Servant Leadership: Analyzing the Advantages and Disadvantages Essay

This essay examines the servant leadership management style, as cited by Robert K. Greenleaf, which emphasizes serving others and empowering employees. It delves into the advantages of this approach, including fostering service, removing ego, creating a collaborative environment, promoting a sense of ownership, and embracing diversity, which leads to increased productivity, trust, and involvement. The essay also explores the disadvantages, such as the timescale required for implementation, resistance to adoption, potential lack of authority, confusion in goals, and a limited vision. The author concludes by stating that servant leadership, while having both pros and cons, can be effective if applied properly, particularly in people management. The essay provides a recommendation that this model can be very helpful in people management, satisfying employees mentally and emotionally, giving them a sense of ownership and motivation, and leading to higher productivity.

Introduction
Servant leadership management style was cited by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970. This is a management
style that includes some set of rules and philosophy that helps in enriching the lives of individuals. It also
contributes in building a good organization and growth of the same. This leadership style starts with the
feeling that an individual wants to serve. There is person who is totally different from the others and
called as leader. There is a much decentralized structure in this style of management as it mainly focuses
on the empowerment of employees and innovation in the organization. It clearly shows that all the
major decision making power lies at top level management and they share it with the employees who
are responsible to work directly with customers and clients. They have much information regarding
major concerns in the organization if compare to other employees. They know the needs of the
organization to face competition in the market.it results in better decision making when companies
know their customers well. It also helps in efficient and effective utilization of resources. Corporate
culture requires the power in correct hands to continue growth (Servant Leadership: A Journey into the
Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness, 2002).

There are different advantages as well as disadvantages of this management model. We will discuss the
first advantage of this servant leadership model. Service is the core part of servant leadership and it
needs a leader who can set aside all personal wants and desires to listen the people that are under his
leadership. This model basically helps in removing the attitude and ego of the people who are in the
leadership position. According to Covey, every person has an ability to become a leader because of the
moral authority. It is all about the ability to choose the position. Everyone has the authority to choose
the ability and everyone choose it in a proper way and it is an advantage that helps in inspiring the
leader so that he can lead in the way he wants to. In servant leadership, there is a requirement of a
leader who can enable others to lead themselves. The second advantage is that there is no disciplinarian
atmosphere. With here are no roles and policies made by them because they administer all the policies
buy listening to everyone. With the help of a collaborative approach, a servant leader can become a
facilitator. I this manner, everyone feel responsible for the result of the project. Spears (1998) feel the
same about servant leadership because according to him, it helps in improving relationships between
people who are collaborating with each other. This is totally opposite to the model that says that leader
shows disciplinarian traits to achieve the targets (Phipps, 2010).
The third advantage is related to the second one. Servant leadership creates a sense of ownership in
everyone. It shows the sharing of responsibility and sense of ownership for the work that basically
increase the level of dedication and pride in everyone’s work. It also leads in increasing productivity and
the outcomes of the approach will be visible by everyone. It also helps in building trust and respect
between all the workers as well as members of the group. According to Flint, Servant leaders are the
people who understand the process and ways to encourage, motivate, inspire and support all the group
members so that they can work together for accomplishing the goals of the organization. In this way
every person understands his roles and responsibility and completes the same without creating any
issue (Wheeler, 2012).
Fourth advantage of Servant leadership is diversity. There are different type of people in a group who
belong to different culture and different diversities. They have various talents, personalities and traits.
According to Flint Extols, servant leadership is considered as a way of recognizing diversity in the whole
group. He explains that servant leaders know that diverse workforce is vital for the success of the
organization. Servant relationship helps in adopting different approaches to leadership that other
models would not do. It possesses the effects of flexibility in replying to varying situations. This model

