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The Power of Servant Leadership
Benefits and potential application of the servant leadership model
The Power of Servant Leadership
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Influencing a group of individuals to achieve a common goal is leadership in its simplest form and the three people responsible for this are Dr. Eric Schmidt, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer; Larry Page, Co-Founder & President, Products; and Sergey Brin, Co-Founder & President, Technology. Overseeing the company's technical and business strategy since 2001, Dr. Schmidt’s leadership has helped the company grow from a startup to a global enterprise while maintaining a culture of strong innovation. Larry Page the founding CEO grew the company to over 200 employees and profitability before moving into his role as president of products. Sergey Brin directs the research efforts of Google with areas of focus in search engines, information extraction from unstructured sources, and data mining of large text collections and scientific data. However Dr. Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin all share responsibility for Google’s day-to-day operations (Google Management, 2010).
Empowerment or Authoritarian
The first of seven leadership styles is empowerment or authoritarian. Google’s leadership believes in empowerment and its success comes from the practice of servant leadership. Russell (2001) identifies the three aspects of servant leadership as being trust, appreciation of others, and empowerment. Values constitute the foundation of servant leadership which promotes the idea that you choose to work with people or organizations based on not who they are now, but who they could become in the future (Brown, n.d.). Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, use this leadership strategy in their company. Empowerment of staff has led to the launch of a multitude of products and services: G...
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...d to projects unrelated to the core business. Googlers are given 10% of their work time to devote to projects that interest them ensuring high motivation based on the fact the staff get paid to work on pet projects. Flexible work time, bonuses, and free lunches are not the only reasons people love to work at Google in addition to the perks, they are constantly challenged to reach new impossible goals and to have fun doing it.
Communication of the Vision
Google leadership continues to communicate vision and by having an open source mentality, leadership could change tomorrow and the company vision would continue almost unabated. Brandon (2009) states “ I'm not saying Brin and Page are unessential to the company vision, but it seems to have been instilled so effectively that they could step aside and Google as we know it would not change that significantly.”
Across the globe, there are CEO’s, managers, and several other individual’s in leadership-type roles that have the expectation of making their company successful in the eyes of the investors, the employees, and the customers that they serve. This may be measured by a company’s gross profitability, employee engagement or overall customer satisfaction. Most companies have leadership models and strategies in place that leaders are expected to use in order to drive the expectations of the company while maintaining consistency across the business. In an effort to examine various types of leadership styles, I have conducted interviews with two individuals that are or have been previously tasked with leading their teams and their company towards success.
One of the leading organizations that follow the servant leadership style is the coffee giant, Starbucks. The basis of the company’s organizational culture is the servant leadership principles. These principles pervade every aspect of their business. The company believes in caring their employees first, as they are the one who takes care of the customers (Ferguson, 2015). The hiring and management of the staff, the way the staff work and interact with one another, serving the customers all represent the organizational culture, their policies, and operations.
I first encountered the significance of leadership in the tenth grade. Berry College the largest campus in the U.S. was in search of school ambassadors to serve part in a seminar known as HOBY. To get chosen you had to write an essay describing your leadership roles, and at that moment I thought that I did not have any. I literally did not know what it meant to be a leader. I had to brainstorm till I remembered going through one of the most difficult times of my life. The lack of understanding the English language became one of my biggest obstacles, and even caused me to repeat a chapter of my life. However, I did not cease; I continued to fight and strove to help others who were susceptible of following my steps. I used my story as an example, and hoped that it would make a difference in someone else’s life.
Motivation is a key factor in any successful company. Motivated employees tend to work more focused and with less pressure. Google is a company that believes that motivated employees work better.
“Google: brand name of a leading Internet search engine, founded in 1998.”(Google.). The company Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google first started out as a general search engine that people could use on a daily basis to look up and find whatever information quickly and efficiently. Fifteen years later, Google has expanded into much more than just a search engine. The company Google has now expanded its reach into various aspects of people’s daily life. Many people use Google inspired technology every day without using their search engine. Google is one of the rapidly expanding companies of the 21st century, and they don’t show any clear sign of slowing down. It seems like at turn to Google is there inspiring our lives. Google has expanded greatly in the last fifteen year and will continue on until they take over most of the technological industry.
My company project is on Google. The worlds most used and recognized search engines. Google founders are Larry Page and Sergey Brin two Stanford University students, in 1996 they built a search engine called BackRub, and at the time it used links to determine the importance of webpages. BackRub later turned into Google, although BackRub started in 1996 Google was registered as a domain on September 15th, 1997 and became incorporated on September 4th, 1998. Larry Page was actually a University of Michigan grad that was considering Stanford, and Sergey was his assigned tour guide. Google comes from the word “googol” which is a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. This was the name used to show Larry and Sergey’s mission to organize an infinite amount of information on the web. Google was based in Susan Wojcicki’s garage, and Google’s official first employ was Craig Silverstein. It’s main headquarters, better know as Googolplex is now located in Mountain View, California since 2004. Google today is located in more than forty countries around the world with more than seventy offices total. Larry Page was Google’s original CEO until 2001, but in April 2011 took up the title again, Eric Schmidt is the executive chairman today, and Andy Bechtolsheim was the first investor with a $100,000 check to Google before it was even considered a company.
