Servant Leadership Theory

749 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Personality traits and leadership styles

Connecting Theory: Servant Leadership and Organizational Climate
Student Name
Institution of Affiliation There are various leadership theories that have been developed to explain the leadership concept and its accompanying constructs. In this essay, an argument is presented that behavioral leadership theory tends to be the one that can most closely explain servant leadership behaviors and how they influence the organizational climate. A brief explanation of behavioral leadership theory is presented with a brief explanation as to how servant leadership style can be situated within the behavioral leadership theory. Finally, the influences of servant leadership on organizational climate are presented. According to Derue et al. …show more content…

Organizations whose leaders exhibit servant leadership are characterized by leaders who are humble and with a selfless attitude that earns them support and cooperation as well as respect from their followers (Smith, 2005). According to Greenleaf (1977) in Melchar & Bosco (2010), servant leadership is characterized by organizational leaders whose focus is on their followers rather than themselves. The objective is to fulfill the needs of the servants for the common good of the organization (Melchar & Bosco, 2010). However, these servants are also expected to act in a manner that is in the best interests of the organization (Melchar & Bosco, 2010). As such, an organizational climate of mutual trust to act in the best interests of each other is created which fosters higher productivity among employees and superior organizational performance. In addition, Wong and Davey (2007) state that the overarching reason why many organizations are characterized by a strained working environment is due to the inability of many leaders to work or relate effectively with their followers. Wong and Davey (2007) further note that organizations with a positive working environment are the only ones that can attract and retain qualified and highly productive …show more content…

It influences the overall organizational climate through enhanced follower-leader relationships which in turn influence employee productivity and organization performance.
References
Derue, D. S., Nahrgang, J. D., Wellman, N. E. D., & Humphrey, S. E. (2011). Trait and behavioral theories of leadership: An integration and meta‐analytic test of their relative validity. Personnel Psychology, 64(1), 7-52.
Jacobs, G. A. (2006). Servant leadership and follower commitment. In Proceedings of the 2006 Servant Leadership Research Roundtable.
Kibbe, M. R. (2015). Leadership Theories and Styles. In Leadership in Surgery(pp. 49-57). Springer International Publishing.
Melchar, D. E., & Bosco, S. M. (2010). Achieving high organization performance through servant leadership. The Journal of Business Inquiry, 9(1), 74-88.
Northouse, P. G. (2015). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage

Show More
Related

  • Southwest Airlines: Servant Leadership

    783 Words  | 2 Pages

    Servant leadership, as defined by Kretiner and Kinkicki (2015, p.486), is putting the needs of others, including employees, customers, and community ahead of one’s own needs. This management style requires selflessness and humility from management so the organization can focus on serving key stakeholders. There are ten characteristics of a servant-leader as identified in the text

    Read More

  • The Human Resources Framework By Bolman And Deal

    1107 Words  | 3 Pages

    Servant leadership is a philosophy and set of practices that augments the lives of individuals, builds better organizations, and creates a more just and caring world, they put the team first, and themselves second (MindTools, 2015). Servant leaders are able to demonstrate their traits through interaction with followers and other leaders within the organization. The characteristics of servant leaders include their commitment to the growth of people, stewardship, and building community, and provide leaders with the opportunity to experience change and to invite followers to change (Savage-Austin & Honeycutt 2011). Servant leadership encourages leaders and followers to ‘raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality’, and set their leadership focus: follower’s first, organizations second, their own needs last (Sendjaya, Sarros, & Santora, 2008). The servant leader focuses on the needs of others to include team members.

    Read More

  • Greenleaf’s The Servant Leader

    838 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Servant Leader discusses the importance of leaders who adopt a service oriented attitude in which they care for the needs of others before their own. A servant leader need not be an actual servant or have ever been a servant to become a servant leader. Rather, a servant leader is born with or adopts an “others first” disposition. Climbing through the ranks may help to create a servant leader, though it is not necessary. When leaders choose to see that the needs of their followers or their organizations are the highest priority they become servants.

    Read More

  • Escherichia Coli Related Cystitis Prevalence and Pathogenicity

    1054 Words  | 3 Pages

    Di Martino, P., Agniel, R., David, K., Templer, C., Gaillard, J., Denys, P., & Botto, H. (2006).

    Read More

  • Hunter: An Analysis Of Contrivant Leadership In The Hunter

    934 Words  | 2 Pages

    purpose for this book is dual. First goal is clearly defining servant leadership and second one is

    Read More

  • Servant Leadership Principles Of Starbucks

    910 Words  | 2 Pages

    The quality of any organization that uses servant leadership improves, because of the organization’s continuous efforts on development. These efforts help create more efficient, content, empowered and innovative teams to generate more profitability (Schmidt, 2013). Starbucks’ employee satisfaction rate has increased and they have markedly grown since 2014 with their attempt to build a community by offering the free college tuition (Business Wire,

    Read More

  • Servant Leadership Model Of Relational Leadership

    1344 Words  | 3 Pages

    James McGregor Burns was one of the first people to come up with a definition of transformational leadership (Bromley). Transformational leadership is great, but Burns made a quote in his book Leadership that should be recognized, “The aim of leadership is not to just reach a goal, but also transform leaders and followers into better, more self-actualized leaders” (Komives and Wagner). This quote really explains what leadership means to me, not only as a person leading a group, but also learning how to follow as well.

