Reflection on Leadership
Point of Interest
Servant leadership is an interesting subject due to the transition in leadership. The leaders have previously been expected to pave the way for the subjects. On such incidences, the subjects had little or no input in the organizational leadership. Despite the previous form of leadership where the leaders focus on improving the welfare of the organization, servant leaders aim at catering for the followers. A point of interest contrary to the transactional leadership that entails rewards for the followers’ output, the followers are hereby motivated to outstanding outcomes. Similarly, unlike in transformative leadership where followers are sensitized of the potential, servant leadership directly invokes the potentials.
A servant leader bears traits that include a commitment to the development of the followers, development of a local community necessary for personal growth and stewardship towards organizational goals. Besides, the leader understands the essence of communication thus gives an ear to their followers. Other auxiliary traits include empathy, persuasion, awareness, and foresight. Servant leadership is seen to overlap with other styles of leadership due to the complexity of leadership. The charismatic form of transformative leadership for instance leaves the gap for the growth of the followers. Servant leadership thus fills in the gap. The aspect is based on the possibility of a rise in narcissism as well as a focus on short-term profit-oriented goals as leaders seek personal interests. Authentic leadership on the contrary shows an overlap of the traits of humility and authenticity. Authentic leadership also displays a true-self-image in their organizations. Ethical leadership as extended by Harrison (2005) also concurs with servant leadership since it emphasizes the right behavior in the organizations. Besides, like servant leadership, the ethical leaders aim at trustworthiness, integrity, care, and service for the good of entirety by encouraging two-way communication.
The impact and the operability of servant leadership can well be captured through measurement. Such a measurement was undertaken by Laub (1999) by incorporating an analysis of the six traits to the Delphi survey. Different measurement of applied overtime is the servant leadership profile defined by Page and Wong (2000). It has been observed that servant leadership has the impact of influencing the interest of being a servant leader through nurturing traits like honesty and humility. Besides, individual traits like self-determination, cognitive development are obtained. The followers are also put at a position of accepting the leaders since they feel that their needs are put at stake.
Personal Experiences
The entire success of the organization is shared between the employees and the organizations. The employees need to feel their input being treated with integrity. The implication is that, if the leaders are not committed to trusting and empowering the followers, they are most likely to be demotivated towards the organizational goals. The positive job attitudes however only awaken when employees realize self-actualization. Development of the corporate social responsibility is an upcoming trend that any organization ought not to ignore. CSR can however not b achieved without the input of all stakeholders. Acknowledgment, as well as engagement of the employees, thus makes them bear CSR responsibility even at individual levels. Eventually, leadership and followership are reciprocal, implying that the followers would only yield if the leaders make them their counter-parts rather than servants. All forms of leadership are not disputed, but they need to engage the element of servant leadership. Transactional leadership for instance tends to rewards according to the output and punish as well. Such would probably risk cases of fraud and faked profiles to satisfy the interest of the leaders. If it is merged with servant leadership however, the employees would automatically yield to the predetermined organizational goals.