“One of the Best Places to Work” in the world is the Google Company. Amazingly, there are employees who choose to leave this highly rated corporation and seek employment elsewhere. One has to wonder why a member of staff would deliberately choose to desert his or her comrades, forsaking impressive paychecks, an awesome working environment with facilities like massage chairs and the great power wielded by the company’s reputation. Many talented employees leave Google despite the perks that they get at their workplace because they are not motivated. It is apparent that the employee motivation comes from self-actualization that is difficult for Google to nurture in its employees because it hires excellent manpower that requires proficient career development to maintain engagement and build loyalty.
Leadership has been defined as the process whereby an individual influences others in accomplishment of shared objectives. Leadership is not a one-way linear event in which only the leader affects the followers but a process through which leaders influence and they are affected by their followers. It is undisputable truth that the success or failure of an enterprise is dependent on the presence of a visionary leader who is able to offer direction in achieving the business’s objectives. Leaders are known to inspire and instill a sense of dedication and zeal to their followers which are principles crucial for success. There is tendency to view leadership in the context of highly successful business enterprises in the world that has led to the misconception that leaders are great and famous people. Successful corporations in the world have relied on the genius of their leaders to succeed. Nonetheless, in response to the changing global business environment and operations, the need for individual leaders or teams has increased significantly. The external business environment has become increasingly dynamic with uncertainty and demands for change being the two major issues faced by corporations.
When considering the term management, there has always been a common miss conception that this automatically makes an individual a leader. Leadership is only a single element of the management role. Many times managers are more comfortable utilizing a particular leadership style. While this may work well the majority of the time, certain employees or situations may require a different approach. Good leadership requires that the individual recognize the need for change to motivate their employees to accomplish the task at hand or to reach common goals. Understanding the importance of leadership is essential. However, the key element to focus on is what steps can be taken to improve one’s leadership capabilities. For many individuals this may be a difficult question to answer and may only be possible through self-assessment and reflection.
Google was founded by two University of Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their main objective of founding the company was to be able to retrieve specific data from massive amounts of information. The two developed a proprietary technology that would become the ultimate search engine. Initially the pair worked out of their dorm room, then a garage, and once they had quickly outgrown these "facilities" they had moved on to a much larger facility where they reside to this day. It seemed to be a matter of time before they had conquered the continental United States, and had begun to eye the lands across the pond.
In corporate America the term used to describe a person in a position of power is “Manager”. A leader can be a manager, but a manager is not necessarily a leader. Leaders motivate, challenge, and influence others to achieve goals. Great leaders have the necessary skills and attributes which allow them to connect with the team and organization. Being a leader is not the same as managing an organization. Leader’s posses the interpersonal skills needed to influence others to achieve a goal willingly. Leading is a major part of a manager’s job. Leaders do not need to be a manager to lead people, but managers must know how to lead as well as manage.
As any other company that managed to rise to fame, it was successful due to an exceptional organizational belief and value, Google company is no exception. Google Inc. practices a routine type of working condition for the scalability and its storage solution, managing the large scale application, as well as making a new platform. It is well known that a routine work is more stressful than any other work.
has various methods of motivation and rewarding their treasured employees. These motivational factors serve as long term strategy for the company and ensure that their staff work at an optimum level while being rewarded appropriately and maintaining high morale in the process. One of Google’s long term objective is to create challenging jobs to attract unique individuals whom have far beyond average skills for example Engineers at Google are encouraged to take up to 20% of their time for developing new products or improving of existing ones this is normally done through team work Just as Pfeffer Best practise describes “Employee involvement and information sharing” to further elaborate on this point one of the founders of Google stated “Google tends to hire problem solvers, Do it yourself spirit, they are some of the nicest and brightest people I’ve met. Thats the most pleasant part about working at google”-Ben Stoddard (Lyubomira Angova & Nevena Dragoshinova,07/02/2013) This organization also provides many incentives that make working at Google an immense experience, in order to keep their workers at the top of their game in terms of innovation, work ethic and creativity, Perks such as Employees being referred to as “Googlers” rather than workers thus eliminating or reducing status differentials as stated by Pfeiffer’s best practise. Hrm department at Google is in sy...
Employee focus (Google has a unique culture and policies to promote innovation. The company strives to employ the most qualified applicants and reward the greatest contributors, in order to promote good performance and facilitate hiring and retention)
Leaders of the future will be faced with many challenges. As the world changes, we must adapt the ways in which we face these challenges, and in turn grow as leaders. A leader is not merely someone which commands a group or organization. A good leader exhibits the ability to take an average team of individuals and achieve greatness. Leadership is not supervision or leading. It is the ability to inspire or influence others towards the end goal. As Barendsen and Gardner stated (2006), “the best leaders are individuals who, in their work, exhibit three distinct meanings of good: (1) an excellent technical and professional quality and competence, (2) an ethical orientation, and (3) a completely engaged sense of fulfillment and meaningfulness” (p. 266). Good leaders must utilize all of these traits in order to meet the challenges of the future. A few emerging challenges that future