Lecture 5

Mostly affiliative leadership: People first

The terminology 'Servant Leadership' became popular in a leadership context after Robert Greenleaf's book, Servant Leadership (1977)

The basic idea of servant leadership: the leader serves the followers (or a cause, which benefits the followers in some way).

Servant leadership emphasizes that leaders be attentive to the concerns of their followers, empathize with them, and nurture them. Servant leaders put followers first, empower them, and help them develop their full personal capacities.

• A leader who embodies this is not leading for reasons of status, wealth, popularity or lust for power. Instead, they want to make a positive difference to the benefit of all - or at least the majority - of followers. Crucially, a servant leader also tends to do this knowingly and willingly at his or her own cost.

Servant leaders place the good of followers over their own self-interests and emphasize follower development (Hale & Fields, 2007). Flanagan Guest Lecture

They demonstrate strong moral behavior toward followers (Graham, 1991; Walumbwa, Hartnell, & Oke, 2010), the organization, and other stakeholders (Ehrhart, 2004).

Practicing servant leadership comes more naturally for some than for others, but everyone can learn to be a servant leader (Spears, 2010).

Although servant leadership is sometimes treated by others as a trait, in our discussion servant leadership is viewed as a set of behaviors. Servant leadership is not a trait, it is a behavior

CEO is not on top. He is integrated in the service and need of his/her followers

In an attempt to clarify servant leadership for practitioners, Spears (2002) identified 10 characteristics in Greenleaf’s writings that are central to the development of servant leadership.

Together, these characteristics comprise the first model or conceptualization of servant leadership.

PEACH Loves Fucking Sucking & Cock-Blocking

Example of a Servant Leader: Tutor that helps you advance in your studies

Altruistic behavior

Capacity to sacrifice

The following slide shows the servant leadership model based on Liden, Wayne, Zhao, and Henderson (2008) and Liden, Panaccio, Hu, and Meuser (2014) that has three main components:

Three pillars of servant leadership theory:

antecedent conditions, servant leader behaviors, and outcomes

The model is intended to clarify the phenomenon of servant leadership and provide a framework for understanding its complexities.

1. Context and Culture:

Servant leadership does not occur in a vacuum but occurs within a given organizational context and a particular culture.

The nature of each of these affects the way servant leadership is

carried out.

1. Leader Attributes:

As in any leadership situation, the qualities and disposition of the

leader influence the servant leadership process.

Individuals bring their own traits and ideas about leading to leadership situations. These dispositions shape how individuals demonstrate servant leadership.

1. Follower Receptivity

The receptivity of followers is a factor that appears to influence the impact of servant leadership on outcomes such as personal and organizational job performance.

Follower receptivity concerns the question “Do all followers show a desire for servant leadership?”

Also important: Do the followers want/like servant leadership? Some want directive leadership

Servant leaders put followers first, empower them and help them develop their full personal capacities.

This leaders are acting ethical and lead in ways that serve the greater good of the organization, community and society at large

Servant leaders place the good of followers over their own self- interests and emphasize followers development

Conceptualizing

Conceptualizing refers to the servant leader’s thorough understanding of the organization—its purposes, complexities, and mission. (Same as in emotional intelligence approach)

Emotional Healing

Emotional healing involves being sensitive to the personal concerns and well-being of others.

Putting Followers First

Putting others first is the sine qua non of servant leadership—the

defining characteristic.

Helping Followers Grow and Succeed

This behavior refers to knowing followers’ professional or personal goals and helping them to accomplish those aspirations.

Behaving Ethically

Behaving ethically is doing the right thing in the right way. It is holding to strong ethical standards, including being open, honest, and fair with followers. Includes Ethics -> Parallels to Transformational leadership & Authentic leadership

Empowering

Empowering refers to allowing followers the freedom to be independent, make decisions on their own, and be self-sufficient.

Creating Value for the Community

Servant leaders create value for the community by consciously and intentionally giving back to the community. They are involved in local activities and encourage followers to also volunteer for community service. Help the people so they can help themselves. Empowering the people -> Persuasion

Follower Performance and Growth

In the model of servant leadership, most of the servant leader behaviors focus directly on recognizing followers’ contributions and helping them realize their human potential. The expected outcome for followers is greater self-actualization. Empowerment: Help yourself in the end

Organizational Performance

Initial research has shown that, in addition to positively affecting followers and their performance, servant leadership has an influence on organizational performance. Several studies have found a positive relationship between servant leadership and organizational citizenship behaviors, which are follower behaviors that go beyond the basic requirements of the follower’s duties

Societal Impact

Another outcome expected of servant leadership is that it is likely to have a positive impact on society.

Servant Leadership can be implemented into almost every organization, if the followers like it

When leaders commit themselves to putting their followers first, being honest with them, and treating them fairly.

They want to listen to their followers and develop strong long-term interpersonal relationships to understand the abilities, needs and goals of followers to allow these followers to achieve their full potential.

It should be noted that in much of the writing on servant leadership there is an underlying philosophical position, originally set forth by Greenleaf (1970), that leaders should be altruistic and humanistic.

Rather than using their power to dominate others, leaders should make every attempt to share their power and enable others to grow and become autonomous.

Leadership framed from this perspective downplays competition in the organization and promotes egalitarianism.

-SL includes altruism as a central component of the leadership process.

-It is the only leadership approach that frames the leadership process around the principle of caring for others.

-In comparing servant leadership to transformational leadership, a meta-analysis found servant leadership was better at predicting employee performance and attitudes, showing promise as a stand-alone theory that can help leadership researchers and practitioners better explain employee performance and attitudes than other recent approaches (Hoch, Bommer, Dulebohn, & Wu, 2018).

-SL provides a provocative approach refering to power and influence, which means that leaders should not dominate, direct or control - leaders should share control and influence.

Question: Servant leader is the typical micromanagement leadership style? No, because you want to empower your subordinates and have them work independently

It is not clear how servant leadership leads to organizational change. For example, Newman, Schwarz, Cooper, and Sendjaya (2017) found that servant leadership was positively related to psychological empowerment, but it did not result in followers engaging in extra-role performance (organizational citizenship) above and beyond that accounted for by leader–member exchange (LMX).

At the research status of today the robustness of theoretical formulation will remain limited.

SL has an utopian ring because it conflicts with individual autonomy and other leadership principles like directing, goal setting, creating vision.

Finally, it is unclear why “conceptualizing” is included as one of the servant leadership behaviors in the model of servant leadership.

Is conceptualizing actually a behavior, or is it a cognitive ability? Is it a skill? Furthermore, what is the rationale for identifying conceptualizing as a determinant of servant leadership?

SL can be applied at all levels of management and types of organizations. Liden et al. (2008) suggest that organizations that want to build a culture of servant leadership should be careful to select people who are interested in and capable of building long-term relationships with followers.

Used in training and development in many Fortune 500 companies for more than 30 years.

SL is taught at many colleges and universities around the world and is the focus of many independent coaches, trainers and consultants.

SL provides a philosophy and set of behaviors that individuals in the organizational setting can learn and develop (like EI and authentic leadership).