Servant Leadership: Characteristics, Pros and Cons

This essay discusses the concept of servant leadership, its characteristics, pros and cons. It explains how servant leadership differs from other leadership styles and its impact on employee motivation and organisational performance. The essay also highlights the importance of self-control, self-motivation and self-sacrifice in implementing servant leadership.

Running head: Organisational Behaviour
Organisational Behaviour
Essay
System04104
12/9/2018

Organisational Behaviour
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Servant Leadership
Leadership is a crucial factor in the success of any organisation and there are many
identified styles of leadership. Servant leadership is the new and growing style of
leadership that is accepted by many Fortune 500 companies. The servant leadership
evolved in1970s by Robert Greenleaf. He created this leadership style with the
motive of describing the leadership style that is based on motivating and influencing
others by establishing a good and healthy relationship with followers. Actually,
servant leadership work on the concept that the leader asks to their followers ‘how
can I help you?' rather than expecting followers or employees to serve them (Ding,
Lu, Song, and Lu, 2012). The main objective of servant leadership is to help,
motivate, encourage, others by full fill their needs and potential. Servant leadership
focuses on help others by full fill their needs and coaches, stewards, and work as a
facilitator of overall employees’ development. The view of servant leadership is to
serve followers, rather than expecting to serve by them to the leader. The key
characteristics of a servant leadership are emphatic, good listener, persuasion,
foresight, commitment, healing, stewardship, conceptualization, and awareness.
Even though the other leadership styles focus on self-goals and on the concept that
“I am more important than you” and kill the innovation and limit the performance of
others, servant leadership focuses on “how I can help you” and give chance to
others to perform their best and give chance for innovation (Yoshida, Sendjaya,
Hirst, and Cooper, 2014).
Servant leadership has some disadvantages as well such as it causes slow and
longer decision-making, leader’s dependency on their employees, and leader
generally treated as a weak person. However, there are many types of leadership,
but servant leadership is the only style of leadership that thinks about others rather
than personal benefits. Greenleaf’s theory discussed in his research that the best
leaders are those leaders who keen to serve others and listening and helping others
about their needs and wants. He/she gives totally a new way of thinking about the
leadership style and approach in contrast to the traditional style of other leadership
that based on a pyramid hierarchy represents the image of leadership (Winston and
Fields, 2015).

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Characteristics of Servant leadership
A servant leader is a person who considers himself as a servant or follower of his or
her own followers. The term in this context should not be considered as in the
negative sense; rather it shows the commitment, sincerity, selflessness, and a true
behaviour of a leader with their followers (Panaccio, et. al., 2015). Servant
leadership can be implemented and can be in practice at any place or any
organisation such as in a business organisation or in a government office. A servant
leader has several characteristics or skills. These are as follow:
1. The first and most important character of a servant leader is to self-desire of
serving others. This should be as a fundamental desire of a servant leader.
2. He/she must be a good listener and listen to understand the problems of
others.
3. A servant leader should empathize with others.
4. A servant leader should self-aware and also have the strength to understand
others.
5. A servant leader should consider the thought of others rather than taking any
decision. He should consider the opinions of others and must have the ability
of persuasion to influence others that what other people want in the
organisation.
6. Servant leaders are not afraid to dream big. A leader should dream big for the
other group members and not for self, as it happens in other leadership styles
were leader mainly focus on achieving self-goals rather than team goal. A
leader should conceptualize his/her idea into reality and should have an evil
eye on the future uncertainty and change that might cause their decisions and
work performance (Liden, et.al, 2014).
7. A most important characteristic of Servant leadership is to stewardship,
which means managing the problems or affairs of other people. Thus, servant
leadership is a position of trust and service.
Pros of Servant Leadership
Even though servant leadership is a new phenomenon in the leadership, it focuses
on making decisions in favour of employees and organisational interests. It is not
limited to managing one or two people of the organisation rather it considers the

