Servant Leadership Change in TSU - Case Study Example

Section 1: Introduction

Wide program coverage and an extensive network of alumni including public servants, entrepreneurs, educators, pilots, lawyers among others make Texas Southern University a major force to reckon with in higher institutional learning. Particularly, the academic curriculum of TSU offers training for potential leaders from different socioeconomic, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Texas Southern University prides itself as an institution committed to addressing contentious issues like equality. The institution’s mission is to provide comprehensive doctoral-level university education through innovative programs. TSU is well-equipped to respond to the urban setting and providing transformative programs aimed at changing the lives of the diverse students in their life-long learning endeavors and becoming engaged citizens. Leadership training centers on creativity at all fronts, including local, national, regional and global levels. The institution envisages becoming the first ever pre-eminent comprehensive metropolitan university. TSU looks to gain the recognition for offering excellent programs, quality of instructions, and innovative research. Its vision is to contribute to the welfare of the public, including communities, state, nation, and the entire world.

My desire to mentor, lead others and change the society in a positive way led me to study at . I dreamt of sharpening my skills as a strategic leader. My full encounter with the institution was by enrolling into the Doctor of Education (Ed. D) degree in Organizational Leadership in Higher Education program to further my skills in leadership. Furthermore, the institution’s values center on Christian vocation thus a platform for cementing my Christian values. All my life, I wanted a place and an environment to express myself as a responsible leader. has the core value of leadership and responsibility that aligns with my life-long interest. Besides, I believe in equality and wish to become a leader who engages his followers because inclusiveness is the basis of innovation. Therefore, the core values of the institution will enable me to achieve my life-long goals and interests of a mentor, community leader, and a role model.

Section 2: The Case: Dr. Lane’s challenge of developing a servant leadership culture at TSU

Dr. Lane has been identified to have continued the great leadership as the primary aim of TSU. As a great leader, his success is much attributed to the passion he attaches to academic excellent. He loves to see a greater level of student academic productivity and personal growth. To show his support for academic excellence, Lane’ dedication has been directed towards ensuring a large number of students graduating with a globalized mindset thereby equipping them to fit into the global market. Dr. Lane’s leadership excellence shows the commitment that TSU has towards realizing its vision and mission of producing global leaders by appointing the right people to drive such courses. For one, he has received a lot of praises as an innovator besides being a reputable visionary leader. The success in the leadership role, as well as professional achievements, confirms Dr. Lane’s dedication and commitment to transforming every institution he has ever worked for. Before being posted to TSU, he served as a dean of students at the University of Texas and his contribution was instrumental in planning and overseeing several student success initiatives all aimed at increasing the enrollment and high retention rates. Lane's leadership is driven by the five priorities including the emphasis on student success, funding, academic quality, partnerships, and culture.

However, for Dr. Lane, he comes at a time when the institution’s administration is changing its leadership approach to a servant leadership. The leadership tune is changing towards developing a leadership serving the interests and well-being of the students. The success of students is now being considered as an imperative deliverable. The Office of the President of Texas South University has also stated that leadership decisions and the subsequent actions are to provide excellent academic experiences to students. The change has been stretched to the employees as they are being asked to focus their energies on creating an environment of friendship and efficiency. By creating a friendly environment, the leadership will foster the meeting of learning outcomes in addition to honoring the university’s mission of producing self-reliant, community engaged and global leaders.

Servant leadership comes amidst growing concerns from the students. For instance, some are complaining about not having adequate learning equipment. Notably, music students have voiced their concerns about the lack of iMacs, and the necessary software like Pro Tools, Photoshop and Final Cut Pro. Other concerns include the housing errors and missing financial aid money. Students are worried that the university is accepting more enrollments despite the limited housing opportunities. Some are against the decision to place them in old dorms despite paying for the new ones and receiving no refunds.