also encourages stronger relationship within the group because there is an increase in the sense of
fulfilment (The Journey of Competitive Advantage through Servant Leadership, 2011).
The fifth advantage is related to involvement. Servant leadership helps in getting the involvement of
everyone in decision making process. Decision of every person gets considered as it is not a democratic
process that shows the major rule to the detriment of minority. Servant leadership values all the import
and try to serve every person rather than a collective mindset. This model enables participation of every
employee in decision making process that creates a sense of responsibility and ownership in them.
When there is an involvement of all the employees then it also helps in increasing the productivity.
When a project gets successful ten every employee also feels satisfied as it involved their contribution
also. According to Wheeler, at the time of discussing humility that is required for servant leadership,
then it states that ‘Servant leaders think that success lies within the community and determined by
efforts, commitment and responsibility of the people involved in it (The Power of Servant Leadership,
1998).
There are some disadvantages of servant leadership as well. We will discuss he disadvantages now. The
first disadvantage is related to the timescale for this kind of venture. There is a requirement of change in
mentality as well as attitude to work in a successful manner in Servant leadership. Greenleaf (1998)
admits almost everything when he states ‘it takes time’ (Hunitie, 2018). According to him, it is not a
project that can have a starring date but rather must start from a different and change mind-set. It
becomes difficult for the large groups as well as long established groups. It can be also difficult for the
people who have adopted being led in an authoritarian way to adopt the responsibility given to them in
this leadership style. This style is considered as a long project because it includes everyone in the idea
(Sun, 2013).
Second disadvantage of servant leadership is that there is a lack of willingness to accept this leadership
style. This style needs a whole institution approach instead of individuals engaging in it themselves.
When all the parts of the institution get involved then this style change and automatically willingness to
engage increase as well. Greenleaf (1998) states that there are many organizations that resists any
chance to undermine their authority by engaging in a thing like servant leadership. According to him,
servant leadership becomes very difficult when ‘administrator is very much involved in the common
mores of the institutional life’ (‘Why servant leadership is a bad idea’, 2018).

The third disadvantage is all about the lack of authority that can result from this leadership style
(Zentner, 2015). Sometimes, leader diminishes all his sense of authority because he needs to divest a
share of responsibility to all the members of the group. It becomes difficult to choose a different
leadership approach for changing the situation. Employee starts looking at the leader in a different way,
because the person has a little authority. McCrimmon states a critique and according to hum no servant
can fire their master. It actually happens when there is a strong relationship between the servant and
the leader or when servant leadership inverts the relationship. It is considered as a big hypocrisy when
the leader must fire the led whom they are responsible to serve (Servant leadership: A journey into the
nature of legitimate power and greatness, 1979).
The fourth disadvantage is related to the confusion in terms of the goals of leadership. There is a
question that can be asked if the manager is responsible to fulfill the needs of the employees or
contribute in meeting the goals of the organization to which they are employed. In this aspect also,
McCrimmon states a critique when he states ‘It is not the manager’s job to fulfill the needs of the
employees’. According to him, servant leadership may have a similar impact of generating a parent-
child relationship that can be result in demotivation on the employee’s part. This may sometimes leads
in disengagement from the process (‘The problem with Servant Leadership’,2018). The fifth disadvantage
is the limited vision. There are different leaders and they are different or distinct from each other on
some or the other way. When the leaders focused on serving the needs of the people who are being led
then they will surely fail to fulfill the requirement or needs of the institution that they have to fulfill for
sure. Denning has an issue with the idea of humility that is considered as very intrinsic to servant
leadership. According to him, ‘The 21st century leader is neither arrogant nor humble’. Humility leads to
risks getting nothing done and on the other and arrogance can be counterproductive (Davenport, 2014).
Conclusion
The conclusion is that the style has so many advantages as well as disadvantages but this style is actually
applied to many organization and they found it effective in managing people. As it was discussed that
employees are given importance as they are included in decision making process. It creates a sense of
ownership and responsibility that ultimately leads in high productivity.

Recommendation
Basically Servant Leadership style has its pros as well as cons. It has to be followed in a proper way. This
model helps a lot in people management because it can satisfy the employees mentally as well as
emotionally. It gives a sense of ownership and motivation to the employees and this is the best way of
getting higher productivity.

References-
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