Darius Goes West: Servant Leadership

Servant leadership isn’t applied or adequate to only one type of culture or even one type of culture. Servant leadership can actually be applied to all walks of life and all parts of the world. For example, the culture of the Japanese and the religion of the Hindu people both embrace a sense of what we call servant leadership. All religions and cultures have their own unique way in which they apply servant leadership, either based on their beliefs, history, or lifestyles. The significance of servant leadership is demonstrated in different ways within each culture and religion even when some cultures are not aware that what they are implying is servant leadership. As religions and cultures change and expand through time the concept of servant leadership is adapted and applied in different ways.

K: The commitment to treat the people with compassion and kindness is the basis of servant leadership in the global perspective.

Leadership refers to the act of leading a considerable number of people within an establishment or the capacity to do this. Leadership has to do with coming up with a vision that is crystal clear and the ability to spreads that idea out in a manner that makes individuals, given the information, knowledge, and methods to understand, willing to follow. Subsequently, balancing and coordinating the conflicting interests of all stakeholders and members. It is typical for any good leader to step up in the event of a contingency, with the potential to imagine and act creatively in situations that prove to be difficult. Different from management, leadership can never be taught, in as much as it may be learned and bettered employing mentoring and coaching (Servant Leadership Based on Robert Greenleaf’s Writings, 2010).

Servant leadership is a key theme in the film Darius Goes West. Darius Weems, a fifteen year old boy with a disability, and thirteen friends travel across the country to spread awareness of Muscular Dystrophe. The original plan was to promote his disability by campaigning to put his wheelchair on MTV's "Pimp My Ride.” Darius’ ultimate goal is to speed the process to finding a cure to Muscular Dystrope and express that a disability will not disable a person from having a fulfilling life.

He’s very confused about a lot of things, and there are a lot of people that he doesn’t recognize at first. Most of these people are scientists that are trying to help Jason, but at the same time they are just using him to find out more about their experiment. A lot of opinions from these people are thrown into Jason’s face. He gets threatened with death many times from them because he doesn’t want to cooperate with these scientists. He just wants to go home to his family. However, he has to tolerate all of it and go along with it for a while otherwise he might not make it out of the facility

“Servant Leadership” throughout history has always been a vital concept to grasp as leaders, however the actual term was not coined until the 1970’s by Robert Greenleaf in his essay The Servant as a Leader. Greenleaf depicts the concept of servant leadership as being a servant first meaning the leader is always willing, ready, and eager to assist those around them in order to create the best environment for everyone to work towards achieving goals.

Robert Greenleaf was the first individual to introduce the concept of a servant leader. Greenleaf was born in 1904 in Terre Haute, Indian. In 1970, after spending the majority of his professional career with AT&T as their director of management development, he released an essay entitled “The Servant as Leader”. This essay described the servant leadership style in detail. Greenleaf stated that he believed the best leader is one who is a servant first. He stated that there were a few key factors for being a servant leader which included; listening, persuasion, access to intuition and foresight, and use of language.

From the group Biblical Integration Paper, it was understood that servant-leadership is not only a gift of purpose that God places in the hearts of His people, but it is also a calling in one’s life to truly touch the lives of others in need. Living a successful life, as a servant-leader is not one that focuses on self-fulfillment, rather it is in seeking a fulfillment that comes from Christ when one pours him/herself out for the sake of others. It is through servant-leadership that one is able to bring hope into hopeless situations (Group Integration Paper,

Servant leadership can be defined as a, “philosophy and set of practices that enriches the lives of individuals, builds better organizations and ultimately creates a more just and caring world” (What is Servant Leadership). Robert Greenleaf first introduced the idea of servant leadership in 1977 as a way to transform leadership to focus on serving others including employees, customers and the community (Marquis and Huston, 2015). Due to the primary focus of serving others, it comes to no surprise that servant leadership and its supporting characteristics are gaining popularity in the nursing field. Although most sources identify ten characteristics of servant leadership, this paper will focus on listening, empathy and building community (Kumar, 2010).

Michelle’s life embodies the idea of a person who has the x-factor, she shows that leadership is something that is developed over time and learned through experiences. The x-factor is when individuals in a society spark creativity, it is a multi-discipline that borrows and synthesis existing intellectual resources to generate new ones and approach causation. (Burns, 2003). Michelle is a prime example of the ideals of the x-factor that crates a leader.

To many readers it will seem to many that Jason really went through some very difficult tasks just to get the what he was traveling to do. We see that not only does he show proof that he and his crew could handle anything. Jason is considered to be a very ordinary man who shows a huge strength and heroism. He also does have his flaws and weakness for women. He also isn’t truly considered to be the leader of this big adventure and takes a smaller role until he reaches

Of late, popular literature has had a focus on what has been termed the “servant leader” and how servant leaders benefit the businesses they are involved with. Jim Collins talks about the concept as Level 5 Leadership in his book: Good to Great (2001), and Tony Dungy, a pro football coach famous for building a record-breaking streak of winning teams, describes it in his book: The Mentor Leader (2010). The servant leader concept has modesty as a central focus. This feature in leadership is often associated with credit sharing for accomplishments (Pfeffer, 2015, pg. 66). Leaders who give credit to their teams for their accomplishments rather than taking credit for the work of the entire firm or organization are considered modest.

I have recently completed a service project at the animal shelter in Bulloch County, Georgia. For four days I rode with my group to the animal shelter to play with the animals. Playing with the animals shows them compassion. We played with many dogs over the course of four days. Doing this service have made myself and my group servant leaders. What is a servant leader you ask, well a servant leader wants to help others better themselves. They want to help even if they do not look like, think like, or talk like us.

The foundation of my personal leadership philosophy can be found in the principles of servant leadership as spelled out by Greenleaf (1970, 1977). Leadership is granted to individuals who are by nature servants. An individual emerges as a leader by first becoming a servant. Servant leaders attend to the needs of those they serve and help them become more informed, free, self-sufficient, and like servants themselves. Leaders and those they serve improve, enhance, and develop each other through their connection. A leader must also be conscious of inequalities and social injustices in the organizations they serve and work actively to resolve those issues. Servant leaders rely less on the use of official power and control, but focus on empowering those they

As written in the lines above, employee engagement has a significant impact on an employee and their engagement. Although there has been many articles and research written about leadership and servant leadership, in this study, it will provide and overview, key traits and influences that servant leaders use in collaboration to address significant problems with strategy and other individuals. Therefore, how do managers and leaders facilitate the engagement of their employees? Leaders do this through their leadership style. In 1970, Robert K. Greenleaf identified servant-leadership, which was different from the traditional views of leadership. According to Greenleaf, “The servant-leader is a servant first. Servant