Therefore, for Dr. Lane, a bigger task ahead is how to ensure a successful transition into a servant-leadership while addressing the students’ concerns. For instance, the new leadership requires a work environment that fosters positive integration between or among employees (the staff) and the leader. On the other hand, a bigger task remains as to how and what approach will instructors use in ensuring that their leadership approach (since they offer guidance to students) is aimed at serving students. However, to realize this goal, it will be a major task rallying the team; team leadership will be necessary. Therefore, Dr. Lane has the responsibility of building a functional team and finding alternatives to enhancing its effectiveness. At best, team leadership will be vital in ensuring the efficiency of the team (teachers) into realizing the new emphasis or goal of servant leadership and serving the student’s interests.

Questions

• As a new leader in the institution, how will Dr. Lane cultivate a culture that supports a servant leadership approach? How can he address the students’ concerns?
• The refinement of the leadership as an approach to leadership is seemingly a transformational leadership situation in disguise. How will he deal with resistance to change or how does he ensure a smooth transition into the new leadership culture? How can the leader stimulate the employees (teachers) to realize the new emphasis of the institution towards academic excellence of the students?
• It is inherently obvious that team leadership is required for this situation. What options does Dr. Lane have in building an effective team of teachers to promote and implement values of servant leadership?

Section 3: Case Analysis

• Servant Leadership

One of the ways of analyzing the leadership scenario is by identifying the elements of servant leadership in the situation. Dr. Lane’s leadership challenge is how to tailor the servant leadership approach into meeting the needs of both students and teachers. By emphasizing the success of the students as an imperative, all leadership decisions will reflect the commitment of the leadership to optimizing learning or academic experiences of the students. The elements of servant leadership theory are evident in this leadership scenario. For one, a leader should show the behavioral inclination towards serving and not being served (Hakanen & van Dierendonck, 2013). Mostly, servant leadership is successful when a leader shows passion in helping others. The best way of showing this passion is by putting the interests of others first, as a leader, and serving their highest priorities. For Dr. Lane, his leadership priority in higher education is seeing students become successful. The priority is addressing the concerns of the student before anything. In this regard, a student-centered in the curriculum is inevitable. In general, Walker (2015) would assert that serving the interests of the students should begin by integrating them into the decision-making process. Therefore, by putting their interests first, the current leadership situation tends to abide by the recommended servant leadership necessities.

However, a major task for Dr. Lane is how to cultivate a culture that supports servant leadership. Hakanen and van Dierendonck (2013) posit that servant leadership does not only entail emphasizing on meeting the needs of the followers but to some extent, the growth of the members is necessary. For instance, meeting of the optimum learning outcome among students will come at the expense of the qualified staff (teachers). Providing enough resources and proper accommodation will be imperative in realizing the servant leadership goals. Besides, the office of the president has asked employees to create a friendly environment to foster the achievement of the goals of servant leadership. As a servant leader, it is vital to create an environment that fosters positive exchanges among followers. According to Burch and Guarana (2014), positive leader-member exchanges improve efficiency in meeting the set goals and objectives. Therefore, for this servant leadership situation, a lot is left to the leader, Dr. Lane, and employees (teachers), to create an environment of friendliness. Through a friendly environment, there will be positive exchanges between teachers and students as well as between the leader, Dr. Lane, and the employees (teachers as the staff).

• Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership is one of the situational leadership approaches. As Tudor (2014) states, leadership is a situational construct that depends on the underlying situation. In this case, a leader adopts his behavior depending on the leadership context. Transformational leadership is a visionary approach to organizing and coordinating followers. The leadership requires right approach through dimensions like idealized influence, inspired motivation and intellectual stimulation to meet the state goals (García-Morales, Jiménez-Barrionuevo & Gutiérrez-Gutiérrez, 2012). Therefore, if the servant leadership is to succeed, then inspired motivation should take center stage. For teachers to follow Dr. Lane’s transformative objectives through servant leadership, they must perceive him as a role model. However, he has done so in previous leadership encounters by driving enrollment rates higher and achieving some of the academic and leadership accolades thus branding him as a role model. Besides, from the path-goal leadership theory, expectancy (from the employees) is a major attribute because with the notion that efforts will translate into greater success, employees are highly motivated (Malik, 2012). Therefore, Dr. Lane’s leadership scenario is inclined towards the provision of individualized motivation or consideration as a determinant of the success of the servant-focused leadership.

