Prior to his appointment as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (SECVA) Robert (Bob) McDonald was already well-known for his advocacy and promotion of the concept of “Servant Leadership” a term first coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970. The author first wrote about the concept of Servant Leadership in an essay titled “The Servant as Leader.” In his essay, Greenleaf recounted his reason for writing the essay, stemmed from the belief that the country was in a leadership crisis and he had a responsibility to attempt to address the problem. When Mr. McDonald came to the VA, he like Greenleaf intuitively recognized the need for and his responsibility to institute and nurture this style of leadership within the department’s leadership ranks. The MyVA Integrated Plan (MIP) dated July 2015, illustrates McDonald’s commitment to this theory by recognizing the need to cultivate leadership excellence in the …show more content…
He depicts this type of person as an individual who makes a conscious choice to lead others, not out of a desire for power or material gain, but rather from a desire to serve and meet the needs of subordinates. Further, he defines the leader as the person who leads the way, who is open, inspires those in his or her sphere of influence, gains the trust and confidence of others, provides motivation, takes ownership of problems, is creative in respect to new ideas and assumes the risk of failing. The author asserts the best way to determine the effectiveness of servant style leadership is whether subordinates gain greater autonomy, knowledge and freedom to affect positively, those that are disadvantaged in our society. In other words, do these employees lead by the servant leader gain the knowledge, skills and abilities, which allow them to act autonomous of their leader in order to improve the lives of those in society, which are in need of their
Leadership is portrayed at its pinnacle in William Bratton’s Turnaround, Rudolph Giuliani’s book Leadership, Oren Harari’s book The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell, and David Lipsky’s book Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point. In each of these works, the author does an exceptional job of depicting the various traits and characteristics necessary for being a powerful and effective leader.
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
In deed on June 6, 1944, the little town of Bedford, VA, suffered a tragedy that would never be forgotten. But through the pain and hardship some of officers who leaded the Bedford boys displayed remarkable leadership’s principles. One of the basic functions of leadership is to unite people: bring people together to achieve common objectives. There is truth in the statement, where there is unity there is strength. This essay will offer a working definition of effective leadership principles and discuss the function of leadership as it relates to followers, motivation and power.
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.
Several traits and abilities contribute to the making of the servant leader and are discussed with equal importance in the essay. However there are some that seem to stand out more than others, not only as advice to leaders but also as advice in living a high quality life.
General Colin Powell displays the transformation leadership qualities of Inspirational Motivation. He provides “energy and direction that fuels the actions of followers.” His model of effective leadership requires “pushing the vision down to every level of the organization.” The most important role is ens...
A servant leader is someone, regardless of level, who leads simply by meeting the needs of the team.
Leadership & Direction. (1997, May 11). Retrieved April 6, 2011, from Big Dog & Little Dog's
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.
ADRP 6-22: Army Leadership; Chapter 10: Organizational Leadership, HQ, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C, 10 September 2012
Servant leadership consists of leaders helping their followers become leaders themselves. The use personal skills such as empathy, compassion and listening to help their followers succeed. It is not necessarily the most popular form of leadership but, it has been proven successful b those leaders who implement it in their work practices. Servant leaders typically have a strong bond with their team. They are the base and the foundation of their teams.
Northhouse (2013) servant leadership questionnaire was designed to critique the seven behaviors characteristics of a servant leader. In addition, the questionnaire results can assist the leader in assessing areas in which the leader would have strong servant leadership behaviors. Furthermore, the questionnaire results can inform the leader what areas that might need some improvement. After completing the questionnaire, I received scores in the high (23-28) to moderate (14-22) ranges. The results are listed below with each behavior characteristics.
Many people want to attain and hold influential positions in society whether it would be in the field of science, politics, education, or in public service. However, many people tend to forget how servitude is one of the main life highways to travel in order to arrive at that successful destination called “Leadership.” Nevertheless, there was one man who knew how powerful the concept of servitude was in order to grasp the reigns of successful leadership. Socrates was a phenomenal philosopher, scholar, teacher, and servant. Socrates leadership style was unique in regards to letting students communicate among one another in an articulate theological reasoning process by questioning and probing at one’s belief system in order to seek self-purification.
Stone, A. G., Russell, R. F., & Patterson, K. (n.d.). Transformational versus servant leadership: A difference in leader focus. Retrieved from http://www.regent.edu/acad/sls/publications/conference_proceedings/servant_leadership_roundtable/2003pdf/stone_transformation_versus.pdf
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