Functional Attributess: Servant Leadership Attributes

Many have developed elements that they believe are the foundation of servant leadership. In summary, included in the fundamentals are healing, creating value for community, empowering, empathy, listening, awareness, behaving ethically, and helping others grow and succeed. Healing refers to leaders trying to help solve problems and relationships. Creating value for community refers to leaders serving as an example and encouraging others to also serve the community. Empowering refers to leaders providing followers with autonomy. Empathy refers to leaders understanding others. Listening is a trait all leaders should possess. In order to understand, one should first listen. Awareness refers to leaders attentive to the things happening around them. Behaving ethically refers to the demonstrating of integrity to gain the trust of followers. Helping others grow and succeed refers to leaders providing support to followers to help them develop and accomplish professional and personal goals.

Over the course of my career, I have tried to model various leadership behaviors based upon successful leaders that I have worked with or for. This has led me to incorporate different styles into my own. Considering my current leadership strengths and how I view successful leaders I will use a servant leadership theory to analyze my own competencies. Servant leaders have 9 different aspects comprised of: emotional healing, creating value for the community, conceptual skills, empowering, helping subordinates grow and succeed, putting subordinates first, behaving ethically, relationships, and servanthood (Boone & Makhani, 2005, pg. 86). The aspects of a servant leader are those that I personally value and identify with. In addition to this, it is my belief that servant leaders, because they are people oriented, are more effective in a variety of environments and situations.

Servant leadership is defined by a willingness of a leader to put the needs, desires, recognition and success of their employees and organization above their own interests. They often inspire followership through their example resulting in deeply loyal subordinates that are motivated to emulate the leader’s behavior not out of fear or a desire to please and impress but because of its intrinsic value. Reading through the results of my Seven Habits Profile I noticed that I was comparatively deficient on a few of the foundational and organizational habits such as putting first things first and beginning with the end in mind. Conversely, I had a much higher level of empathetic traits with synergy, seeking first to understand, and thinking win-win taking the top three spots. These traits are highly consistent with servant leadership.

Servant Leadership is “an approach to leadership with strong altruistic and ethical overtones that asks and requires leader to be attentive to the needs of their followers and empathize with them; they should take care of them by making sure they become healthier, wiser, freer and more autonomous, so that they too can become servant leaders” (Valeri, 2007). Although there is not many servant leaders in this world but the concept of servant is one of the most leadership approach leaders today struggles with. Servant leadership is mainly about the leader helping to grow their followers or members personally and professionally through empathy, listening skills and compassion. The concept of servant leadership which was proposed by Robert K. Greenleaf in his 1970 writing indicated that servant leadership is a theoretical framework that advocated a leader’s primary motivation and role as service to others.

The two theories that I chose to do my self-assessment by are the authentic leadership theory and the servant leadership theory. The authentic leadership theory was chosen due to my desire to stay true to who I am and what I stand for. However, the servant leadership theory was chosen because of my desire to meet the needs of others while doing what I can to help others succeed as well as meet their set goals. Being a servant while being authentic are the traits I want in my style of leadership and are assessed throughout this paper along with my strengths and weaknesses in the area of leadership.

Traits commonly listed as characteristics of servant leadership include a makeup of providing accountability, supporting and resourcing, engaging in honest self-evaluation, fostering collaboration, communicating with clarity, and valuing and appreciating (Irving/Longbotham pg 8).

Servant leadership is a theory based on Robert K Greenleaf’s belief that all men have a primary motivation to serve others and through this service they aspire to lead (Parris & Peachey, 2012). Although this leadership model has very little in common with charismatic and situational does however compare to transformational leadership in several areas. The main area of commonality between the two can be found as transformational leaders serve as stewards to change enable the followers to accept the change and move forward with the organization (Tichy & Devanna, 1990, p. 75). In essence, servant leadership becomes the long-term transformational approach to life and work.

At its core, servant leadership is about service to others and originates from within. Servant leaders possess individual qualities within themselves that facilitate their leading through acts of service. Ten traits characterize servant leadership: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of others, and building communities. Servant leaders, according to Parolini (2004), are characterized by their ability to “bring integrity, humility, and servant hood into caring for, empowering and developing others in carrying out tasks and processes of visioning, goal setting, leading, modeling, team building, and shared-decision making” (Parolini, 2004, p. 9). A historic

The Servant-leadership characteristics are ‘Listening’, ‘Empathy, ‘Healing’, ‘Awareness’, ‘Persuasion’, ‘Conceptualization’, ‘Foresight’, ‘Stewardship’, ‘Commitment to the growth and development of people’, and ‘Building community’. Over the last one week, as a team leader, I started applying some of the Servant-leadership characteristics across the team. Evaluated the results against our previous accomplishments. The outcome of this approach seems promising with better results and upbringing new team players.

In the process of interviewing a servant leader, this paper investigates the defining behavior of servant leadership from a practical and philosophical standpoint. There are practical behavioral characteristics that can be uniformly integrated into the business infrastructure that is founded upon Biblical principles yet not used as a pool to proselytize. Through research and group discussion boards, this paper analyzes the institutional applications and the interpersonal relationships

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.

Simply, servant leaders hold a view as a servant first and leader second (Owens & Hekman, 2012). Moreover, servant leaders emphasize personal responsibility for the organization and all internal and external stakeholders (Peterson, Galvin, & Lange, 2012). As stated, expressing a genuine concern and care for people are a basis of servant leadership. In addition, servant leadership also focuses on the growth of

Servant leadership is a type of leadership whereby the leader serves the needs of the people, empathizes with them, and involves them in solving their needs. Servant leadership is all about involving the people you are leading in your decision making, being ethical and caring for the people to enhance their personal growth at the same time improve their life. A servant leader does not simply delegate roles; he starts the work and energizes the others to join him and get the work done. According to Spears (2004), the servant leader as defined by Greenleaf is one who gets the natural feeling of wanting to serve first and then a conscious choice brings him/her to lead. This leader makes sure that other people’s highest-priority needs are take

Several reviews have been conducted to provide insight into servant leadership as a theory. Parris and Peachey (2013) state that Russell and Stone reviewed the theoretical framework of servant leadership and listed nine distinct character traits of servant leaders, namely; integrity, honesty, vision, service, trust, modeling, pioneering, appreciation of others and empowerment. Parris and Peachey (2013) appreciate the conceptual framework in the work of Russell and Stone yet they note that it lacks a methodology.

Instead of asking an individual to do something for him, he or she instead does it himself. Sometimes going hardly noticeable by others because to them it becomes expected of them. Servant Leadership is associated with theological and orgazational values ( Paul and Blanchard, 1988). It is in regards to caring, elegance, importance and management being highly regarded with servants feeling better about their employees and themselves. Servant Leaders benefit from insights, information, contacts which makes it productive and effective in what they do. Recommending and suggesting new ways of doing things gives leaders an effective way to self-replenish