This is a custom essay written on Servant Leadership
Many would agree to the statement, “to lead is to serve”. It was well said by Rabindranath Tagore, that serving is synonymous with enjoying. To put it in other words, serving is the best means of creating a channel of compatibility with another person. Serving the person is the best way to gain trust from him and thus lead him. This very idea has led to the concept of Servant Leadership.
The concept of servant leadership finds its origin in the Bible. The Bible says that the servant leaders first anchor themselves in service to God and stand ready to serve and lead others. It is the desire to enrich and enhance the lives of those being led through unselfish servanthood. It stands against the styles like, authoritarian, top-down, and command and control styles of leadership.
Servant leadership demands those qualities in a leader that are absent in most of the other styles of leadership. Listening forms one of the most crucial tenets of servant leader. To actively listen is to convey, with body, face, eyes, posture, gestures, that one is really interested in hearing what someone is saying. Research has shown that many people when engaged in dialog, listen inattentively to others and spend time in rehearsing what they wish to say. Such a tendency defeats the purpose of being a servant leader.
The servant leader must be able to put himself in the follower’s shoes; be empathetic towards the followers. Empathy is a key trait of servant leaders. Without empathy, one can’t build trust. And without trust, one will never be able to get the best effort from his employees. Empathy can be shown by persuasion. The leader who influences by persuasion need not tell the follower what to do. The leader acknowledges his dependency on the follower. Although a manager may have the authority to carry out certain actions without consulting subordinates, it is probably more effective to include them as it gives them the opportunity to express their opinions. By actively soliciting agreement a leader makes a strong appeal to the follower’s esteem.
One of the key elements of the servant leaders is thinking beyond day-to-day realities and communicating the same to the followers. This demands expertise to conceptualize and communicate the problems to the followers effectively.
The five C’s of effective communication:
- Collect
- Comprehend
- Categorize
- Convey
- Convince
Every leader must specialize in the process of communication. The first task is to collect the information that is to be communicated. Here the leader should avoid the redundancy and the obsolete factors that dampen the crisp in communication.
After collecting the appropriate data, he needs to comprehend the same. This needs understanding the finesse of the issue/data in order to communicate the same to the members effectively. The leader should understand the fact that level at which he delivers the message may not be same at which the employers receive it. With the changing times, there is a need for change in leadership style as well. Corporate and the social organizations have realized the importance of servant leadership and it is proving to be a successful style of leadership.
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