Essay on Servant Leadership: Examining Pros, Cons, and Effectiveness

This essay delves into the concept of servant leadership, examining its application within organizations. It begins by outlining the core principles of servant leadership, emphasizing its focus on employee well-being and development. The essay explores how servant leadership contrasts with other leadership styles like charismatic and transactional leadership, and how it can foster better collaboration, employee commitment, and innovation. It highlights the benefits, such as improved employee engagement, enhanced customer satisfaction, and the creation of a positive work environment. The essay also discusses the attributes of servant leadership, including providing support, promoting employee growth, active listening, building community, and fostering reflection and learning. Furthermore, it critically analyzes situations where servant leadership may not be suitable, such as when short-term objectives are prioritized or when the focus is solely on financial returns for investors. The essay concludes by providing a comprehensive analysis of servant leadership's advantages and disadvantages, offering insights into its effectiveness and limitations in various organizational contexts.

Organization behavior

Organization Behaviour 1
The constant challenge faced in the organizations is employee engagement due to low
morale, less productivity, and eventual abrasion. Disengaged employees cost 34% more to
the organization. The challenges faced by the organizations demands a leadership style which
is high on compassion and construct on the ideas of team members. The leadership style
places a premium on team’s interest than the leader’s own (Vibert, 2017). The set of
leadership behaviors stated to above start is popularly known as “servant leadership”.
According to servant leadership, as a servant leader, a person is a servant first and
concentrates on the requirements of others. A servant team leader first considers the need of
team members than considering his own. In this case, perspectives of other people are
welcomed first and assistance required to encounter both their private and professional
objectives practices a comprehensive culture and construct a sense of amity and oneness in
the team. Servant leadership indicates better collaboration in the teams and improves the
commitment of the employees (Graham, Ziegert, and Capitano, 2015). The servant-leader
also empowers teams along with persuading innovation, efficiency and revenue cohort in the
long run.
The servant leadership can be used to every level of the organization such as executive,
middle managers, and team level. The listening is acute at the executive level. The leaders
listening more attain much more understanding into the pertinent issues occurring within the
organization. After proper listening and hearing, executives can influence positive change by
modeling behaviors and traits expected to view in the organization. Servant leadership is used
by the middle managers to ensure that the teams have the right equipment or facilities to
conduct their job. It necessitates middle managers to be servant leaders to the teams. The
servant leadership is enabled in the team to articulate their role for the company’s mission
and better connect to the organization’s strategy (Gagné, 2018).
Other leadership styles to be used in the organizations are charismatic, visionary,
transactional, facilitative and more. Charismatic leadership manifests its revolutionary power.
The charismatic leadership is used to influence and attract a great number of employees in the
organizations. On the other side, visionary leadership is used in the organizations to identify
the steps, methods, and procedures of leadership for attaining the vision of the business

Organization Behaviour 2
(Hoch, Bommer, Dulebohn, and Wu, 2018). Visionary leadership is greatly visionary.
Transactional leadership is used by the organizations to focus on the supervision,
establishment, and performance. In this leadership, followers are inspired and promoted
through rewards and punishments. It keeps followers to keep motivated for the long term.
The facilitative leadership used to enhance the efficiency of the organization. This leadership
helps organizations in being more directives in assisting the organization to run its process. It
involves suggestion and interventions in the daily activities of the organization.
The servant leaders take the position of servant to their followers. The servant leadership
offers employees with the empowerment and participatory job characteristics which are
concerning to both employee and customer satisfaction. Servant leadership is all about
working towards development and wellbeing to meet goals. It is also identifying to be
distancing oneself from power, influence, and position to serve self. The servant leadership is
used in the organizations to commit more towards organizational values and in maintaining
high-performance levels (Klotz, and Neubaum, 2016). The attributes of servant leadership are
one of the dominant factors in attaining better outcomes for an organization. These attributes
are offering subordinates with suitable training to attain goals along with sufficient resources.
The servant leadership assists in the professional growth of the employees by empowering
them and sharing information. The employees are even permitted to work in a good working
environment. The servant leadership removes the obstacles which prevent employees to do
their job. The obstacles are faced by the employees in several forms like lack of skills which
can be addressed by appropriate training and coaching. The servant-leader also assesses the
team on a regular basis in order to be successful. Once the information is attained, work is
done actively to assist success (Chiniara and Bentein, 2016).
The servant leadership oriented establishments take the stance which is good for the
customers and business. Such culture inspires personnel to create products of high quality and
value in the form of price and utility. Servant leadership enables an environment to inspire
people to work together for mutual benefit. It produces diversity at the workplaces which
assist everyone by the lens of several perspectives. When the organization is being served
over their own needs, the customers also win. The leadership even manages workplace
globalization and workforce diversity. The managers become a servant to deal with
individuals and teams associating to the diverse ethnic cultures. They even exercise control

