Servant Leadership Essay

A servant leader must listen to a person fully without interrupting or judging them. While doing my service at the animal shelter there were two other people doing service. They were prisoners wearing the orange jumpsuit. Although most people would assume they are bad and not to talk to them, me and my group had a conversation with them about the dogs. They showed a lot of compassion about what they were doing. Although it was work they were forced to do they gave it their all. I listened and communicated with them the entire time without judging whatever they might have done. This was showing servant leadership in one of the hardest

The field of nursing is one of the quintessential servant roles in our society today. We serve by taking care of our patient’s physical and mental (and sometimes spiritual) health. As a nursing student, there are three main characteristics that I have seen modeled in leaders that I think are most important to a servant-leader’s success. In my own practice, I hope to focus on all servant-leader characteristics, but these in particular as I strive for a lengthy and fulfilling career.

Many have developed elements that they believe are the foundation of servant leadership. In summary, included in the fundamentals are healing, creating value for community, empowering, empathy, listening, awareness, behaving ethically, and helping others grow and succeed. Healing refers to leaders trying to help solve problems and relationships. Creating value for community refers to leaders serving as an example and encouraging others to also serve the community. Empowering refers to leaders providing followers with autonomy. Empathy refers to leaders understanding others. Listening is a trait all leaders should possess. In order to understand, one should first listen. Awareness refers to leaders attentive to the things happening around them. Behaving ethically refers to the demonstrating of integrity to gain the trust of followers. Helping others grow and succeed refers to leaders providing support to followers to help them develop and accomplish professional and personal goals.

Servant leaders possess a high level of ethical behavior and moral compass. Meaning, they conduct themselves in a manner in accordance with common principles that are considered legal. They distance yourself from using your grade or position as power or leverage. And they serve others by working toward the development of their goals for the common good of the team or unit. An example of a good servant leader is this Platoon Sergeant I once had. We were tasked establish an over-watch position and reconnaissance in front of the Brigade in order to prevent the element from being ambushed moving forward. This Platoon Sergeant sat on top of the OP scanning with the Recon III (Thermal, FLIR, Satellite optic) and listened to the radio while the platoon was at 25% security. And he did that all night then conducted missions the following day leaving him with less than five hours of sleep in a 40-hour time frame. This man sacrificed his rest cycle so that the platoon would be rested for the remainder of the field problem. This is what makes a servant leader in the

The servant-leader is a servant first and desires to serve others. They identify and meet the needs of their followers. They focus on the growth of the group or the whole community. They help people develop their skill and perform at their best. The servant-leader shares his or her power and put the needs of his or her followers before his or her own needs. However, a traditional leader is the person at the top that exercises power over the group. The servant-leader innate action, are goal orientated, and are dreamers. They are good communicators, dependable, and are trustworthy. They listen and understand the goals of their followers and are selfless at meeting the needs of their followers. They persuade their followers and do not force them

Additionally, I entered the health care field because I wanted to serve and take care of others. To become a servant leader, one must first meet the criteria of a servant before they can satisfy the criteria of a servant leader. The servant leader is the only form of leadership that places service as its first priority (Focht & Ponton, 2015). Characteristics displayed by a servant leader include “value people, humility, trust, caring, integrity, service empowering, serve other’s need before their own, collaboration, love/unconditional love, and learning” (Focht & Ponton, 2015, p. 44).

Servant Leadership describes its leaders as those who are able to achieve results for their organization simple by serving the individual team members first and making sure their needs a priority. In this leadership style, the nurse leader looks to the needs of the staff and consistently asks how they as a leader they can help the staff solve problems and promote personal development. The entire team has input into decision-making based on the values and ideals that best represent the company and manage the care of the patient. Skills of a servant leader include: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to growth, and building community.

As a leader in Nursing, I understand that my leaderships rely on services based on the context of traditional science education. This writher experience as a clinical nurse evolution as a follower leader serving at the bed site care. However, the Servant leadership establish an increased service to others, a holistic approach and decision-making. (Greenleaf, 1970). According, to Greenleaf’s ten characteristics was establish for the servant leader and it was considered a critical concern. The following components are central to the development of servant leaders, as listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people and building community (Greenleaf, 1970).

The terms servant and leader are typically thought of as being contradictory terms. However, the theory of servant leadership has started gaining more and more notoriety over the last several years. Many organizations are learning that the management and leadership styles of the past are no longer inspiring or influencing the workers of today (Hunter, 1998). Servant leadership combines being able to identify and meet the needs of employees and patients by using the characteristics one poses to positively impact and influence them. Most simply put it is the combination of utilizing ones characteristics to do the right thing (Hunter, 1998). The Servant describes many characteristics that make a leader a good leader and this paper will explore a few of those characteristics and how they influence the nursing profession. Namely, commitment to the growth of others, empathy and being an active/receptive listener.

I have observed various leadership styles in my experiences, which range from military life to corporate life. Over and over again I see the same pattern among those who are being lead. The leaders who tend to get more cooperation and motivation out of those they lead, are themselves hard workers who without hesitation will get into the trenches with their people.

As discussed earlier history show us servant leadership has been around in religions for quite some time and while servant leadership roughly travels back two thousand years, the modern servant leadership movement was launched by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970. Greenleaf says a servant leader is concerned with serving followers wellbeing first, opposed to leading first and just focusing on organization. (Patterson, 2010) Servant leadership builds positive relationships with subordinates, empowers them, and helps them succeed. Servant leaders lead with integrality and live ethically, but many cultures have viewed servant leadership as weak and less productive.

One of the traits of servant leadership is looking outside the organization and creating value for the community. True servant leaders will take their leadership role outside the workplace. In our role as leaders, we can bring in the community to foster other servant leadership behaviors. By understanding and conceptualizing, we know what to look for in the community. Then by healing and putting our followers first, we know what each individual needs and where that can be found in the community. Helping our followers grow and succeed, we must empower them and there are opportunities in every community that can help. We must simply go find them. In looking to the community, we bring resources into our own project situations and then we not only use this leadership skill with our team, but find that in leading as a servant leader, it becomes a way of life. .

The servant leadership model puts serving others as the number one priority. This could be applied to civic leaders such as Dr.

Servant leadership is successful when leaders truly believe and act upon a desire to make their followers successful, through being honest and treating them as partners (PSU, 2014). Sinek gives us a great real world application of this by telling the story of Charlie Kim, the CEO of Next Jump. Next Jump is a tech company, of which there are thousands in the US, but what makes Next Jump stand out is it’s policy of lifetime employment. That’s right, no one gets fired. ever. In fact, if your performance is weak, extra time and resources are dedicated to coaching and helping you improve. As a leader, what better way to demonstrate your belief in and desire to make your followers successful, than a no fire

Robert Greenleaf, the founder of the modern servant leadership movement said that "the servant-leader is servant first." “By that he meant that the desire to serve, the "servant's heart," is a fundamental characteristic of the servant-leader. It is not about being servile, it is about