Servant Leadership Advantages And Disadvantages

While discussing traits of good leadership you find many similarities in followership and servant leadership, as well as differences. Regardless of their differences, each style of leadership is equally important. Soldiers depend heavily on good leaders in the Army, though good leaders are not as common as they should be. Soldiers are more effective and willing to work when they have a leader who truly cares. Followership and servant leadership are two tactics that assist in persuading soldiers to accomplish the task-at-hand.

I have recently completed a service project at the animal shelter in Bulloch County, Georgia. For four days I rode with my group to the animal shelter to play with the animals. Playing with the animals shows them compassion. We played with many dogs over the course of four days. Doing this service have made myself and my group servant leaders. What is a servant leader you ask, well a servant leader wants to help others better themselves. They want to help even if they do not look like, think like, or talk like us.

“Servant leadership refers to a leadership approach by which leaders set aside their self-interest and altruistically work for the benefit of their followers, and the communities in which they operate” (Newman, 2017, p.49). To accomplish this, a leader must be thoroughly engaged in their environment and an active listener. My third strength is active listening. Active listening relates to the servant leadership theory because active listening “enables a servant leader to build trustful relationships with others and to understand the needs of followers to create an effective working climate and culture and to grow and release individual talent” (Coetzer, 2017, p. 13). Active listening requires one to listen respectfully, to engage in questions, provide time for reflection, and to be consciously seek out and interpret subtext. Open and honest communication between a leader and employee are integral to the proper function of a work environment. Employees who feel unheard may disengage and become less productive. A decline in employee morale, productivity, and engagement are failures of a leader and are generally the result of poor communication and listening skills.

Servant leadership isn’t applied or adequate to only one type of culture or even one type of culture. Servant leadership can actually be applied to all walks of life and all parts of the world. For example, the culture of the Japanese and the religion of the Hindu people both embrace a sense of what we call servant leadership. All religions and cultures have their own unique way in which they apply servant leadership, either based on their beliefs, history, or lifestyles. The significance of servant leadership is demonstrated in different ways within each culture and religion even when some cultures are not aware that what they are implying is servant leadership. As religions and cultures change and expand through time the concept of servant leadership is adapted and applied in different ways.

1. What is servant leadership, and how does it differ from other leadership models? (Use specific examples. You may have to do some additional research. Please cite any resources you use.)

Liden (2014) explained that servant leaders serve as a role model to their team on what needs to be done to reach the team goals. This supports that engagement is a positive strength to have as a servant leader. When leading a team, I delegate work but make sure that I spend time working on the project and go beyond just checking in with the group. It is important to take part of the process as well as leading the work that is being done on behalf of the organization. Focht (2015) did a study to define the most important elements of servant leaders and one of the ones identified by the study was empowerment. “Empowerment for the servant leader involves effective listening, making people feel significant, putting an emphasis on teamwork, entrusting

I absolutely agree with your point that “Between the topics of servant-leadership and transformational leadership, it appears that the commonality between the two is found in leading by example.” Too often, leaders fail to actually lead and instead keep themselves elevated above and distant from their employees. By doing this, leaders create a barrier between themselves and their employees. When I first read your post, I thought it was commendable that your leadership took cuts in pay just like everyone else. However, when I read on and discovered that they were the only ones whose pay was restored, I was very disappointed to see that they showed their true colors: definitely not servant leadership!

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

I think is very important for the leader to have been a servant first. The leader that have experience on her field will do a better job than someone that has no idea how that is made and is trying to lead people. I knew about this leadership, I just didn’t know there was a name for it.

The last weakness that I want to address in this paper is that my heart at times can stop or slow down some of the tough decisions that have to be made. I am the master of second chances. I am very patient and really do love working with my people. There has been a couple times in my career where I just didn’t want to make the final decision to fire a couple of my staff. We did coaching, written warnings, etc. to try and help them improve. Most of the time this works, but with one particular staff member I should have taking harder action sooner. This had to do with a staff member that was just negative and causing contention in the building. It was addressed for more than two years before the individual was finally let go. If I had better followed through with the disciplinary action he would have been terminated much earlier.

James Burns, Robert Greenleaf, and Thomas Carlyle write in The Leader’s Companion that there is a “universal craving…for leadership” and that we need servant leaders that sometimes aren’t seeking leadership roles to fill that gap. Leaders are increasingly underestimated and undervalued, mostly because we care more about the leaders than we do their leadership. Everyone knows the type of people Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are, but less care about how they would lead. The media focuses more on Clinton passing out from the “heat” and Trump posting controversial things on Twitter than they do on their actual policies that are important for Americans to be aware of. We also corrupt our leaders with fame so much that it is hard for us to call

Servers are thought to be submissive followers and leaders are thought to be powerful decision makers and as contrast as serving and leading can seam to be at first thought they can have much more overlapping roles. Helping others so they will in turn help you is by no means a new concept; it is one that has in fact been around for at least the last two thousand years. However, it was Robert K Greenleaf that took that general idea and reshaped the roles of serving and leading molding then into one philosophy of Servant Leadership (Keith, 2015). Greenleaf’s concept was that “the servant-leader is servant first” meaning not that a leader should be slavish or submissive but that they should have a desire to know the needs of others and ensure those needs are meet (Keith, 2015).

Individuals in leadership roles within the health care arena are known for inspiring others, vision and beliefs for balance, as well as for in planning long-term initiatives. Leaders are as well known for reassuring and motivating others, serves and encourage diplomacy, an activist, and believes in pushing others toward excellence.

As written in the lines above, employee engagement has a significant impact on an employee and their engagement. Although there has been many articles and research written about leadership and servant leadership, in this study, it will provide and overview, key traits and influences that servant leaders use in collaboration to address significant problems with strategy and other individuals. Therefore, how do managers and leaders facilitate the engagement of their employees? Leaders do this through their leadership style. In 1970, Robert K. Greenleaf identified servant-leadership, which was different from the traditional views of leadership. According to Greenleaf, “The servant-leader is a servant first. Servant

The Leadership Theory presented in this document is Servant Leadership. The article summarised herein is “A systematic literature review of servant leadership theory in organizational contexts” published in the Journal of Business Ethics, pages 113(3), 377-393, written by D.L. Parris and J.W. Peachey in 2012 but published in the 2013 Journal.