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interest of the whole organisation. A servant leader considers the opinions and
suggestions of their followers and analyses the final results through the lens of what
is best for the organisation and even they can say no if it is not a right suggestion or
decision for the organisational point of view. Servant leadership theories accept that
if a leader serving their people who work in the organisation in the best way, then
he/she actually best serving the customers (Choudhary, Akhtar, and Zaheer, 2013).
A servant leader helps their employees or staff in such a way that they also make
right decisions regarding the organisational goals and it improves their leadership
ability as well. A servant leader is not thinking about self; rather he/she can take care
of the needs and wants of other people as well. Therefore, a servant leader set the
tone for the organisation. We can say that servant leaders are treating and
motivating people as a good motivator, encouragers, cheerleaders, and
communicators. Servant leadership is on others rather than upon self and on the
understanding of the role of the leader as a servant. Many researchers research
about the servant leadership and talk about self-sacrifice, fairness, equality, and
prosaically behaviour, altruism, spiritual leadership, stewardship, and authentic
leadership (Mittal and Dorfman, 2012). However, selflessness and positive intentions
are the two important synonymous of this leadership style. According to Chen, Chen,
and Li, (2013), in servant leadership need of power is more important than the need
to serve. A servant leader focuses on creating trust with other people and serve as a
steward leader for others. They later added in their statement is that to serve is the
key to good leadership. It is the responsibility of a leader to serve the followers with
increases the autonomy and responsibility of followers, and encourage them to think
about their self-growth and development.
Cons of Servant Leadership
According to the Greenleaf, the servant leader is a leader who does not use his or
her power to make decisions or get things done rather they rely on the suggestions
and opinions of other people who work under the servant leader or follow him/her
(Sipe and Frick, 2015). It means a servant leader totally depends on the employee in
the organisation for decision-making). One of the major drawbacks of servant
leadership is that it takes more time to make decisions about any problem or
situation because a servant leader relies upon the followers and their suggestions.
Therefore, the autonomy in decision-making in servant leadership is lacking. Servant

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leader only what he/she can do is what his/her follower asks to him/her. The major
problem associated in the organisation that self-sacrifice and self-serve awareness
are self-built characteristics in a person and it cannot be evolved automatically and in
a short time of period within a person (Newman, Schwarz, Cooper, and Sendjaya,
2017). Therefore, it takes too much time to teach and train a leader to think and act
as a servant leader. This is the cause that a servant leader treated as a helpless
leader and perceives as a weak person in the organisation who depends on other for
his or her own decision-making. A servant leader does not have strategic insights
rather it looks things through the follower’s point of view (Du Plessis, Wakelin, and
Nel, 2015). Normally it is difficult to found a servant leadership with strategic thinking.
Another drawback of the servant model is that it needed a high level of patience and
ability to foster internal motivation in other peoples. Generally, it has been seen that
servant leadership is being practised by only those person having the level of self-
control and high-level of psychosocial advancement. Some people think that high
levels of spiritual qualities are prerequisite of servant leadership (Liden, Wayne, Liao,
and Meuser, 2014).
Conclusion
The term servant leader is not an old concept in leadership rather it was originated
by Greenleaf in 1970s. Even most of the organisational people do not aware of this
concept of leadership, but some large companies implement servant leadership in
their companies. Therefore, this leadership style is not as prevalent as other
leadership styles are in the corporate world. Approaching servant leadership style
needs a high level of self-control, self-motive, and self-sacrifice and needs an ability
to give the credit of work you do by inspiring and led other people to do. If we
consider the interest of a business person they might say that servant leadership is a
bit too spiritual than practical because the business culture focuses on seeking
material gains and the concept of new generations thinks " what in it for me?" If a
servant leader focuses on strategic decision-making and do not totally depends on
the followers' opinion, somewhat it is fruitful in those organisation where seeking
business profit is the primary motive.

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References
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