Comparison of Servant Leadership and Followership in Management

This essay provides a comparative analysis of servant leadership and followership, two distinct yet interconnected philosophies in management. Servant leadership, where leaders prioritize serving their employees, is contrasted with followership, which emphasizes cooperation and teamwork. The essay highlights their similarities, such as focusing on employee improvement and trust, while also pointing out their differences in scope and application. The author explores how servant leaders empower their followers, fostering a collaborative environment. The essay also references relevant literature, including works by Spears & Lawrence (2016) and Uhl-Bien et al. (2014), to support its arguments. Ultimately, the essay emphasizes that although different, both servant leadership and followership are essential for organizational success. The conclusion suggests that servant leadership facilitates legitimate influence and greatness, while followership enables the actualization of potential.

Running head: ADVANCED LEADERSHIP MANAGEMENT
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Name of the Student:
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Author Note:

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Servant leadership and followership are the two types of philosophies of
management. The essay will be comparing and contrasting the servant leadership and
the followership management in details. It will helps us in understanding that though
they are different types of management styles, yet they follow the same pattern.
Servant leadership is considered as the philosophy of leadership in which the
main purpose of the leader is just to serve (Spears & Lawrence, 2016) This leadership
is very much different from the traditional form of the leadership in which the main aim
of the leader is the flourishing of company or the organization in which they tend to
work. It is the responsibility of the servant leader to share power among each other.
The servant leader puts the requirement of the employees first and even it helps the
people to progress and perform as highly as possible. On the other hand, followership
considered as the will of the individuals to cooperate while working in achieving the goal
while representing a high standard of interactive teamwork (Uhl-Bien et al. 2014).
Effective followers are considered as the active participants who are involved in the
creation of the leadership process. This essay will be focusing on the comparison
between the followership and that of the servant leadership. He main purpose of the
essay is to learn that though followership and servant leadership are two different kind
of philosophies, they are part of the same dynamics in itself.
Servant leadership and followership tend to work together simultaneously.
Though both of them are very different, they tend to have various similarities. According
to both the philosophies, the value of the others are being put into focus. Both the
servant leadership and the followership tends to focus on the improvement of the

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workers as well as of the interpersonal relationships as well as the organization for
which they tend to work as a whole (Oc & Bashshur, 2013). Both the servant leadership
and followership are on the basis of the trust and mutual respect. However, it can be
said that the servant leadership and that of the followership may have various
similarities but they tend to have very different from each other as well. As per the
servant leadership quality, the servant leaders gives the right to the others to make
suggestions or recommendations for the organization before making the actual
decision. On the other hand, the followers tends to serve their leaders by giving them
ideas and by offering various help when they are in requirement of it. Both the ideas
uses the values of the employers who are working under the organization. It is to be
noted that bot the servant leadership and the excellent followership tends to differ
mainly in terms of the scope (Liden et al., 2014). It is to be noted that a leader has
various number of relationships that the leader must engaged themselves into.
However, in contrast to the servant leadership, the follower have to face various number
of challenges like understanding what and where the various needs tends to lie. It is
also a challenge for the followers to understand where to apply his excellence and even
gain the capability in gaining the admission to do so. One of the best thing that can be
done by the servant leadership is to provide with endorsement like that of the advocacy
and even sponsorship to his or followers in order to open up the systems and even the
chances so that excellence can be totally utilized by the follower.
Thus the conclusion that can be derived from the study is that the servant
leadership can be defined as the journey into that of the legitimate influence and

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greatness and on the other hand the followership is defined as developing the actuation
of something which is very much deep within us.
Followership
Respect for authority
positive attitude
loyalty
courtesy
Servant leadership
listening
empathy
healing
awareness
Good morals
Serving
organization
Supportive
trust

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Diagram: Venn diagram of followership and Servant leadership

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References
Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Liao, C., & Meuser, J. D. (2014). Servant leadership and
serving culture: Influence on individual and unit performance. Academy of
Management Journal, 57(5), 1434-1452.
Oc, B., & Bashshur, M. R. (2013). Followership, leadership and social influence. The
Leadership Quarterly, 24(6), 919-934.
Spears, L. C., & Lawrence, M. (Eds.). (2016). Practicing servant-leadership:
Succeeding through trust, bravery, and forgiveness. John Wiley & Sons.
Uhl-Bien, M., Riggio, R. E., Lowe, K. B., & Carsten, M. K. (2014). Followership theory: A
review and research agenda. The leadership quarterly, 25(1), 83-104.