Part B: Servant Leadership Profile - Essay Example

Servant Leadership The term servant leadership was a term that was created by Robert Greenleaf in 1970 with an aim to bring about the concept of leaders focusing on meeting the needs of workers, instead of the earlier method of commanding and controlling them (Spears 7). The servant leader is one who is a servant first and one who endeavors to have the needs of others met, ensuring that they improve in their status , become healthier, acquire more freedom and autonomy and more likely to be shaped into servitude in the future.

Servant leaders will posses characteristics some of which are, being skillful in listening and making decisions concerning others, as they strive to find out the will or aspirations of a group and seeks to find the best way to have it implemented (Spears 8). They are known to be receptive listeners who reflect on what is being said as they make decisions that greatly incorporate the aspirations of the group. The servant leaders will also demonstrate empathy, a quality that enables them to accept and recognize all members of the group, irrespective of their differences and uniqueness, and even though they could reject some individual’s behavior or performance, they do everything to accept them as people who should be listened to and probably corrected in the best way possible.

Servant leaders also posses the quality of being emotional healers to the group and this is because since have the opportunity to interact with members of the group at individual level. This ability to get to the level of individual members of the group creates a bond between the leader and the members, which facilitates emotional healing, as the individual realizes that somebody is concerned about their welfare. As role models, servant leaders have self awareness ability, which implies that they should understand and have ethical behavior and values since they cannot implicate ethics and values to workers that they do not portray (Spears 9).

Self awareness also enables them to view and tackle issues holistically instead of from a narrow perspective. Servant leaders posses the characteristic of being able to be persuasive instead of being authoritative, seeking to convince rather than to force decisions upon the group. The leader is able to build consensus within the group, making this characteristic one of the clearest difference between authoritative and servant leadership. The servant leader has the other characteristic of being able to be conceptualistic, or being able to see the bigger picture of an organization.

This involves the balancing of day to day activities of the group while also working towards the bigger picture of the future. Another characteristic of the servant leader is the ability to have foresight, which entails the ability to learn from past lessons, understanding present realities and the implications of the decisions made for the future (Spears 9). In the area of stewardship, the Servant leader is able to facilitate within the group, the feeling of all members being stewards of the organization for the greater good of the community.

This makes the members feel responsible for the growth and the impact of the organization since they feel that they are its part and parcel. Facilitating the growth of people in the group is also a very integral characteristic of servant leaders, and they are able see beyond the present services being given to the untapped potential in the members of the group. Servant leaders recognize their personal responsibility to nature the potential in the members of their group, and do everything possible to enhance it.

The servant leader should also have the capability to build community, which entails his recognition that the community aspect in shaping human lives has been replaced by large institutions. The building should entail mostly, being charitable to the community through service and investments. This gives the members of the group joy as they feel that they are making a positive contribution, and it also becomes a bridge for socializing with the community.Work CitedSpears, Larry, C. Practicing Servant-Leadership, 2004.

Hesselebein & Company.