The Importance Of Servant Leadership

To be a leader, one must posses leadership however, to describe leadership, much like any other human trait, it is a difficult task. For much of human history scholars and leaders have discussed what is leadership and what makes a great leader. However it is difficult to compare one leader 's accomplishments to another because every generation has their different struggles. Without comparing different leaders, to define what leadership is first you must examine who can be a leader.

Every individual strives to be a leader, and thus every individual can be a leader. However, not every person can be an effective leader. An effective leader shows leadership through multiple individual characteristics which collectively become their style of leadership.

Leadership is a position of power, and given a certain level of respect. Therefore; a leader can not always relinquish their command to someone below them. Every person has the capability to be a leader, yet not every person can not be a leader at the same time. It is an important characteristic of all leaders to is to recognise higher authority, and thus “A leader leads by example, not by force.” (Stone, Russell, Patterson, 2004) Servant leadership shares all that same characteristics of other forms of leadership, but don 't have an issue with command structures. This issue is solved because all the followers and the leader have the same goal of service to the servant. An effective servant leader shares the power and allows for growth of the people being served. The characteristics that make a person 's form of leadership more like servant leadership include, the ten which Larry Spears compiled from Robert Greenliefs philosophy. The greater emphasis on: Awareness, listening, building the community and most importantly Foresight, separate a servant leader and other styles of leadership. I believe these traits take the leadership beyond the leader and allow the collective team to focus on the greater task, and effectively serve

I understand that leadership, a positions of power and rank must be respected, but whenever availed if the leader can take some characteristics of a servant leader they will create a better following. I quotes Sun Tzu earlier saying “A leader leads by example, not by force.” (Stone, Russell, Patterson, 2004), and Tom Peter explained that ”Sun Tzu Leaders don 't create followers, they create more leaders.” (Stone, Russell, Patterson, 2004) I believe that this is very relevant in servant leadership. With this thought, servant leadership is the most effective form of leadership to create more leaders who have a passion for what they do and want to continue working for a cause rather that a rank. “Successful corporations don’t wait for leaders to come along. They actively seek out people with leadership potential and expose them to career experiences designed to develop that potential.” (Kotter, 2001, p.