Introduction Often leaders and people may feel inclined to place the blame or responsibility outside of themselves. Taking responsibility for one’s own actions and thinking presents as a major challenge, leading to additional problems in the long run. People have seen this before as their boss or manager shifts the blame to their employees rather than owning up to their own failures and it leads to instability within the company. Servant leaders are a different kind of leader. Leaders stemming from a fairly new philosophy and leadership style, they self-reflect and own up to their mistakes as any good leader should because they understand the need to work together and complete a goal. Servant leadership offers an alternative to the traditional forms of leadership: transactional and transformational and steps away from the often fatalistic mentality of stereotypical leadership roles. Although such leadership styles have their place in society, servant leadership may become the best way to develop effective and efficient leaders. This essay aims to provide a basis from which to understand what servant leadership is through case studies, comparison to traditional and transactional leadership styles and how it applies in Lifespan studies and Lifespan development.

By understanding the philosophy behind servant leadership, one can connect such a philosophy to the Lifespan framework and understand how various experiences can not only make an effective servant leader, but provide the foundation for leadership to rise within an individual. People need great leaders because most cannot or are unwilling to perform the necessary actions to complete major and complicated tasks. By implementing the philosophy of servant leadership, society may grow and expand in ways never before seen.

What is Servant Leadership?

Servant leadership exists as a leadership philosophy where the main objective of the leader is service. Different from other, more traditional leadership styles, servant leaders do not focus on the organization’s or the company’s success, but rather puts the needs of followers or employees first, helping them develop and perform to the best of their ability (Blanchard & Broadwell, 2018). By inverting the norm, servant leaders put followers and employees as a main priority. One can see this through a retail store setting. Ordinarily a manger would aim to get the highest sales goals regardless of what skills and abilities the sales associates in the store have, often adopting a transactional leadership style. By focusing on store goals, the manager misses golden opportunities to promote a better work environment and overall better store performance by refusing to communicate effectively with his subordinates and promoting and encouraging their development.

Communication is an important part of the servant leadership philosophy. Going back to the store example, if the manager communicates with each store employee, he can discover each of their strengths and weaknesses and assign tasks accordingly. For instance, employee A is a people person and is an excellent communicator but a poor understanding of the cash register. Employee B performs well ringing customers up, but is shy and does not enjoy talking to customers. They can work together and split sales in half allowing both to perform to their strengths while also providing better sales for the store. This is the kind of effectiveness servant leadership promotes through its extensive philosophy.

The founder of the servant leadership philosophy is Robert K. Greenleaf. According to Greenleaf, servant leaders must focus on, “Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants” (Spears & Lawrence, 2002, p. 24). Through shifting of mindsets from serving the company/organization to serving the needs of the employees/followers, both the company/organization and the employees/followers benefit. Because employees/followers improve and develop, it leads to higher work performance and productivity, and the company/organization gains profits and better reputation from such improvements. In fact, because servant leadership leads to better results, various top ranking organizations have adopted the style, leading to continued success (Flint, 2011). Companies like Google understand the need to address employee issues and make working at the company enjoyable. “Google seems to have a fundamental understanding of many servant leadership characteristics....

Google employees are nurtured with free meals, haircuts, transportation, and gym memberships. In addition to material perks, Google encourages open communication and listening” (PennState, 2016).
The main aspects of servant leadership consist of self-reflection and awareness. “Servant leadership focuses on the leader's development through awareness and self-knowledge. Self-reflection and awareness enable a leader to understand his or her purpose, beliefs, and individual characteristics” (Trastek, Hamilton, & Niles, 2014, p. 379). Servant leaders must understand what motivates and inspires themselves so they can then apply such knowledge to others after assessing what kind of obstacles affect their followers. Servant leaders often have a number of characteristics that make them receptive to the process. “Spears18 identified the qualities and characteristics of servant leadership: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. These characteristics drive servant leaders to help people meet their goals and overcome challenges” (Trastek, Hamilton, & Niles, 2014, p. 379). These characteristics help them shape their identity and how they handle situations.

One of the most significant and strongest principles of servant leadership lies in its focus on teamwork. This is because servant leadership theorists believe leaders must not lead alone. “This principle makes room for servant leaders to master the art of delegation of power, authority, and responsibility to make decisions” (Enyia, 2018, p. 120). So many problems bombard modern day business from politics to safety concerns, to a stagnant economy. Servant leaders understand the importance of collaboration and use it to solve complex, multi-faceted problems (Enyia, 2018). In doing so, they are able to provide better results than transactional leaders that only approach problems from an often simplified perspective.

Lifespan Development

Lifespan development and lifespan studies allows people to understand the process of growth and development in a person. Through real world observations, people can understand how humans transform through each life stage. “Human development and lifespan studies often lend themselves to investigation within real-world settings. These naturalistic observations can be conducted in child care centers, classrooms, work settings, shopping malls, sporting arenas” (Wong, Hall, Justice, & Hernandez, 2015, p. 37). Case studies offer an in-depth look at a single person. Heavy in qualitative data, case studies provide individual perspective on key issues that affect everyday people. These individual perspectives and experiences lend to a better understanding of certain phenomenon like leadership and adaptability (Wong, Hall, Justice, & Hernandez, 2015).

When looking to understand how servant leadership principles and characteristics develop in an individual, it is important to see how that person’s life created an environment for such personal growth. The various obstacles overcome and the various influences all make up the personality and the drive of a person. Therefore, to better understand servant leadership and how it cultivates in others, one must look at the individual.

Case Study: Lila, Age 31, Female

Lila began her college journey attempting to be something she thought was lucrative. When she was a young child, she loved playing video games and thought that being a game developer would be a worthwhile job. She looked online and saw the salaries for programmers were halfway decent and decided to pursue the Computer Science major in order to fulfill her dreams of being a video game developer. As time passed and she took on more courses, she discovered programming was not as easy as she once believed. She began failing her courses and could not understand how she would keep up with the workload. Eventually she ended up taking one year off due to failing several classes.

Although she pursued her Associates degree in Science, she had to transfer to two other schools because she felt lost about what degree to pursue for her Bachelors. She decided to give programming one more shot, but then quickly realized, she was not cut out for that kind of work. Instead she pursued an English degree, which prompted protest from her parents. They told her an English degree was not lucrative. That she would not find gainful employment even if…