Servant Leadership: Characteristics, Pros and Cons

Running head: Organisational Behaviour
Organisational Behaviour
Essay
System04104

Organisational Behaviour
1
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).

Organisational Behaviour
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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