Servant Leadership Research And Application

Introduction

The enormous and daunting task of leading an educational institution has is challenges. The task of taking over an underperforming middle school under the dark clouds of No Child Left Behind can be the greatest challenge of a site-level school administrator. Although it may seem impossible to overcome adversity within a staff that lives each and every day in desperation and negativity, with the help of the right administrator the dark clouds that hover over the school can be cleared by a new vision of healing, building community within and a commitment to the common growth of the organization. It would be easy to take the crystal ball theory and look into the future and change all the problems that have been created over time that determine the root cause of why the organization is where they are today. The bold reality is that in order for a leader to make effective transformational change, he or she must have a game plan and a research-based model that drives the common vision. Servant leadership is a model that is built on the foundation that the leader serves its followers, before he or she even thinks about the notion of leading. The foundation of this leadership research application looks deep into the ground floor transformation of an underperforming middle school using servant leadership as the primary model and tests the notion that a support model of authentic leadership in conjunction can move the organization towards internal success as a group and as individuals. As many small trickles of water feed the mightiest of rivers, the growing number of individuals and organizations practicing servant-leadership has increased into a torrent, one that carries with it a deep current of meaning and passio...

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