Servant Leadership II

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Servant Leadership

Good leaders must first become good servants.

Robert Greenleaf

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Overview

  • Servant Leadership Defined
  • Servant Leaders Characteristics
  • Becoming a Servant Leader

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Servant Leadership

  • Robert Greenleaf

Servant as Leader (1970)

  • Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership
  • Greenleaf.org
  • Westfield, IN
  • Information, resources, conferences, seminars, consulting

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Servant Leadership Description

  • Servant Leadership – is a paradox: both service and influence

  • Interest in Servant Leadership
  • Most scholarship has been prescriptive, until recently
  • Past 10 years have clarified the concept and its assumptions
  • Focuses on leadership from the point of view of the leader and his/her behaviors
  • Servant leaders put followers first

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Servant Leadership Defined

  • Servant-Leadership is a practical philosophy which supports people who choose to serve first, and then lead as a way of expanding service to individuals and institutions.
  • Servant-leaders may or may not hold formal leadership positions.
  • Servant-leadership encourages collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power and empowerment.

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Characteristics of the
Servant Leader (Spears, 2004)

  • Listening
  • Empathy
  • Healing
  • Awareness
  • Persuasion

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Listening:

  • identify and clarify the will of a group
  • listen receptively to what is being said (and not being said!).
  • getting in touch with one’s own inner voice, and seeking to understand what one’s body, spirit, and mind are communicating.

Empathy:

  • People need to be accepted and recognized for their special and unique spirits.
  • One must assume the good intentions of co-workers and not reject them as people, even when forced to reject their behavior or performance.

Healing:

  • Learning to heal is a powerful force for transformation and integration.
  • Many people have broken spirits and have suffered from a variety of emotional hurts. Although this is a part of being human, servant-leaders recognize that they have an opportunity to help make whole those with whom they come in contact.

Awareness:

  • General awareness, and especially self-awareness, strengthens the servant-leader.
  • Awareness also aids in understanding issues involving ethics and values.
  • It enables one to view most situations from a more integrated position.

Persuasion:

  • reliance upon persuasion, rather then positional authority, in making decisions within an organization.
  • Servant-leaders seek to convince others, rather than coerce compliance.
  • This particular element offers on of the clearest distinctions between the traditional authoritarian model and that of servant-leadership.
  • effective at building consensus within groups.

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Characteristics of the
Servant Leader (Spears, 2004)

  • Conceptualization
  • Foresight
  • Stewardship
  • Commitment to the growth of people
  • Building community

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Conceptualization:

  • Servant-leaders seek to nurture their abilities to “dream great dreams.”
  • one must think beyond day-to-day realities.
  • a servant-leader must stretch his or her thinking to encompass broader-based conceptual thinking.
  • Servant-leaders must seek a delicate balance between conceptualization and day-to-day focus.

Foresight:

  • The ability to foresee the likely outcome of a situation
  • Foresight is a characteristic that enables servant-leaders to understand the lessons from the past, the realities of the present, and the likely consequence of a decision for the future.
  • It is deeply rooted within the intuitive mind.

Stewardship:

  • holding something in trust for another
  • CEOs, staffs, directors, and trustees all played significant roles in holding their institutions trust for the greater good of society.

  • Commitment to the growth of people:
  • Servant-leaders believe that people have an intrinsic value beyond their tangible contributions as workers.
  • deeply committed to the personal, professional, and spiritual growth of each and every individual within the institution.
  • making available funds for personal and professional development, taking a personal interest in employees’ ideas and suggestions, encouraging worker involvement in decision making, actively assisting laid-off workers to find other employment, and so on.

Building community:

  • seek to identify a means for building community among those who work within a given institution.

Building a Theory about Servant Leadership

  • Greenleaf’s leadership approach – loosely defined characteristics and normative principles
  • Servant leadership adopted as guiding philosophy in many organizations
  • Recent models of SL developed using multiple variables
  • Russell and Stone (2002)
  • Patterson (2003)

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Model of Servant Leadership
(Liden et al., 2008)

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How does Servant Leadership work?

  • SL is different from many other leadership theories.
  • It is concerned with putting followers first and the outcomes that are likely to emerge.
  • SL works best when leaders are altruistic and have a strong motivation to help others.
  • It is important for followers to be receptive to this style of leadership.
  • SL results in community and societal change.

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Application

  • SL can be applied at all levels of management and in all types of organizations.
  • SL has been used extensively in a variety of organizations for more than 30 years.
  • Organizations should be careful to select employees who (a) are interested in building long term relationships with followers and (b) have strong ethics.
  • SL is taught at many colleges and universities and is used by numerous independent coaches, trainers, and consultants.

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How Do You Become a
Servant-Leader?

  • Listen to others
  • Involve others
  • Help people get what they want
  • Promote teamwork rather than individual decision making
  • Enhance problem-solving skills
  • Adapt to the situation
  • Use power honestly
  • Inspire others to service

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Servant Leadership

Strengths

  • Focus on followers’ needs
  • Fits well with mission of non-profit organizations
  • Gaining popularity
  • Makes altruism the central component of the leadership process.

Criticisms

  • SL is not a panacea. It may not be effective when subordinates are not open to being guided, supported, and empowered.
  • May be seen as whimsical, or not really “leadership.”
  • Researchers are unable to reach consensus on a common definition or theoretical framework for SL.

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