant leader voluntarily. The empowering and developmental behaviors shown by
servant.
There has been a bit of research done on the nature of servant leadership. The belief is that many organizations are moving from the traditional style of leadership to a more servant based style. Larry C. Spears (2010) and Kent Keith (2016) note a few characteristics of one who is a servant leader. The characteristics proposed by Spears (2010) are listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to others growth, and community building. These traits will often manifest naturally becoming more enriched as time goes by through experience. Keith (2016) references only four elements of servant leadership. He begins with an element of morality, then of the servant focus, concern for others’
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
To be a servant leader you have to have certain qualities. Not only have the qualities but
The importance of servant leadership should not be underestimated and it can be simplified and embodied in one timeless phrase: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When applied to leadership the result can be phenomenal. Those who wish to serve do so with their hearts, it is not forced nor is it with resentment. The servant leader serves out of acceptance and ownership of their ability and duty.
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.
Integrity and servant-leadership are a huge part of being a leader. A leader needs integrity because this is a huge part of being dependable and trustworthy. An example of integrity is when a leader says they are going to do something, then they actually follow through with what they said. A leader with integrity will be consistent in all of his/her actions. Their values and principles will match what their methods are. Being a servant-leader means that the leader does not see themselves as being too good to do the tasks they ask of their followers. A servant-leader will do the task even if it seems below them. An example of a leader is a nurse. A nurse is a leader to a certified nursing assistant (CNA). A nurse can be a servant-leader by bathing a patient and changing the bedding, even though this is usually the job of a CNA, this nurse did not see themselves as too good to do some "dirty" work. A leader is willing to help out and follow through. Both of these characteristics help the followers trust the leader. This also helps build a firm foundation for a good relationship between the leader and the followers.
What is a servant leader? A servant leader is a individual that wants to serve first and is selfless. “The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.” (Keith) A servant leader can be anyone in a group setting from a work place, education, religion and cultures. Jesus was a servant leader. He was selfless he died on the cross for our sins. He was selfless and while here on earth was always helping people and teaching the way of the lord.
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 can be thought of as an inverted triangle where the leader is supporting the organization at the point. As a result of this leadership style, leaders are more in tune with their teams. They have more insight on their team and the inner workings of their organizations.
A servant leader is someone, regardless of level, who leads simply by meeting the needs of the team.
Servant leaders are servants first, have a genuine want to serve others, and ultimately make a conscious decision to lead others (Greenleaf, Senge, Covey, & Spears, 2002)Click and drag to move. Servant leadership is based upon twelve unique principles that ultimately improve the wellbeing of the followers and the community (Greenleaf et al., 2002)Click and drag to move. Many great leaders utilize a multitude of these principles to help motivate, influence, and lead others. Individuals that exhibit servant leadership qualities, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., possess skills and qualities that help motivate others and driven by a sense of a higher calling (Northouse, 2016)Click and drag to move.
The modern use of the term servant leader derives from the act of servant leadership which has been around for many ages, but was made a final common phrase when Robert K. Greenleaf wrote his essay called "The Servant as Leader". Robert used this term to represent someone who has a natural feeling to serve others as well as someone who aspires to lead. People can now use the philosophy of leadership to try and pinpoint characteristics and behaviors that can further determine if someone should be named a servant leader. Individuals who are called to represent themselves as servant leaders better the world by setting a positive impression on young children who are growing up in a society where they are only expected to take care of themselves.
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).
Servant leadership can be described as the ability of serving other people, placing the collective objectives before one’s objectives and working hand in hand with your followers so as to achieve them. This type of leadership involves empowering and inspiring people as they work to achieve the set collective goals. Nelson Mandela adopted the servant leadership role in that he placed the need of the citizens before his own. While he was in jail, his desire to be free was overcome by the need for all the citizens to be free. Therefore, Mandela worked very hard to ensure that the South Africa citizens became free, and the apartheid rule that was oppressing them was abolished. Despite his imprisonment, he continued to encourage the people they had been imprisoned together through his courage. That is because he knew that his citizens needed a leader like him so that they could be
Servant Leadership means to serve others and to lead. It puts everyone else first teaching to put others before yourself, with this leading qualities emerge. Just being or having leadership qualities doesn’t always work. Most leadership models show possessive towards the better for themselves, some work out while others don’t, mostly I think because the unwillingness to see others before yourself is a hard concept for some to understand and use. You can be a great leader but if you don’t understand servant qualities or serve for the benefit of others your probley not much liked. Most I don’t think know what Servant Leadership is or means, I didn’t until this course opened it up to me.