Servant leadership is a popular term today. Nowadays, many companies are hiring servant leaders. Does the question arise who servant leaders are? What are servant leadership characteristics? Here you will find answers to all these questions.
Robert Greenleaf gave the term servant leadership in an essay in the 20th century. The basic principle of leadership is that a leader should serve his followers first. He distinguished servant leaders from leaders who seek leadership for power and wealth. Robert Greenleaf was an organizational executive. He was not a famous author or philosopher.
New paradigms are emerging to leadership, and one of them is servant leadership. The servant philosophy is a form of the contemporary approach to leadership. It is a recent form of leadership. The main aim of the servant leaders is to serve their organization and followers. Servant leadership characteristics emphasize trust, collaboration, empathy, ethics, and so on. There are some well-known servant leaders: M. Scott Peck, Ken Blanchard, Ann McGee-Cooper, Peter Senge, Duane Trampe, Kent Keith, Stephen Covey, Margret Wheatley, and Larry Spears.
Ten Servant Leadership Characteristics
Larry C. Spears gives these ten characteristics. He was the former president of the Robert Greenleaf. The following are ten servant leadership characteristics:
Listening
Listening is one of the essential servant leadership characteristics. When you listen to others, you can make deep commitments to them and understand what they are saying. While you are listening to others, give them full attention. Try to avoid any kind of interruption. When they finished talking, give them feedback on what they say.
Empathy
Servant leaders make efforts to understand others’ perspectives and intentions. Servant leadership encourages you to put aside your views for some time. So it would be easy for you to understand others’ viewpoints. The leader should have the ability to understand others’ emotions and feelings since they understand others so deeply. Thus, they should perform actions to fulfill others’ desires.
Healing
This servant leadership characteristic refers to emotional health. The emotions of them as well as the people who are following them. Healing means that servant leaders must support the followers. Their support should be whole mentally as well as physically. The servant-leader must support their followers with all the resources and knowledge.
Self-awareness
Self-awareness means looking at your own strengths and weaknesses. It means that leaders must have the ability to think about their emotions and behaviors. Furthermore, he must look at his decisions’ consequences. Also, how they are affecting his followers and must stick to his values. In simple words, he should adopt moral codes and must remain honest in performing them.
Persuasion
One of the chief servant leadership characteristics is persuasion. Servant leaders use persuasion as a style of leadership rather than authority. Since persuasion encourages them to take action. The main aim of persuasion is to build consensus among the followers since persuasion means taking everyone’s support for the leaders’ decision.
Conceptualization
Conceptualization means the servant leaders are expected to dream big. Furthermore, they perform day to day actions to achieve those bigger goals. Thus it is the ability to imagine future possibilities. Also, they should recognize those possibilities with current realities. Generally, the managers also must have this characteristic to motivate their team.
Foresight
Foresight promotes that leaders should predict what will happen in the future. They should make this prediction by learning from past experiences. They should be aware of the team’s present situation. Besides this, the servant leaders must understand the consequences of their decisions. Also, they should learn to trust their intuition.
Stewardship
Stewardship is taking responsibility for your actions as well as your teams’ action. Thus the leader is accountable for the role of the team members in his organization. If you are a leader, then you are responsible for the things that are happening in your organization. Take your time to understand your team’s requirements.
Commitment to the Growth of People
Servant leaders are responsible for the growth of people who aligned them. Thus servant leaders are committed to the personal development of the people. Also, he handles the professional development of everyone in the team. For developing people around you, you should understand their development needs. Besides this, the servant leaders must be aware of the team’s skills. Along with this, he knows the skills which his followers should have to complete the job.
Building Company
The last servant leadership characteristic is a building company. Since it provides opportunities for people to interact with one another in a group, thus it means that the leader must build a sense of community within the organization. Along with this, he must organize events to encourage the team and build their company like a tea party, etc.
So these were some main servant leadership characteristics given by C. Spears. Servant leadership aims to serve people and the organization. Leaders must make their followers happy and to engage them with work.