    Read More

  • Servant Leaderships: Transformational Leadership And Contrivant Leadership

    1009 Words  | 3 Pages

    The two most intriguing leadership styles presented in the readings were transformational leadership and servant leadership. Both leadership styles are relationship-oriented, that is, in order for these leadership styles to be effective, positive relationships must exist between leaders and followers. Also, both leadership styles reject the role of leader as being reserved for those individuals in designated positions of power, but rather a quality that may be exhibited by any individual (Kelly, 2012, pp. 10-11). However, the differing goals of each leadership style is the seemingly critical factor that separates transformational leadership from servant leadership.

    Read More

  • The Definition Of Leadership According To The Leadership Theory?

    924 Words  | 2 Pages

    Leading by example is the main idea. Servant leaders do not want to be in the first line and they prefer to guide their employees from a distance. They distinguish because of their personality, their behavior and their values. The only disadvantage is that in a competitive financial environment it is difficult from them to be recognized.

    Read More

  • Systematic Leadership Theory

    1017 Words  | 3 Pages

    Systematic research on leadership began in the early 1930s (House & Aditya, 1997). Researchers were interested in identifying leadership traits that might differentiate leaders from non-leaders. Despite of devoting so much effort to this area, only a few leader traits were found to be positively related to leadership effectiveness such as intelligence and Self-confidence.(Mann, 1959).After this leadership researchers turned their attention to leaders’ behavior. Two types of leadership behavior were identified in different studies (1) Initiating structure that includes task related behaviors such as organizing work, defining role responsibilities, and setting up work activities. (2) Consideration includes relationship oriented behaviors such as building trust, respect, and liking between leaders and followers. The University of Michigan group also identified two types of leadership behaviours. (1)Production orientation means that how much leader is concerned with achieving organizational goals and tasks and (2) employee orientation means that how much followers’ needs are important to leader (House & Aditya, 1997). (Song Heyi and Mao Na Guo Dan, 2007) inspect the relationship between the traits and the performance of the leader in different organizational cultures and found that in today’s dynamic world the negative traits are directly related to the performance, leaders play significant role in every organization. As the competition between the service oriented organizations is very high and continuous change is needed here and growth of these organizations where the only possibility to survive successfully is due to the effective and productive leadership. Leadership is process of social interaction where leaders try...

    Read More

  • Leadership In Servant Leadership

    938 Words  | 2 Pages

    Servant leadership is a perplexing theory. It takes on radical ideas like a lifetime employment policy, or employee-wide furlough, to illustrate how putting the leader at the service of their employees can result in efficient leadership. “When individuals engage in servant leadership, it is likely to improve outcomes at the individual, organizational, and societal levels (PSU, 2014)". The servant leadership actions of Charlie Kim and Bob Chapman depict how the proper use of servant leadership creates trust, and inspires productivity; benefiting their organization, their employees, and

    Read More

  • A Personal Model of Leadership

    1292 Words  | 3 Pages

    Introduction Through identification and ongoing assessment of her leadership style and ability, this leader is able to develop and understand her own strengths and limitations in order to grow and develop into a more effective leader. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of servant leadership, contingency, and path-goal styles of leadership to gain an understanding of current leadership models, identify this author’s style of leadership, and explore why leadership is important to organizations, society, and this author. A Personal Model of Leadership Servant leadership was a term that was first used by Keifner Greenleaf (1970) in his first essay, The Servant as Leader (as cited by Crippen, C., 2005). Greenleaf based his essay on his belief that a servant leader is a servant first, and explained that it would begin with the natural urge to serve and then the leader would make a conscious choice to become a leader, in doing so he makes the choice to ensure that others needs are met first (2005 ). As a servant leader develops he should always keep aware of those who he serves and strive to ensure that they are becoming healthier, wiser, freer, have an increase in autonomy, and become more like servants themselves (2005).

    Read More

  • Servant Leadership Vs. Transformative Leadership

    1693 Words  | 4 Pages

    While there is a body of research for transformative leaders, there is very little for servant leadership. This is changing as more efforts are applied to understand servant leaders. This has led to conjecture that servant leadership is little more than an extension of transformative leadership. However, as demonstrated here, there very clear and marked differences between the two. Humphreys has proposed a model of servant and transformational leadership that includes the contextual variable a model of servant and transformational leadership that includes the contextual variable. With all of the available evidence, transformative leadership is best suited for a dynamic external environment, since a transformational leadership would be aggressive enough to meet the organization’s needs. (Humphreys) In a more stable external environment, a servant leader would find the most success, since their efforts would be more evolutionary versus revolutionary in

    Read More

  • Importance of Leadership in an Organization

    1833 Words  | 4 Pages

    Melchar, David and Susan Bosco. “Achieving High Organization Performance through Servant Leadership.” The Journal of Business Inquiry 9.1 (2010):74-88. http://www.uvu.edu/woodbury/jbi/volume9/journals/achieving_high_organization_performance_through_servant_leadership.pdf

    Read More

  • What Is Servant Leadership?

    695 Words  | 2 Pages

    Servant Leadership means to serve others and to lead. It puts everyone else first teaching to put others before yourself, with this leading qualities emerge. Just being or having leadership qualities doesn’t always work. Most leadership models show possessive towards the better for themselves, some work out while others don’t, mostly I think because the unwillingness to see others before yourself is a hard concept for some to understand and use. You can be a great leader but if you don’t understand servant qualities or serve for the benefit of others your probley not much liked. Most I don’t think know what Servant Leadership is or means, I didn’t until this course opened it up to me.

    Read More

More about Servant Leadership Theory

Open Document