Servant Leadership---- The Key to a Successful Future?

 Everybody can be great because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. you don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve.... You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. --- Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! 

Based on the title of this post and the quote above, you can probably guess that this post will be about servant leadership. This week in class we have been talking about methods of internal and external communications and we read an article about The Art of Servant Leadership. After I finished reading the article I knew that I wanted to dig a little deeper about servant leadership and that brings me here today! 

Today we're going to focus on traditional and servant leadership and why I believe that servant leadership is the key to a successful future. 

Leadership Styles and Communication 

So you may be wondering what leadership styles have to do with communication. It's essential to smooth and coherent communication between organizations. According to an article by Zoe Mackey, "servant leaders build avenues for better communication." According to this article, they surveyed employees from different organizations and noticed that a lot of the complaints about leadership from the survey were similar such as being unclear about directions, not meeting with employees, and not giving their employees constructive criticism. A number of these complaints can stem from traditional command-and-control leadership structures, which are based on values like hierarchy class systems and exclusion and privilege (Mackey, 2018, n.p.). Servant leaders tend to do the complete opposite of this. They collaborate with the entire team to create a clear vision that leads to a better direction. Servant leaders use the team to help create the vision and then they join their team and help them bring the vision to life. This post is going to set to explore the differences between traditional and servant leadership and how I believe that servant leadership will help build strong foundations for companies. 

Traditional leadership 

The origin of traditional leadership is said to have begun during the industrial revolution where workers were led by someone who had total authority/control over them. Traditional leadership is often compared to militant style. With traditional leadership, the "boss" is the one who orders their employers what to do without any input from their employers. They make the rules and you must abide by them if you want to work for them.  Here is a model for a more clear understanding: 

After analyzing the model does it make more sense? How many of us have had bosses who led with traditional leadership? How did it make you feel? Did you feel like you approach them directly? These are all questions that I had to ask myself. I have had a boss who led with a more traditional leadership style. Personally, I didn't like that type of leadership. I felt small compared to my boss. I felt as if I couldn't directly communicate with my boss. I believe that traditional leadership disrupts smooth communication between the boss, its employees, consumers, and investors. When I had a boss who led in a traditional way they would often ask me questions on how to do my job because they didn't know. I'm not saying they must be perfect but knowledgeable. How can you expect me to communicate issues or potential new goals for a job that you know nothing about? Often if the boss doesn't know specifically how a certain job runs within the company how can they make goals and objectives to help better the job? They can't. I believe that it just doesn't work. 

Servant leadership

Servant leadership is so important to me. I believe that I've been a servant leader whenever I was a leader of an organization or project. I want to put in the work and not just tell others what to do. This is so important. I believe that in order for an organization and its communication to flourish there has to be a level of respect and relatability between all parts that help run the organization or company. Here is a model of servant leadership: 

After analyzing the servant leadership side, you can notice that the model has been flipped upside down. The employees are at the top and the board of directors is at the bottom. I believe that employees are the most important part of any organization or business. Without employees there is nothing. You don't have a running company. A quote that I feel directly relates to this is that "I raised to treat the janitor with the same respect as the CEO." Servant leaders do the jobs that their employees do. They relate to them which leaves a smooth line of open communication for them. Servant leaders motivate their employees to be the best which creates a more valuable brand. Servant leaders are serving instead of commanding, showing humility instead of brandishing authority, and always looking to enhance the development of their staff members in ways that unlock potential, creativity, and sense of purpose (Tarallo, 2018, n.p.). Have you ever had a boss that was a servant leader? How did that boss make you feel? Do you believe that you could directly communicate with them? 

Once you answer those questions about traditional and servant leadership, let me know your opinions on each of them in the comments. Also, if you would like to take it a step further to decide if you are a servant leader or not, I'm going to drop a link below to a servant leadership assessment created by Modern Servant Leader. I scored a perfect score on the assessment which is an 18/18. If you choose to take the assessment and are comfortable with sharing your scores, let me know in the comments. 

See you online next week, 

- Makayla Cameron 

Link to assessment

References

Tarallo, M. (2019, August 16). The art of servant leadership. Retrieved April 05, 2021, from https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/organizational-and-employee-development/pages/the-art-of-servant-leadership.aspx

Burley, K. (2019, February 11). Emergence of traditional leadership styles. Retrieved April 06, 2021, from https://bizfluent.com/info-8469011-emergence-traditional-leadership-styles.html 

Mackey, Z. (n.d.). Why servant leadership reduces employee turnover rates. Retrieved April 06, 2021, from https://ideas.bkconnection.com/why-servant-leadership-improves-employee-turnover-rates