As my natural tendancy is to be a servant leader, I wanted to know why and how it will benefit me. What I found out was I possessed most of the characteristics of a servant leader as described by Greenleaf (1970) in his research. The 10 characteristics identified by Greenleaf in a servant leader are listening, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community, (Northouse, 2015)
In addition, I seemed to be the person that followers seeked out as a confidant, not only about work issues, but also personal problems followers were dealing with, as well. I always have been concerned with others and the battles they faced in their daily lives and have felt a responsibility to help if you can, as we are all just trying to get through this life with as few scars as possible. As I continued to hone these skills listed previoualy, I began to see how putting others first began to pay dividends to me and our organization. I witnessed followers become more autonomous as their confidence grew. They were more willing to take on additional tasks out of their comfort zone, as they knew i would be there for support. Another example of how practicing listening, healing, and awareness specifically, it was clear to me how willing those people were to go the extra mile when necessary which in turn was beneficial to the organization.
So, what’s in it for me? The answer, exactly what Greenleaf found as the outcomes of being a servant leader, that is witnessing followers achieve their full potential, better organizational performance, and the one I’m most proud of is the societal impact. That impact could include an employee who goes home from work feeling good about themselves and the work they performed, therefore instilling servant leadership principles at home in their children, and a world full of servant leaders could do much to create a world that would be a much better place to reside.
Reference:
Philip Christopher Desbrow says
Servant leadership is important to me as well when we as leaders are working to improve the bottom line or goal for the organization. It really comes from us putting employees first and the customer second that can really make the difference. I have found in my travels that if we really want to push our employees to do better and exceed expectations, then we need to make sure that we are essentially there for them when needed. As Northouse discusses servant leadership, he talks about serving the people and doing this first and foremost. In any job that we are employed at and lead people, it would be naive to think that we could do the work with the help of the followers. It takes a tribe in a village to survive, same concept in a work environment. Everyone matters and a leader needs to be able to “put their interest aside” so that they can be their for needs of the followers (Northouse 2016).
I do believe that we as leaders need to be able to screen out the followers who are being propped up from the servant leadership mentality. This is where there could be a draw back to this type of leadership. Is it possible that we could be creating a type of crutch for the follower? Where there work is actually becoming more and more of a drag per say then helping them to be better? These are the types of reflections we should have with our self when employing the servant leadership role, perhaps to much attending to needs could become a bad thing.
Reference:
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.