Abstract The servant-leadership concept continues to grow in its influence and impact. In fact, it has been witnessed of an unparalleled explosion of interest and practice of servant-leadership. In several ways, it can truly be said that the times are only now beginning to catch up with Robert Greenleaf’s visionary call to servant-leadership. The purpose of this literature review paper is to understand the effectiveness of Greenleaf’s “servant-leadership” philosophy. Through motivation to lead, a need to serve, and empowering and developing people. This is caused by displaying and expressing a positive attitude, humility, a trust for others, fairness, and social responsibility that focuses on helping organizations become stronger on a corporate …show more content…
The notion of a servant as a leader or “servant-leadership” has come to be known, and is purposefully in nature. It is a unique style of leadership ideology which flows against the grain of self-interest human behavior. The main idea of servant-leadership should be typical a hierarchy where employees serve their bosses. In contrast, leaders serve their people. This is the the foundation for leaders to lead others effectively. According to Greenleaf (1998), “the need for a better approach to leadership, one that puts serving others—including employees, customers, and community—as the number one priority. Servant-leadership emphasizes increased service to others, a holistic approach to work, promoting a sense of community, and the sharing of power in decision making.” Servant-leadership’s management philosophy help leads and inspire others to achieve superior organizational …show more content…
According to Boone & Makhani (2012), “servant leaders lead through their vision, their mental picture, and oral description of what tomorrow will be like.” During a servant-leaders successful journey, an individual must first express a vision that will unify, energize, attract, and guide followers (Boone & Makani, 2012). Visions are sometimes thought of as taking a leap of faith. It can also serve as a useful tool for recruitment and fulfilling the role of the North Star (Boone & Makhani, 2012). Visioning inspires both the leader and follower to act and accomplish; therefore, visioning requires courage. In order to practice visioning effectively, an individual must learn to aim high and allow for wind and elevation (Boone & Makhani,
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
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.
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.
purpose for this book is dual. First goal is clearly defining servant leadership and second one is
After leaders develop their visions, they must make them convincing, and persuasive or as known as a compelling vision which is known as the vision that people can see, feel, understand and embrace. Therefore the effective leaders will give a rich and colorful image of what the future will be after their visions have been
Servant leadership is defined as a philosophy that one carry outs to supplement the lives of others and shape organizations to become better. In order to become a servant leader, you have to first become a servant. One must be want to serve first. There’s a difference between servant leadership and an authentic leadership style. The impression of servant leadership can be traced back to have started two thousand years
Servant leadership is becoming a more “sought-after” concept in today’s society, but what exactly is servant leadership? Does it mean different things to different people? Although the three books, The Servant as Leader, The Servant, and Lead Like Jesus, all center around servant leadership, each author takes a different perspective on the meaning of being a servant leader. Robert Greenleaf addresses leadership from a straight-forward stance; saying that a good leader must be a servant-first by finding the will within themselves to put the needs of their group before their own. James Hunter discusses servant leadership through a story involving everyday people that the reader can relate to. He uses Jesus as a guide to explain how to initiate character development that will, in turn, fashion servant leadership. Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges offer a new perspective on servant leadership by bringing Jesus into the picture on an even deeper level than Hunter. They explain that by knowing Jesus Christ and developing an intimate personal
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,
3). Through the service of others, servants as leaders create positive changes in the lives of others that lead those served to act more autonomously (Block, Blanchard, Wheatley & Autry, 2006). The goal of a service leader is to help others achieve their highest level of functioning. Those served are then motivated to become service leaders as well (Block, Blanchard, Wheatley & Autry, 2006). Thus, servant leadership focuses on commitment to helping the individual served grow in their abilities. In turn this gives the served individual confidence in their work and personal abilities which then transforms into a desire to help others do the
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
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).
Andy Stanley begins with the origin of a vision. Stanley (1999) contends, “Visions are born in the soul of a man or woman who is consumed with the tension between what is and what could be” (p. 17). According to Stanley, a vision is the ability to see what is possible in light of the present reality. A leader will not a have a vision for an organization if he is content with the status quo. Conversely, it is out of discontent that a vision is birth within a leader’s heart.
Many leadership styles exist. The determining factor if a leadership style is effective or not is often how it is carried out and if it is appeasing to those, the leader is attempting to lead. One of the leadership styles that has become popular is Servant leadership. Although Greenleaf developed servant leadership more than thirty-five years ago and he identified ten characteristics that pertain to servant leadership. (book p. 56) Servant leadership has been successful in various industries and its popularity continues to increase.
“The God of creation moves graciously reconcile that fallen human race to himself (2Cor.5:19)”, (Howell, 2003, 300). Servant-leaders are not to have a vision agenda because
Before a leader can be successful and before goals can be set, a vision is needed. A vision is something you want to achieve or accomplish, something you want for the future, and it is the most important thing for a successful leader to have. Without a clear vision, leaders will have problems inspiring others, and employees will have a difficult time being motivated due to not knowing what they’re working to achieve. Clark (1997) states that “As a leader, you have to get your followers to trust you and be sold on your vision” (p. 1)...