Servant Leadership



Servant Leadership

Introduction

Servant leadership includes leadership philosophy as well as leadership practices. In traditional leaderships the power is exercised and accumulation is done by the top management. In servant leadership the power of leadership is shared and the needs of other are fulfilled before for their development and performance. Servant leadership was named by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970. Robert recognized that servant leaders could be the individuals as well as the organizations. Robert had faith that servant leaders have the ability to change the world (Salahuddin 2010).

Autocratic and Laissez-Faire are the most common distinctive types of leadership. In authoritarian leadership style the tasks are clearly defined and the result and execution is monitored. On the other hand autocratic leadership practice participate leadership style and involves the participation of employees in decision making. In this style employees have more responsibilities. Servant leadership is mostly related with participative leadership. Guiding principles are not corresponded by authoritarian leadership. The major authorities of servant leader are to motivate, encourage and support employees in enhancing their skills and abilities.

This leads towards responsibility to engage in participative decision making (Salahuddin 2010).

According to the management model presented by Blake and Mount, participative leadership style is the most efficient leadership style and increase the performance of employees and their satisfaction from a great extend. The servant leadership is not only limited to employee related behavior and it rethinks about the relationship of hierarchy between leaders and subordinates. It means it is not good to enforce participative style in all the situation instead it focuses on the responsibilities of leadership and promote the satisfaction and performance of the employees (Salahuddin 2010).

Characteristics of Servant Leader

The characteristics which are required for the development of servant leader are as follows:

Listening

Managers of leaders must have the ability to listen to other people first and understand their problems or their point of view then taken decisions. They also have to focus on the things which are not spoken. It means that they also have to listen to the inner voices (Kim 2002)

Empathy

Servant leaders also understand their subordinates, give them respect and appreciate them on their work. This thing also helps in generating competitive advantage (Kim 2002)

Healing

Servant leaders must have the ability to heal themselves and others. They solve problems and resolve conflicts among others. They try to build good relationship among people.

Other characteristic of servant leadership are awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, growth of people and building community (Kim 2002)

Servant Leadership and Leadership Theory

According to some scholars there is a difference between leadership philosophy and leadership theories. The leadership philosophy includes servant leadership and ethical leadership. Leadership theory includes functional and situational leadership. The past in the value based view that how leaders should act and on the other hand latter is usually the way that teaches how leaders should act. It has been seen that from many decayed leadership theories are not able to support servant leadership philosophy. Recently a leadership theory has been made by the James Scouller which has ...