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Explain the concept of servant leadership in theory and practice
Explain the concept of servant leadership in theory and practice
Explain the concept of servant leadership in theory and practice
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Developing servant leadership
Characteristics
Once servant leaders are identified in organization they must be developed as any other employee would be. In the “Five necessary attitudes of a servant leader” the authors, Boone and Makhani explore the concept of servant leadership in terms fitting the style of an organization. Three main attitudes are vision handling, listening as hard work, and being a talent scout. Attitudes, in this article, are looked at as determinants of behavior. (Boone & Makhani, 2012) The article also takes the stance that implementing any leadership style is difficult. Servant leadership is considered for many business leaders challenging or puzzling to develop the necessary skills an attributes needed. The article
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In a 2014 article by Chan and Mak entitled “The impact of servant leadership and subordinates ' organizational tenure on trust in leader and attitudes” the authors focus on how the practice of servant leadership affects subordinate relationships. The basis with this relationship is trust with a primary impact on job satisfaction for all. The authors argue that a leader with serving behavior should serve new employees as it will result in effective and cooperative employees. (Chan & Mak, 2014) Alternatively, tenured employees may not require the heavier dose of servant leadership, but rather other leadership styles such as transactional. (Chan & Mak, …show more content…
study of the Hotel employees in relationship to servant behavior highlights many of the other advantages to servanthood discussed previously. However, the study finds that implementation of servant leadership and its outcomes are not automatically effective. (Wu et al., 2013) This is especially true for the hotel and customer service industries. To alleviate this potential barrier the authors suggest combining servant leadership with other tactics such as reward systems and setting firm expectations. In the 2011 article by Savage-Austin and Honeycutt they directly investigate the barriers to servant leadership. They conclude that the primary barrier is when the organization as whole does not adopt servant leadership as it is much more difficult to introduce in pockets. (Savage-Austin & Honeycutt, 2011) Secondly, servant leadership requires both the leader and the follower to be invested in this style of leadership. (Savage-Austin & Honeycutt, 2011) The study also focused on for profit organizations as potential barriers tend to me more prevalent. It is also stated that implementation of servant leadership typically leads to change for an organization and change carries its own set of
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
Most cultures I find relate in many ways. They all display characteristics of servant leadership. I discovered that the Indian culture holds one to moral and ethics within the culture and religion. In a mirror image of Christians, Indians believe that your destiny is base off the seeds one sows while here on earth. The Indian culture does not recognize their beliefs and morals as servant leadership and have a different way of presenting the concept. One of the ways that one will find that servant leadership is presented different is in their religious practice of Hindu. Over all the Indian culture diverse context and religion
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.
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.
Servant leadership is becoming a more “sought-after” concept in today’s society, but what exactly is servant leadership? Does it mean different things to different people? Although the three books, The Servant as Leader, The Servant, and Lead Like Jesus, all center around servant leadership, each author takes a different perspective on the meaning of being a servant leader. Robert Greenleaf addresses leadership from a straight-forward stance; saying that a good leader must be a servant-first by finding the will within themselves to put the needs of their group before their own. James Hunter discusses servant leadership through a story involving everyday people that the reader can relate to. He uses Jesus as a guide to explain how to initiate character development that will, in turn, fashion servant leadership. Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges offer a new perspective on servant leadership by bringing Jesus into the picture on an even deeper level than Hunter. They explain that by knowing Jesus Christ and developing an intimate personal
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
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.
Many leadership styles exist. The determining factor if a leadership style is effective or not is often how it is carried out and if it is appeasing to those, the leader is attempting to lead. One of the leadership styles that has become popular is Servant leadership. Although Greenleaf developed servant leadership more than thirty-five years ago and he identified ten characteristics that pertain to servant leadership. (book p. 56) Servant leadership has been successful in various industries and its popularity continues to increase.
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,
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,...
Many people want to attain and hold influential positions in society whether it would be in the field of science, politics, education, or in public service. However, many people tend to forget how servitude is one of the main life highways to travel in order to arrive at that successful destination called “Leadership.” Nevertheless, there was one man who knew how powerful the concept of servitude was in order to grasp the reigns of successful leadership. Socrates was a phenomenal philosopher, scholar, teacher, and servant. Socrates leadership style was unique in regards to letting students communicate among one another in an articulate theological reasoning process by questioning and probing at one’s belief system in order to seek self-purification.
Further, the audio lectures explained the idea of having a loving fulfillment in our actions and wanting to perform our duty- hesed (Fischer, 2009). Mutual accountability for the leader and follower anchors the concept of servant leadership. In fact, inputs from the biblical perspective of love and justice in a covenantal context affect the outputs of our organizational impact in how we treat each other and the expectations of the agency (Fischer, 2009). As leaders, we look for mindsets focused on intrinsic motivations but not in a self-serving capacity as explained by the actions of the captains. Indeed, servant leaders have a desire for power to mentor and encourage positive relationships and creating an organizational culture which places others first.