The case study shows two fronts of leader-member exchanges. The first exchange is between the leader and the employees (the teachers) and the second one is between the employees (teachers) and the students. In equal measures, servant leadership will be successful if the leader motivates teachers through positive exchanges, especially by attending to the students’ needs since the grievances are also affecting teacher-student interaction. To realize the positive outcomes of the servant leadership (of optimizing student's academic excellence), students should also have positive exchanges with the teachers. Resistance to change may come from the employees (teachers) especially having to dedicate their time and going the extra mile of serving only the interests of the students. Nonetheless, with the right approach to the transition into servant leadership through training of the teachers (for professional development and improvement), the servant leadership goals, as set by the TSU’s office of the president, are realizable. Positive exchanges among teams, according to Posthuma and Aly-Riyami (2012), create room for cohesion and innovation, as one of the emphases of transformational leadership.

• Team Leadership Theory

The effectiveness and the realization of the servant leadership goals of optimizing student’s success will require a team-based approach, especially from the teachers. As true to the statement by Posthuma and Aly-Riyami (2012) leaders in higher learning institutions have the chance of creating top management teams for guiding and improving their organizations. The servant leadership being recommended in the case study is meant to improve the organization regarding the achievement of academic excellence. Therefore, for Dr. Lane, this will come at the expense of creating an excellent top management team. Furthermore, Solanksy (2008) confirms that with the right strategic mix of goal settings, clearly setting the team roles as well as considering the team life cycles, the goals and objectives of an organization are met. Hence, servant leadership in the case scenario requires the proper selection of a team to fulfill the set aim of optimizing academic excellence while at the same time, creating a friendly environment among the teachers for the realization of this goal. A team works best when presented with autonomy and limited influence from the leader. In this regard, achieving servant leadership goals and objectives will be realizable at the expense of the management having minimum impact on the teachers. Minimum supervision will be a necessity. As Solanksy (2008) recommends, a leader ought to understand that self-managed teams have different team processes. Mainly, leadership responsibilities should be delegated, and this concerns what Zaccaro, Rittman and Marks (2001) suggest as shared approach to leadership. Teachers also want a leadership impact or influence on their students. For the effectiveness of the servant leadership, it is imperative to have a single-self managed team of teachers who can execute some roles of the executive management.

Nonetheless, servant leaders are best at attending to their team’s needs. Notably, Hakanen and van Dierendonck (2013) identify some of the attributes of servant leadership with the appropriate attributes to team's effectiveness including stewardship, listening and building community. Students are part of the team. Meeting their needs including the provision of right resources and proper accommodation will influence their learning outcomes. Equally, a servant leader should listen to the team and adopt a humanistic approach to leadership. As Haber-Curran and Stewart (2012) would suggest, engaging with the team is a humanistic approach to leadership, especially in higher learning context that requires student-centered learning programs. Nevertheless, a stewardship approach to leadership obligates the leader to bear the responsibility for the actions of the team. The objective of the new approach to leadership (stewardship approach), is to ensure that Dr. Lane, as the leader, must commit himself to ensuring that teachers have developed a friendly environment to foster a servant leadership approach. However, this boils down to the exchanges among members themselves and as Solanksy (2008) states, positive exchanges lead to team’s effectiveness.

