Servant ledership

Question 1

10 Characteristics of a Servant Leader (Spears, 2002)

Answer 1

1. Listening – acknowledging the viewpoints of followers and validating these perspectives.
2. Empathy – “standing in the shoes” of another person and attempting to see the world from that person’s point of view.
   What does it mean to have true empathy
   Truly have empathy and feel the other
   Visceral response , not parentatured words
3. Healing – in helping followers become whole, servant leaders are themselves healed.
4. Awareness – understanding oneself and the impact one has on others.
5. Persuasion – creates change through gentle, nonjudgmental argument.
   Gentle manner
6. Conceptualisation – the ability to be a visionary for an organisation.
   Vision is able to assess whether it is able to bring the greater good
7. Foresight – the ability to predict what is coming based on what is occurring in the present and what has happened in the past.
   Only care if it is making a profit
   Does that vision has a greater good
8. Stewardship – carefully managing the people and organisation one has been given to lead. Holding the organisation in trust for the greater good of society.
9. Commitment to the growth of people – treating each follower as a unique person with intrinsic value beyond what he/she contributes to the organisation.
10. Building community – allowing followers to identify with something greater than themselves that they value.

Question 2

Building a Theory about Servant Leadership

Answer 2

• Greenleaf’s leadership approach – loosely defined characteristics and normative principles.
• Servant leadership adopted as guiding philosophy in many organisations.
• Recent models of servant leadership developed using multiple variables
  
  • Russell and Stone (2002)
  • Patterson (2003)

Question 3

Model of Servant Leadership (Liden et. al., 2008)

Answer 3

Antecedent Conditions, Servant Leader Behaviours, Outcomes

Question 4

Antecedent Conditions

Answer 4

1. Context and culture
   
   • Organisational context
   • Dimensions of culture (e.g. power distance)
   Not have work in news
   Cannot be done sincerely unless there is a culture as embracing as this.
   Need power distance: need one to lead, don’t care about ego
2. Leader attributes
   
   • Traits interact with ability to engage in servant leadership (e.g. moral development, emotional intelligence)
3. Follower receptivity
   
   • Some subordinates do not want to work with servant leaders.
   • When matched with followers who desire it, servant leadership has a positive impact on performance and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB).
   not everyone will embrace this leader
   take advantage of this leadership

Question 5

Servant Leader Behaviours

Answer 5

1. Conceptualising
   
   • Thorough understanding of the organisation.
   • Address the complex organisational problems while meeting goals of the organisation.
2. Emotional hearing
   
   • Recognising others’ problems and taking the time to address them.
3. Putting followers first
   
   • Follower’s concerns and interests are priority.
4. Helping followers grow and succeed
   
   • Knowing followers’ professional or personal goals.
5. Behaving ethically
   
   • Doing the right thing in the right way.
6. Empowering
   
   • Allowing followers the freedom to be independent, make decisions on their own, and be self-sufficient.
7. Creating value for the community
   
   • Intentionally giving back to the community.
   • Encourage followers to volunteer for community service.

Question 6

Outcomes

Answer 6

1. Follower performance and growth
   
   • Recognising followers’ contributions and helping them realise their human potential.
   • Favourable impact on subordinate in-role performance.
   • Followers themselves may become servant leaders.
2. Organisational performance
   
   • Positive relationship between servant leadership and OCB.
   • Team effectiveness enhanced by increasing members’ shared confidence they could be effective.
3. Societal impact
   
   • Indirect positive impact on followers, organisation and society
     Could I get the same effects without having the traits and value set that comes with servant leaders
     Did they have to ave a servant based leadership mindset?
     Is this a requirement for somebody to create big societal impact ?
     Elon mask and bill gates

Question 7

How does Servant Leadership work

Answer 7

• Servant leadership is different from many other leadership theories.
• It is concerned with putting followers first and the outcomes that are likely to emerge.
• Works best when leaders are altruistic and have a strong motivation to help others.
• It is important for followers to be receptive to this style of leadership.
• Servant leadership results in community and societal change.

Make explicit values that are required to lead

Question 8

Servant Leadership Strengths

Answer 8

• Makes altruism the central component of the leadership process.
• Provides a counterintuitive approach to the use of influence. Leaders should share control.
• Servant leadership is not a panacea. It may not be effective when subordinates are not open to being guided, supported, and empowered.
• Research has resulted in a sound measure of servant leadership – the SLQ

When have to lead that is not for yourself (non profit )
CEOs uses this to branch their works

Question 9

Servant Leadership Criticisms

Answer 9

• Because the name appears contradictory, servant leadership may be seen as whimsical, or not really “leadership”.
• Researchers are unable to reach consensus on a common definition or theoretical framework for servant leadership.
• The prescriptive overtone suggests that good leaders “put others first” and conflicts with other principles of leadership such as directing, concern for production, etc. It can also sound moralistic, which may deter some researchers.
• Conceptualising is not unique to servant leaders. It is unclear why it is included in this model.

Whimsical
Fad of an organization
Aren’t of an elk when promoting servant leader
Messy at a broader level, doesn’t have a coherent theoretical framework
è For instance: LMX is a model itself
Quite preachy
Being conceptual
, need a model to test that

Question 10

Application

Answer 10

• Servant leadership can be applied at all levels of management and in all types of organisations.
• Has been used extensively in a variety of organisations for more than 30 years.
• Organisations should be careful to select employees who a. are interested in building long term relationships with followers, and b. have strong ethics.
• Servant leadership is taught at many colleges and universities and is used by numerous independent coaches, trainers, and consultants

Coaching, training organization, zeitgeist of society
Even playing field
“Determinism”- Robert Sapolsky
How we should turn out and the impact that should mean for policy and politics
Model may grow because of popularity