Role Of The Nurse As A Servant Leader

Robert Greenleaf was the first individual to introduce the concept of a servant leader. Greenleaf was born in 1904 in Terre Haute, Indian. In 1970, after spending the majority of his professional career with AT&T as their director of management development, he released an essay entitled “The Servant as Leader”. This essay described the servant leadership style in detail. Greenleaf stated that he believed the best leader is one who is a servant first. He stated that there were a few key factors for being a servant leader which included; listening, persuasion, access to intuition and foresight, and use of language.

Servant Leadership is “an approach to leadership with strong altruistic and ethical overtones that asks and requires leader to be attentive to the needs of their followers and empathize with them; they should take care of them by making sure they become healthier, wiser, freer and more autonomous, so that they too can become servant leaders” (Valeri, 2007). Although there is not many servant leaders in this world but the concept of servant is one of the most leadership approach leaders today struggles with. Servant leadership is mainly about the leader helping to grow their followers or members personally and professionally through empathy, listening skills and compassion. The concept of servant leadership which was proposed by Robert K. Greenleaf in his 1970 writing indicated that servant leadership is a theoretical framework that advocated a leader’s primary motivation and role as service to others.

Servant leadership, as it applies to the modern world, is a concept that Robert Greenleaf defined in his influential 1970 essay, The Servant as Leader. Greenleaf’s essay explains that servant leadership is an amalgam of concrete leadership styles and “fragments of data” that came to him through “intuitive insight” (1970). Having worked at AT&T from 1926-1964, he accumulated a number of leadership qualities throughout his professional career. After retirement he began teaching at Harvard Business School, but became distressed by younger generations and their rebellious attitudes. After careful consideration, he decided institutions were doing a poor job of serving, so they were doing a poor job of leading. His

Nurse leaders are the background to the nursing care. Effective nurse leaders can promote a positive workforce and a healthy work place for other nurses. Workplace dynamics is an essential part of how each nurse functions. Nurses, being mentally and physically stressed, need to have support and guidance from a nurse leader to feel confident about performance. The impact of nursing leaders can be a positive and guiding force for the younger or more inexperienced nurse. Having strong relationships with solid leaders can instill values in the beginning stages of a newer nurses’ career. Gaining insight and core concepts from a more experienced leader can make a world of difference in the way a new nurse performs, provides patient care, and sets future goals for themselves. A newer nurse with a positive role model and nurse leader can model themselves to become a leader for future nurses.

“Servant Leadership” throughout history has always been a vital concept to grasp as leaders, however the actual term was not coined until the 1970’s by Robert Greenleaf in his essay The Servant as a Leader. Greenleaf depicts the concept of servant leadership as being a servant first meaning the leader is always willing, ready, and eager to assist those around them in order to create the best environment for everyone to work towards achieving goals.

The phrase “Servant Leadership” was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as a Leader, an essay he first published in 1970 ("What is servant," ). The servant leader serves first, while aspiring to lead second. The servant leader serves the people that he or she leads, implying employees are an end in themselves rather than a means to organizational purpose or bottom-line. Servant leadership is meant to replace a command and control, top-down, model of management. Servant leadership encourages collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power and empowerment. A few famous examples of servant leaders are George Washington, Gandi and Caesar Chavez.

Servant leadership can be defined as the skill of empowering others towards a common goal through service to them (Hunter, 2014). The theory of servant leadership was initially written about by Greanleaf in the 1970s even though it has existed for hundreds of years (Parris and Peachey, 2012). Greanleaf believed that servant leadership was brought about by individuals reflecting on personal growth rather than providing a step by step manual on how to be a servant leader (Parris and Peachey, 2012). More recent researchers include in the definition of leadership various attributes such as altruistic calling, service, empowerment,

Robert Greenleaf and James Hunter are both experts when it comes to leadership. Greenleaf coined the term “servant leadership” and published his first essay regarding this topic in 1970. Hunter is a world renowned author and speaker because of his leadership forte, and has worked with thousands of business executives on developing leadership skills that create successful businesses (Hunter 1998). Both of these men are distinguished professionals because of their philosophies and approaches to efficacious leadership, but they each have a different approach of how they present and represent these ideas.

Servant leadership is a theory based on Robert K Greenleaf’s belief that all men have a primary motivation to serve others and through this service they aspire to lead (Parris & Peachey, 2012). Although this leadership model has very little in common with charismatic and situational does however compare to transformational leadership in several areas. The main area of commonality between the two can be found as transformational leaders serve as stewards to change enable the followers to accept the change and move forward with the organization (Tichy & Devanna, 1990, p. 75). In essence, servant leadership becomes the long-term transformational approach to life and work.

Dr. Kent M. Keith was a presenter on behalf of the Greenleaf Seminar on Servant Leadership at the 53rd annual conference for the Arizona School Boards Association in December, 2010. He correctly pointed out that servant leadership is about serving others, about becoming distinguished through the altruistic desire to serve, and about the "…universal recognition of the importance of serving others" (Keith, 2010).

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

Servant leadership is a type of leadership whereby the leader serves the needs of the people, empathizes with them, and involves them in solving their needs. Servant leadership is all about involving the people you are leading in your decision making, being ethical and caring for the people to enhance their personal growth at the same time improve their life. A servant leader does not simply delegate roles; he starts the work and energizes the others to join him and get the work done. According to Spears (2004), the servant leader as defined by Greenleaf is one who gets the natural feeling of wanting to serve first and then a conscious choice brings him/her to lead. This leader makes sure that other people’s highest-priority needs are take

In the book The Servant, the author James C. Hunter discusses Servant Leadership, and the impact it has on every aspect of life. The book begins with a middle-aged man, John, who has it all, a supportive wife and kids and an authoritative job as a manager at a glass factory. John however, feels his life is falling apart, his employees aren’t respecting him and his relationships with his wife and kids are becoming distant and negative. In an attempt to make a change, John attended a week long religious retreat that’s main focus is Servant Leadership. The attendees at this retreat were all very different, their careers varied greatly, and their views on how to be a leader were not alike either. In the end though, they all agreed on one thing, making a change to become a Servant Leader was going to reshape their lives, through both their careers and relationships.

Here, Greenleaf describes a relationship that is centered on the selfless nature of the leader. While servant leadership prioritizes serving other’s without benefiting personally, it should be questioned if this is truly possible. This is because it is not likely to act as a servant-leader without receiving something in return. An example of this would be a person volunteering for a cause

Since this article was a systematic literature review, the authors did not provide their own definition of servant leadership and thus the theory remains under-defined. Parris and Peachey note that most researchers quote Greenleaf’s definition of servant leadership verbatim.