Section 3: Recommendations and conclusion

• Recommendations
• Developing a student-centered curriculum

For the servant leadership to serve the interests of the students, there is an obligation to have a learner-focused or student-centered curriculum. For Dr. Lane, the primary challenge should be developing a student-centered learning environment. The content, processes, product, as well as the learning environment, should be tailored towards addressing students’ needs. The approach will be effective because as Walker (2015) suggests, a learner-focused instructional framework provides intrinsic motivation to the learners and this will be necessary for achieving the goal of optimizing the student's academic outcomes. However, these changes are best addressed through a transformational leadership approach. For one, idealized influence should begin by Dr. Lane acting as a role model and serving the interests of the teachers as the staff will translate the positive exchanges when interacting with students. On the other hand, Intellectual stimulation, as a dimension of the transformational leadership theory should guide the leader in creating a new culture of servant leadership. For instance, teachers should be allowed opportunities for development and training to enable them commit to ensuring positive learning outcomes. Besides, intellectual stimulation to students entails being provided with the necessary learning resources to achieve their life-long goals of becoming role models and reputable community leaders.

• Having a team-based leadership

The other recommendation will be to have a team-based approach to leadership. In this case, Dr. Lane should borrow from the elements of effective teams as recommended by the team leadership theory. For his leadership to foster servant-ship, the building of effective teams should begin by establishing positive relationships with the employees. The objectives and goals of the leadership should be guided by positive exchanges among employees and with the leader. As such, Dr. Lane should strive at his best to create positive exchanges to streamline the establishment of trust, loyalty and a notion of responsibility among the teams, especially teachers. The effectiveness of the team, as Dr. Lane should understand, depends on trust and loyalty. According to Zaccaro et al. (2001), trust and loyalty improve the innovative capacity of a team. Innovation will be necessary for meeting the goal of improving academic excellence. Therefore, servant leadership will be successful by fostering teamwork and providing the necessary support to teachers in fulfilling the stated goal of serving the interests of students. For instance, the prime concern of the students is learning and quality learning experience. In this regard, necessary support to the teams (teachers) is needed for achieving this goal. Other staff, like the accommodation department, should be allocated enough resources for achieving their goals of serving students better in housing requirements. On the other hand, teams work best when equality prevails, and this concerns the allocation of resources (Solanksy, 2008). Dr. Lane should aim at allocating resources with equality in mind and show fair treatment of the teams. Finally, objectives of servant leadership of serving the plight of the employees should guide the leader in achieving the new mission of optimizing student excellence and learning outcomes. For one, addressing the concerns of the students will be a necessity, and this involves timely completion of the new buildings and offering refunds for those students.

• Having a compelling vision

The success of servant leadership depends on the ability of a leader to have a compelling vision. A leader should be in the best position to see and forecast what is invisible to the team members (Tudor, 2014). Therefore, Dr. Lane should create the impression among teachers that he does believing in the success of the servant leadership. Particularly, the team will only believe the capacity of the leader if he inspires greatness among them, is committed to uniting teachers and engages them in decision making. However, Dr. Lane is such a visionary leader as evident from his previous leadership encounters. The effectiveness of his leadership will be cemented by a follower-centered approach in interacting with the members. For instance, communication of the vision should be embraced both at team and individual level.

• Sound every-day leadership habits

The success of servant leadership depends on leader-member exchange (Tudor, 2014). A leader should portray sound behaviors. For this sense, Dr. Lane must base his leadership on respect to teachers, all staff and students when making decisions. On the other hand, he ought to appreciate the contributions of the teams in the realization of the goal of academic excellence. Finally, he should provide opportunities for all the members to explore their potentials and develop their skills. For instance, training to employees should be a priority to enhance their professional development.

• Conclusion

In summary, a major leadership problem for Dr. Lane developing a servant leadership culture amidst the growing concerns from students regarding housing (accommodation) and learning resources. To achieve this objective, he should build a culture that fosters transformation by providing support to teachers and allocating the necessary training for meeting the set objectives. Effective team leadership will be vital because the mission is to be achieved through teamwork (among teachers). Being a servant leader, therefore, calls for his action to address the needs of the students, and build an effective team of teachers. Dr. Lane is up to the task to develop an organizational culture that encourages positive exchanges. The implication is that academic excellence will require full support from the teachers regarding their commitment to innovation in instructions and guiding students to become innovative leaders. Therefore, Dr. Lane must portray himself as an effective team leader.