Organization Behaviour 3
and channelize behavior in the desired direction (Vasu, Stewart, and Garson, 2017). The
servant leadership assists managers to efficiently deal with workforce diversity by
encouraging awareness, a variety of skills, culture, and gender assortment. The servant
leadership even causes higher organizational effectiveness by indicating a strong relationship
between the energetic teams. The leadership even leads to more confident and inspiring teams
where decision making becomes quick and transparent. The innovative culture is enabled
from the servant leadership which makes managers be creative and innovative in their
approaches to the customers and employees. For instance, servant leadership has always used
by Marriott to focused on the culture of service to the customers and others in the
organization. The emphasis of the Marriott is on the ‘spirit to serve’ which moves the bank to
such heights (Lee, Schwarz, Newman, and Legood, 2019).
The servant leadership mainly concentrates on the growth and well-being of people and the
organization to which it belongs. The servant leadership principles highlight facilitation and
assisting employees to grow and connect their maximum potential. It even inspires individual
team members and the organization to be successful (Spears and Lawrence, 2016). The
principles of servant leadership leading to the effective leader are:
Support team: The servant leadership makes sure that the team members have all the
assistance, knowledge, skills and resources required to conduct the job. The servant leaders
make use of great tools to support the team by the regular and one-on-one meeting. It enables
employees with the opportunity to consider when the assistance is required along with the
current challenges (Winston, and Fields, 2015).
Growth of people: The servant leaders are committed to the growth of team members. It is
made possible by inspiring its professional and personal development. The servant leaders try
to learn as much as possible about the team member’s skills and their aspirations regarding
the assigned tasks. It has been also realized that, at a certain point in team member’s
development, the challenge is faced to execute which has been learned with accountability
and responsibility. The servant leaders focus on coaching and mentoring then pitching in or
interfering. It comprises giving and attaining regular feedback on their performance (Miner,
2015).

Organization Behaviour 4
Listen: Listening is must have servant leadership principle. The servant leaders seek the
opinion of the team members for taking big decisions. The decisions involve employees’
work along with the relevant feedback. The servant leaders set aside their own beliefs and
preconceptions and effectively listen to the suggestions of the employees. The decisions
made by the leaders explain the reasons behind the team. It is difficult and time expended in
the short term but will form a transparent and respectful environment in the long run along
which constructs trust.
Constructing community: The servant leadership principle relies on building a community. It
is made possible by sharing a company’s goals and missions and involving employee’s
efforts in the biggest picture. The balance is made by the leaders by focusing on the team’s
short term KPIs and daily achievements along with inclusive longer-term goals. In order to
build a community, everything is kept on the top of everything which is going on in the
organization. It helps leaders to build up a community through the weekly or monthly report.
It can be incredibly motivating when everyone in the organization understands that their work
is being attributed to the mission of the organization (Newman, Schwarz, Cooper, and
Sendjaya, 2017). It not only enhances responsibility among the employees but contributes
efforts in growing together.
Reflect and learn: Reflect and learn principle focuses on learning from past experiences as a
team and individually. When it comes to the team level, it is a good notion to reflect at the
end of every project or throughout the year on the progress made and what could be made
better. It helps an organization to improve and grow. It also gives an opportunity to the
followers to improve themselves (Chen, Chen, and Sheldon, 2016).
The servant leadership intends a radical shift and causes reversing leader-follower equation
which focuses on follower development. There are some instances where servant leadership;
is not suitable. The servant leadership is all about giving up a complete authority which goes
against the work structure in which CEOs form all the decisions and communicate to the
personnel. The problem concerned with servant leadership is that the leaders should channel
their egos. It is rarely found that the business leaders are willing to act generously in the
chase of success which leads to the unsuccessful of the leadership.
Servant leadership is not suitable for short term objectives. For instance, when a person
requires short term goals and is willing to throw away investment. Such people can lose team

Organization Behaviour 5
just after the attainment of the immediate goals. In such a scenario, servant leadership does
not work at all. There is also one more example of where servant leadership does not work.
When a company wants to provide results for just one stakeholder group, then servant
leadership does not work. When the company just want to drive fiscal returns for investors
and do not bother what ensues to the employees, society or environment, servant leadership
will not work. On the other hand, the servant leadership will not work when the only
motivation of a person is career and have no interest in the success of the organization served
(Seto and Sarros, 2016).
The long term objectives may not be attained in the absence of the servant leadership and
other stakeholders may abandon and the career may agonize. Still, these are the situations
where servant leadership will not work. The servant leadership also makes employees less
motivated and it leads to the poor results over time. These are naturally persuaded to step in
and fix problems when they take place. Servant leaders are recommended to influence people
to do the same by taking effective actions. It is also recommended not to take a decision for a
long time as its lows down the implementation procedure.

Organization Behaviour 6
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Organization Behaviour 7
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