Corporate leadership
Name
Institution Affiliation
Corporate leadership
The nature of servant leadership
A servant leader is someone who was first a servant and later became a leader. It all starts from one starting to get a feeling to serve hence making them aspire to lead. It is said that for one to become a great leader, they must be servants first (G., 2020). In servant leadership, one needs to be willing to support and uphold the idea of individual sacrifice to meet the needs of other people to enable them to achieve their potentials. It requires one to able to go beyond the required effort and collaborate to make something that does not have a direct impact that benefits them (Zentner, 2015). Servant leadership is exceptional in a way that enriches the lives of people, helps build exceptional and better organizations, and create a world full of care and justice. The concept of servant leadership and the term has been there since the 1970s when Robert K. Greenleaf decided to publish an essay which was talking about a servant being a leader.
The importance
Servant leadership is important in institutions because and every leader should consider adopting it. It helps in empowering teams since leaders focus on putting their members first as the carry out their duties to meet the overall objectives. A culture that is collaborate is created where members work together to improve efficiency and deal with issues facing them effectively. When this culture is built, honesty and transparency are created leading to easier communication among members (Norman, 2016). Besides, servant leaders help in removing blockers by liaising with other departments in the organization to overcome any challenge facing them. Apart from just being always there to help others thrive well and meet their goals, servant leadership helps the leaders to have personal growth as they thrive to make their members grow.
The main features of servant leadership
Servant leadership needs a leader who will not depend on the power given by the company to make the lives of others hard. Servant leadership entails leaders who make the lives of others better. They aim at considering the needs of the employees and focus on satisfying them first by prioritizing them. These leaders have a strong sense of being careful and responsible in whatever they do so that they do not hurt their fellows (Norman, 2016). A servant leader is committed to do research for continuous improvement of their teams and themselves. They lead their team members improve their expertise and perform better. In any organization where a servant leader exists, it is assured that that there will be a positive contribution of such organization to the society. This is because this leadership makes one not avoid losing their focus in an effort of building the community.
The difference from other forms of leadership
Although some features and characteristics of servant leadership resemble some other forms of leadership, servant leadership have several exceptional ones that make it outstanding. For instance, we can compare transformational leaders and servant leaders. Servant leaders have a main goal serving their colleagues, ensuring the needs of customers are met and the organization is running well, while, transformational leaders focus in making sure that the main goals of the organization are met (Lacroix & Pircher Verdorfer, 2017) . Servant leaders can influence others by ensuring that their needs are fully satisfied while transformational leaders do model to influence others. Furthermore, transformational leaders can use persuasion to promote and motivate others to work well while servant leaders use problem solving as a tactic to influence others.
The main advantages and disadvantages of servant leadership
There is no leadership style that is perfect. As a servant leader there must be always some pros and cons that are experience (Lacroix & Pircher Verdorfer, 2017).
Advantages
- Servant leadership can be used to meet an organization long term goals by doing a continuous improvement.
- Servant leaders are made to take a good care of their employees hence encouraging them to duplicate the same to the customers and other members of the organization.
- Due to the ability of servant leaders to be humble, there can attract their teams trust hence improving that credibility of the organization.
- Servant leadership helps in creating an organization culture which is positive and can be changed overtime to eliminate any negativity.
- Due to the nature of this leadership style, employees are motivated to have high and quality performance.
Disadvantages
- Servant leadership requires a lot of time and patience to achieve the required results.
- There are some existing critics about this leadership style. It is believed that it discriminates gender and is usually overrated.
- Servant leaders have high expectations from their teams. The teams want hem to do what they ask for without denying the requests (G., 2020). Sometimes these issues force the leaders to work for longer hours to satisfy the needs of their fellows.
- The decision-making process of this leadership style may take too long. This is because any decision made must aim at benefiting all people and hence, they have to come up with different perspectives to come up with better ways to achieve that.
Circumstances in which servant leadership is effective
Servant leadership is only effective if the leader does the following; First, the leader must be someone who listens before they communicate and make any decisions. Listening to people carefully shows the good commitment to identify the will of team members to satisfy their needs. The ability to listen also helps the leader to have clarity of things and do reflection that is essential for personal growth and that of the members (“Perceived servant leadership: the impact of servant leadership on intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction”, 2020) . Another important circumstance is empathy where there is ability to empathize and understand others. People want to have a feeling that they are accepted and recognized in a special way. There must be self-awareness that helps the leader to be strong and understand all issues relating to power and leadership. This helps to nurture their capabilities and hence achieve their big dreams.
Circumstances in which servant leadership is ineffective
Sometimes, servant leadership can be ineffective, especially in this current world where there are so many trends in the leadership environment. Leaders in todays world find themselves having so many obligations that put them under pressure. It therefore makes them not meet the needs of their teams effectively. In addition, the human qualities that are required to become an effective servant leader are becoming rare, the demands for practice of this leadership style are unmeasurable. sometimes servant leadership might make leaders do everything for their employees in an effort of fixing problems (“Perceived servant leadership: the impact of servant leadership on intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction”, 2020). This can make the employees feel that they finished a task that they were supposed to accomplish. At the end, these employees will feel demotivated and hence servant leadership will not be effective in this circumstance. Finally, this style cannot be effective if, it does not fit businesses. For example, businesses that are in the process of undergoing rapid changes in the organizational culture may not respond well to servant leadership. This is because there will be lack of stability that makes it hard for leadership to implement it in the system.
Being a servant leader and my personality
Being a servant leader is not an easy thing because it requires a lot of sacrifice and selflessness. However, I think I can be a servant leader. This is because my personality makes me to be empathetic and responsive to other peoples needs. I am persuasive and able to involve team members in decision making. I am interested in doing things that lead to both personal growth and professional growth of others.
Parts of my personality that I need to develop to become a servant leader
The only part I need to develop so that I can become an excellent leader is the ability to do conceptualization. I need to seek to nurture my ability to have great dreams and investigate problems and think beyond the reality before I solve them.
Conclusion
Servant leadership is attracting many people in the business world. It may not be the best or perfect leadership style and it remains popular due to its good characteristics. It has shown to promote success to many organizations where managers utilize it. This leadership style has made leaders to focus in improving peoples lives and the community as whole.
References
G., D. (2020). Reflections of Servant Leadership from Great Epics of India. International
Journal Of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, 24(5), 3695-3704. https://doi.org/10.37200/ijpr/v24i5/pr202078
Lacroix, M., & Pircher Verdorfer, A. (2017). Can Servant Leaders Fuel the Leadership Fire?
The Relationship between Servant Leadership and Followers’ Leadership Avoidance. Administrative Sciences, 7(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci7010006
Norman, Z. (2016). Servant Leadership: All About an Effective Servant-Leader. SSRN
Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2834147
Perceived servant leadership: the impact of servant leadership on intrinsic and extrinsic job
satisfaction. (2020), 28(2), 27-29. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid-11-2019-0267
Zentner, A. (2015). Servant Leadership and Religious Values: Drawing Speculation to
Commonalities between Servant Leadership Characteristics and Faith-Based Values. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2638587