Servant Leadership

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 she had a Master’s degree in English. However, Lila felt this was her calling as she thoroughly enjoyed writing and wished to pursue what she felt passionate about. So she began at square one, taking introductory courses for her selected major and although her college journey ended three years later than other students, at 24, she felt happy she finally accomplished something she truly wanted.
From that point forward, Lila began her path towards her desired career of novelist. She began writing several books, going to events to network with publishers and literary agents. She got the contact information of various people in the literary world and even managed to speak to an editor for a major publishing house. However, every time she tried to get work out there, no one wanted to listen. She received rejections on top of more rejections, or just no response at all. She felt alone and she felt lost because of all the time she dedicated to her one, true passion. Several years passed and she took odd jobs to pay the bills. She worked at the zoo, worked in daycare facilities, all to make sure she could keep her head above water. At the age of 29, Lila discovered from a friend, a hiking club that would go on trails and take long trips in nature. She felt compelled to join and go on a weekend getaway to one of the nature preserves near the city.
During this time, she connected with the world around her and made new connections with those in the club. Over a series of months, she built up rapport with several people there and felt as though she made lifelong friendships with some of them. It was in these connections, that she began to see something in herself she never saw before, how she could be a leader, how she can provide stability and direction within a group. Because although she was the newcomer, she had developed a sense of identity and a sense of purpose within the group. She was the one that helped plan the hiking trails. She made sure to talk to everyone and make everyone aware of the dangers of certain areas. Her knowledge, communication skills, and ability to adapt to various scenarios, quickly earned her respect and admiration from her peers. The wisdom and experience she gained from being a leader in her club propelled her to write a novel of her experiences, a sort of ‘How-to Guide to Hiking’. Because her information came from a genuine source, readers quickly praised her work and demanded she make more. Eventually after a few years, she became a successful non-fiction author, providing helpful information those interested in hiking.
The hiking club had awakened in her, a self-realization that she could lead. Servant leaders are those that provide effective leadership through collaboration, communication, and compassion. By Lila demonstrating to the hiking club that she could take responsibility and guide them, she proved she could do something she otherwise would have never thought she could. Effective servant leaders do not have to be the quintessential ‘male’ or masculine personality. They can be someone outside of the perceived stereotype of confident leader, because they help the group towards goal completion. There is a certain level of awareness and self-reflection needed to be a servant leader and Lila demonstrated such acumen throughout her time developing as an adult and as a leader within the hiking club.
Although her journey in college was met with hurdles and several setbacks, she was determined and able to find her way, which led to successful completion of her college degree and lucrative career. If one looks at life experiences, one understands the process of what makes a good leader (Dierendonck & Patterson, 2018). How someone handles challenges and obstacles is a major way of determining an effective leader. Even though Lila was met with resistance for her academic choices by her parents, she insisted she needed to continue doing what she felt she needed to; and although she was met with continued obstacles, she found herself by going out there and exploring new experiences. Self-reflection is the most basic step towards servant leadership (Dierendonck & Patterson, 2018). Without the necessary self-reflection, leaders cannot ascertain what they need and what the group needs.
Lila planning out routes for the hiking club meant she understood there needed to be some pre-planning for the outings and was determined to take on the extra responsibility because she believed in herself like she did when she chose a new major in college. Without that determination and that confidence in her abilities, Lila would not have been able to build the kind of rapport she did with the hiking club. The case study is meant to show how life experiences can shape and mold a servant leader or any kind of leader. Lifespan studies examines the entire life of someone from birth to old age and sees how various instances contribute and play a role in a person’s current actions. “…psychologists who study human development have recently adopted the lifespan perspective which “maintains that important changes occur during every period of development and that these changes must be interpreted in terms of the culture and context in which they occur” (Meacham, 2012). Lifespan development can be applied to servant leadership because experiences help make up the ability of someone to lead, especially regarding servant leadership that demands for a greater emphasis on communication, compassion, and collaboration.
When servant leaders emerge as effective pillars of any group, it is because of the various challenges or experiences they have dealt with throughout their life. From experiences during childhood to experiences in adulthood, they all help contribute to the idea of leadership and the kind of personal strength required for such a role. It is in these case studies that proper understanding of servant leadership comes through.
Servant leadership offers a look into how someone not only provides stability to a group through thoughtful decisions, but how they take on responsibilities that otherwise would be left to whomever chose to do them. Although Lila was considered a newcomer, she felt the need to communicate with everyone in the group and get a gauge as to how everyone was during the hikes. By developing rapport with each person, she built a meaningful connection with the entire group and slowly through her actions, gained their respect. Communication is such an integral part of effective leadership, especially servant leadership that requires some level of collaboration (Dierendonck & Patterson, 2018).
When Lila made friendships with those in the hiking club, she felt more comfortable and able to truly discover her purpose within the group. Those experiences she parlayed into a lucrative writing career that then provided her a means of gaining fulfillment and satisfaction. Life choices often do not always seem like they make sense. However, when one looks at the full picture, and reflects on what has happened, one can see the true difference from the beginning to the end. Lifespan development may include a ‘mapping out’ of a person’s life to understand inner motivations and aspirations (Meacham, 2012). When Lila reflected on her life choices during her stint at becoming a novelist, she could not see how she would get to the end result of a successful writing career. However, the steps she took, which at first seemed wrong, eventually led to her success in the present. The same can be said of servant leadership.
Effective servant leaders take what they have learned in the past, especially mistakes made in the past, and they use that to provide fuel for solutions in the present. Whatever obstacles exist, servant leadership is one of the few leadership styles that can lead to true handling of the problems and real solutions (Dierendonck & Patterson, 2018). This is why servant leadership has grown in popularity as a leadership style. Other leadership styles like transactional leadership and transformational leadership may seem like the most common options and have been for centuries (Bertocci, 2009), nonetheless, servant leadership will continue to see more use in society as complex problems require complex solutions and even more capable leaders.
References
Bertocci, D. I. (2009). Leadership in Organizations: There is a Difference Between Leaders and Managers. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Blanchard, K., & Broadwell, R. (2018). Servant Leadership in Action: How You Can Achieve Great Relationships and Results. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Dierendonck, D. V., & Patterson, K. (2018). Practicing Servant Leadership: Developments in Implementation. Basingstoke, England: Springer.
Enyia, S. O. (2018). Servant Leadership. Page Publishing.
Flint, B. B. (2011). The Journey to Competitive Advantage Through Servant Leadership: Building the Company Every Person Dreams of Working for and Every President Has a Vision of Leading. Nashville, TN: WestBow Press.
Meacham, W. (2012, May 14). Definition and Explanation of Lifespan Development Psychology. Retrieved from https://owlcation.com/social-sciences/What-is-Lifespan-Development-Psychology-Exploring-Development-Through-Lifespan
PennState. (2016, June 26). What Google is Getting Right with Servant Leadership. Retrieved from https://sites.psu.edu/leadership/2016/06/26/what-google-is-getting-right-with-servant-leadership/
Spears, L. C., & Lawrence, M. (2002). Focus on Leadership: Servant-Leadership for the Twenty-First Century. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Trastek, V. F., Hamilton, N. W., & Niles, E. E. (2014). Leadership Models in Health Care—A Case for Servant Leadership. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 89(3), 374-381. doi:10.1016/j.mayocp.2013.10.012
Wong, D. W., Hall, K. R., Justice, C. A., & Hernandez, L. W. (2015). Counseling Individuals Through the Lifespan. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.