In this lesson, we learned about servant leadership. In this style of leadership, the leader focuses on developing their followers and helping them grow into leaders themselves (Hamel, 2021). At first glance, this type of leadership seems counterintuitive in that it is the opposite of what traditional leadership is. However, this type of leadership is useful in many situations. I think this type of leadership works best in academic environments such as during training and in schools, and in teams with high autonomy.
The most obvious application of this theory is in job training and development. In training and development, the goal should be to strengthen their skills and develop them into future leaders. Servant leaders can enhance this process by emphasizing on the employee’s strengths. Servant leaders should focus on what the employee want to do and is passionate about. They should ask them, “what do YOU want to do” and “what are YOU excited/passionate about?” (Tarallo, 2018).
When I read this lesson, the first thing that popped in my head was my CAS professor here at Penn State. In my opinion, he was a great professor because he knew that public speaking is not everybody’s favorite thing to do and he put much effort into developing our skills in public speaking. He let us choose the topics we wanted to speak about and he coached us and gave us valuable feed back after our speeches and in our speech drafts. In addition, he often stayed after class to address student’s questions and concerns and held extra office hours during the week of our speeches. During office hours, he reviewed our speech drafts and gave us encouragement. His actions are examples of servant leader behaviors. According to the servant leadership model, some of the servant behaviors are emotional healing, putting followers first, and helping followers succeed (Hamel, 2021).
Servant leadership works best in teams with high autonomy. Google is an excellent example of a company that understands the importance of servant leadership. Google practices servant leadership through nurturing their employees, having an open communication, and regularly assessing managers. Google nurtures their employees by giving them free haircuts, gym memberships, meals and many more. They have an open communication system that encourages communication and accountability. Lastly, Google regularly assesses their managers by asking their employees (Flynn, 2018). These behaviors show that Google values their employees and high-autonomy. They provide everything that they can to support their employees from free haircuts to keeping check if their managers are doing a good job.
References:
Flynn, M. (2018, April 25). How Google Gets Servant Leadership Right: 4 Steps your Company can take to Cultivate Servant Leadership. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-google-gets-servant-leadership-right-4-steps-your-michael-flynn.
Hamel, R. P. (2021). Lesson 11: Servant Leadership
Tarallo, M. (2018, May 17). The Art of Servant Leadership. https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/hr-topics/organizational-and-employee-development/Pages/The-Art-of-Servant-Leadership.aspx.
Hi!
I really enjoyed reading your blog and the specific examples you incorporated within the blog post! I agree that at first servant leadership can seen counterintuitive but after having gone through the entire lesson I realized how significant this leadership theory is to real life. I personally enjoyed your example of your CAS teacher because he seems to be a professor who understands the importance of bettering his students while also showing support throughout. It is important that professors understand the importance of the characteristics of servant leadership because it could be extremely significant. Overall I really enjoyed reading your blog post and it was very interesting! It brought a lot of insight to servant leadership theory!
Great blog! It sounds like your CAS teacher embodied servant leadership through his attempts to nurture your class’ public speaking abilities. From your blog, it seems that he demonstrated several characteristics identified by Northouse (2019): empathy, healing, awareness, and persuasion (pp. 229-230). He first demonstrated awareness, by acknowledging that public speaking is difficult for many students. He understood that during weeks when speeches were due, students were likely to have more questions and request more input prior to delivering. In response he extended his office hours to allow as many students to meet with him as possible. This demonstrated his empathy as well, as did his giving encouragement to make more students feel comfortable with presenting (Northouse, 2019, p. 229). His feedback and encouragement also seemed to serve as a source of healing for students, and helped them to overcome their insecurities with giving speeches. Finally, persuasion was evident as his approachable nature, and willingness to be fully engaged with his students made them more willing to listen to his guidance, and allowed him to direct their behavior.
I like how you mentioned that servant leadership is best in groups with high autonomy, as I think it is an important component of empowering followers as well as helping followers grow and succeed (Northouse, 2019, pp. 236-237). I know from personal experience that if leaders are constantly hovering over followers, the follower begins to feel that the leader must always be consulted prior to engaging in any course of action on their own. Leaders should provide the framework followers can act within, as well as provide support when needed, but otherwise allow followers to act independently. The goal of servant leadership is to develop followers into future servant leaders, capable of acting appropriately and influencing the next generation of followers (Northouse, 2019, pp. 243-244).
Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership. Sage.