Analysis of Servant Leadership in Social Service Organizations Essay

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of servant leadership within social service organizations, specifically examining its application in the context of the Mental Health Foundation in New Zealand. The introduction establishes the theoretical framework and highlights the organization's role in addressing mental health issues. The discussion delves into the importance of servant leadership in fostering a positive work environment, motivating employees, and improving patient care. It emphasizes the benefits of servant leadership, such as enhanced communication, trust-building, and employee engagement, which contribute to better organizational performance. The essay also considers the views of Follett's coordination in management and teamwork. Furthermore, the essay draws on research and reports to highlight the prevalence of mental health disorders in New Zealand and the critical need for effective leadership approaches. It explores the role of servant leadership in addressing challenges, promoting safety, and gaining public trust. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and reinforces the significance of servant leadership in driving positive outcomes for both employees and clients within social service organizations.

Running head: SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANISATION
SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANISATION
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANISATION
Introduction
This essay provides a brief idea about theoretical understanding of a social service
organization (The Mental Health Foundation) and the management of the said firm. The another
part of this essay aims to introduce a detailed overview of servant leadership organizational
theories in social service mental health organizations. This paper also analyzes the role of servant
leadership theory in managing social service mental health firms. The country selected for this
essay is New Zealand. The Mental Health Foundation is one of the famous social service
organizations that cater to their service to reduce the adverse effect of depression and other
mental disorders from the life of different individuals belongs to New Zealand. This organization
was established in the year1977. This organization offers free training and development
facilities. The paper further discusses the role of Servant Leadership organizational theory in
contributing to the development and welfare of most of the big mental health organizations like
NGOs. Another important fact that this paper includes is Follett's view of Coordination in
management and teamwork in improving organizational performance.
In the servant leadership style, leaders are characteristics with soft-spoken attitude,
empathy, positivity and another similar one (Journals.sagepub.com, 2019). In a mental healthcare
organization, the sole responsibility of leaders is to realize a patient's mental condition and
recognize the actual disorder that incurs serious trouble for the client(Hughes & Wearing, 2016).
Leaders need to counsel their patients that would help them to analyze the actual problem. They
need to maintain a good relationship with the patient that would help the patient open up their
feeling and sufferings. In mental health firm, servant leaders need to create a positive and healthy
work environment that would help any patient to overcome diseases. Servant leadership
promotes the concept of collaboration and a participative work environment that would help the

2SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANISATION
employees feel encouraged and motivated. Servant leadership theory is considered as the most
effective organizational theory for improving the management of any health care organization
(both mental and physical health) because it helps to generate trust and care while serving any
patient's needs. Besides, trust and care for clients, this theory helps social workers to help their
fellow staffs to attain better performance (Napan, 2016). Hence, this theory helps to enhance the
organizational performance of any mental healthcare organization in New Zealand.
Discussion
The Mental Health Foundation is granted as the famous social service organization that
deals with the problems related to mental illness and disorders like depression, anxiety, panic
attack, and other life-endangering illness. This organization has governed by different Board of
Trustees. They are responsible for formulating different strategies and policies that help them to
run different functions and generate campaigns for creating awareness about mental health
disorders. They use to arrange different social service programs that help them to provide free
and effective information about mental disorders and discussed different symptoms that would
help individuals to adopt measures for recovery. The mentioned organization is renowned for the
social services and they are committed to generating human welfare by recognizing different
mental illnesses that affect the life of any individual badly. According to this organization, the
mental disorder is a kind of illness that grows gradually and remain hidden. Thus, according to
the above-mentioned firm, one can see the physical injury and may take medicine to overcome,
on the other hand, in the case of mental health disorders, people often failed to identify the actual
reason of their sufferings. Thus, mental health disorders need to be considered as a serious matter
that has to be controlled. To improve any social service organization the application of servant
leadership organizational theory is necessary. Servant leadership plays a vital role in motivating

3SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANISATION
employee performance, reduce stress, pressure, it generates the concept of the participative work
environment. In this leadership style, leaders use to serve their skills for improving their
followers, subordinates, and employees. This will help the social service workers to generate
their conscience to serve for human wellbeing. With the growing advancement and technology,
the standard of human life has changed. These dynamic changes have raised different problems
related to human health (both mental and physical). Through the entire life span, individuals use
to face many barriers to reach their desired targets, some may get failure. This failure may incur
major mental sufferings. As per the report generated from the New Zealand Health Survey
(2102/2013), almost more than 580,000 adults in New Zealand are affected by serious mental
disorders. Women are more prone to this problem compared to men. suffering of women for this
mental illness in 1.6 times more than men(Mentalhealth.org.nz, 2019). Women belong to the age
group of 35 to 44 tends to affect badly from the same(Mentalhealth.org.nz, 2019).
In mental health care organizations, leaders use to deal with different clients having
different mental health issues like anxiety, stress, overthinking, depression and other life-
endangering diseases (Carryer & Yarwood, 2015). It is the leader, who has the responsibility of
serving their clients in the best possible way with efficient treatment facilities, providing
hygienic foods and water facilities. Besides, all the above-mentioned responsibilities leaders
have to focus on other important aspects they need to develop rules and policies, and motivate
employees that would help to enhance the organizational performance and profit. In this case,
servant leadership theory has an immense impact on enriching any mental health organizational
performance. This theory promises to deliver high-value care and treatment to their fellow
patients. Servant leadership believes that the leader should serve for the welfare of his/her sub-
ordinates. Servant leadership promotes the culture of teamwork that would help the organization

4SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANISATION
able to provide the best treatment to its clients. In the mentioned leadership model leaders use to
acts as a constant motivator for the employees that would help the staff to provide better
treatment and helps them to overcome their sufferings. This would help the organization to
attract more clients. Different vital components of servant leadership help any mental health
organization to generate motivation, employee management, gain public trust, and provide job
satisfaction to different employees associated with the organization (Gutierrez-Wirsching,
Mayfield, Mayfield & Wang, 2015).These qualities of a servant leader to manage the
organizational performance of any mental health firm are discussed below:
Any leader who follows this leadership theory, have great listening power. This ability
helps the leader to understand his staff and client’s problems and make it easy to formulate
effective strategies. Thus, this ability of any leader helps to build good relation with his/her
employees and reduce the employee retention problem in mental health organization in New
Zealand,
Servant leaders have an attractive charismatic personality that would able to heal the
stress and pressure of his/her employees or subordinates. A servant leader has gentle behavior.
They are considered sensitive leaders having a major concern about employee’s problems and
sufferings. This would further generate employee engagement and generate employee
willingness to perform well (Haar, Brougham, Roche & Barney, 2017). This will generate
employee confidence to work even on difficult situations.
The focus of any servant leader is to care for his/her followers first and find a relevant
solution to solve their problems. This would help to develop a feeling of dependency on
employees on their leader. Thus, it helps to maintain a close link between the leader and his

5SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANISATION
employees. In any mental healthcare institutes, employees often suffer from different critical
times and this quality helps the leader to stand beside his/her employees.
A servant leader is committed to helping employees to expand their careers and push
them to reach their desired success (Coetzer, Bussin & Yarwood, 2015). This would help to
generate a strong sense of trust and leadership feelings. Thus, in the case of mental health care
institutes, employees would able to generate a feeling of trust and respect for their leaders.
Risk is one of the inevitable or inseparable parts of any mental healthcare organization.
However, patients in the said organization have lost their ability to decision-making and
distinguishing right from wrong, there is a high chance that they create different problems that
may fall the organizational staffs in serious trouble. Considering this fact in mind, the servant
leader has framed different strategies to ensure the safety and security of the patients. This will
help the organization to gain public trust and faith (Seto & Sarros, 2016). The reason for quality
service and effective treatment provided by the organizational authority, would generate the
client's faith and attention and help them to enrich the firm's profit level. Thus, the servant leader
has an immense role in the contribution to the improvement and renovation of non- profit
making mental health organizations.
There are several strategies adopted by the Mental Health Foundation in managing and
developing the organizational functions are: Firstly, the said organization has promotes a fair and
healthy work environment for staff associated with the organization that would help employees
to work comfortably and promptly. Secondly, Considering the Follett’s view of Coordination
and Management, the Mental Health Foundation (New Zealand) has formulated different
strategies to arrange various training and development program, teaching and motivating
employees and staffs to indulge them in team-work that would help them to enhance the

6SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANISATION
performance(Selber &Austin, 1997). Thirdly, the organization has adopted different measures to
support different employees associated with the said organization and help them to boost their
interest in severe their best performance for improving the organizational performance. Lastly,
the based on the concept of “executive board meeting”, mentioned on the book “Administration
in Social Work” by Margaret Gibelman DSW, different board members of the said firm has
announced executive meeting every year to discuss different problems of the firm and formulate
strategies to overcome organizational threats (Gibelman, 2004). This will help the firm to attain
the desired success of reducing the mental health problems from the people of New Zealand.
The similarity between management and servant leadership like, to develop a good
reputation of the organization manager used to formulate different strategies that will generate
organizational performance and helps to build a great brand position in the market. Similarly,
servant leaders put their efforts on building good organizational image or reputation by
enhancing employee productivity this will help the firm to build great position in the market
among all the competitors present in the market.
There is a huge difference between organizational management and leadership.
Management is the process that deals with actions involved in improving and maintaining the
emerging threats and risks of the firm. On the contrary, leadership can define as the process of
challenging the system for the attainment of better results and performance (McNabb, 2009).
Management deals with the process of holding every aspect and staff associated with the
organization together in a crisis. However, leadership is the concept of inspiring different groups
of people and employees for attaining a common goal or target. Management of any non-profit
mental health organizations, conduct several activities for analyzing and improving both internal

7SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANISATION
and external facts of the organization. On the opposite side, leadership deals with a wide range of
facts including social, cultural, economic aspects of the society (McNabb, 2009).
Conclusion
This essay concludes that mental health disorder has become a major threat for people of
New Zealand. As per the survey report of the New Zealand Health Survey (2012/2013), a
maximum number of adults in New Zealand has suffered from mental health disorders. As per
this statistical report women belong to the age group of 35 to 44 are considered as the main
sufferers of different mental health disorders like anxiety, panic attack, and similar ones.
Depression is considered the major mental health disease that harms an individual’s lives and
their family members. The Mental Health Foundation is one of the well-known social service
firms that provide its service with the mission of decreasing the adverse effect of mental illness
from the lives of different people of New Zealand. They offer different training and development
programs to generate information about various symptoms of depression and other mental
diseases to help people to recognize the actual reason for their suffering. To develop the
organizational performance of any non-profit mental health organization, servant leadership
theory is considered as the best solution. Servant leadership promotes the concept of serving for
the betterment of different individuals. According to this theory, leaders should serve their skills
and talents for generating the welfare of different employees associated with the organization.
Similarly, Follett has raised the same view of establishing coordination and teamwork for
enhancing the quality of social services delivered by the said organization. According to
Margaret Gibelman DSW, the board members of this said organization has conducted board
meetings to formulate different policies to overcome different problems of the same. Thus, it can

8SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANISATION
conclude that the servant leadership style has an immense role in developing organizational
management of the non-profit mental health organization.

9SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANISATION
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