What I Have Learned About Leadership

School Paper

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

What I have learned about leadership

Describe the traits and behaviors that are the core of your leadership model, and explain how a leader will utilize these traits and behaviors to achieve organizational objectives.

 Servant leaders are primarily concerned with the well-being and growth of people and their community. The servant leaders put the needs of others first, shares power and help to develop people and do their job best as possible. Traditionally servant leaders are valued by their decision making and communication skills. They usually have a deep commitment to be informed about the will of others and serves to clarify that will. The servant-leader understand the said and unsaid problems of the subordinates and they are also concerned the inner voice of them. They strive to empathize and understand others. Skilled empathic listeners are successful servant leaders. The servant leadership one of the greatest strength is the potential to heal the one’s relationship with others. People are usually suffered from many emotional hurts and they have broken spirits. Servant leaders should have strengths and self-awareness to understand the issues related to values, power, and ethics. The reliance on persuasion is another trait of a servant leader in spite of one’s positional authority in organizational decision making. The servant leaders mostly try to convince others but they don’t coerce compliance. This trait of persuasion used by servant leaders to achieve organizational goals. The servant leaders can look at the organizational problem from the perspective of conceptualization. Conceptualization motivates them to achieve the goals of the organization smoothly and in a well-managed manner.  The broader-based conceptual thinking is the long term operational goal which is only achieved by servant leaders. Another trait of servant leaders which is closed related to conceptualization is foresight. A leader can imagine and visualize the outcomes of the conceptualization of goal achievement. Foresight enables servant-leaders to learn from the previous lessons and thing about the realities of the present and make an absolute decision for the future (Spears, 2010).

Explain what type of leader will be most successful emulating your model and why?

The Servant leaders try to involve people in decision making and respect the opinion of the people to create a community within a team. The innovations can only be lead by the engagement of team members with one another. The only issue with servant leadership is the removal of hierarchal environment. The dependence of servant leadership is on the long-time behavior with team members in an efficient manner. The servant leaders are successful when they have a clear vision and mission to gain organizational objectives. They need to be self-motivated to achieve the goals of the organization. Respected and strong leaders are the ones who have a high level of self-motivation. The great servant leaders are full of contagious positive energy. The people feel comfortable to work with such types of leaders and it gives a significant source of ideas and inspiration. Some times leaders have to make continues decisions in the everyday course of business and it is very difficult to handle the situation alone. The servant leaders use to take the suggestions of other subordinates and make the decision without stress. It is quite difficult and stressful for managers to make decisions daily. The servant leaders use to take the suggestion of people while making a decision. The leaders have to maintain the brackets of decision making, first, they have started with the small decision then go through the way of a bigger and most difficult decision. The servant leaders have an edge of others opinion while making a decision which makes them comfortable and lowers their level of stress. The decision taken by servant leaders could be more appropriate and strong because they analyze all the perspective of problems which could be expected in the future. The responsibility of leaders is to focus and manage the goals of an organization which can only be possible with the cooperative environment of the organization.

Describe which of the leadership influence tactics will be most effective for leaders to utilize when applying your model. 

Servant leaders usually use soft tactics to deal with the members of the team. The soft tactics include consultation, personal appeal, rational persuasion, and ingratiation. In decision making or planning the behavior of servant leaders is to seek the participation of others to propose and implement the policy in goal setting and achievement. The leaders required extensively to consult with other stakeholders. The managers have to make the decisions quickly and clearly and servant manager have to manage too much democracy and lots of consultation. The successful small companies use the Stalinist principle to achieve the results in a definite time. The leaders have to stay focused on goal achievement. The common mistake that a servant leader can sometimes practice is to take the decision and then start a debate on it. This practice makes him weak while deciding according to the opinion of another person which is better than their decision. Another tactic used by the servant leaders is Personal Appeals in which the leader depending on the interpersonal relationships to influence their behavior. The leaders keep a good relationship with their subordinates and work in a friendly environment. They use to have friendly lunch or dinner with subordinates and discuss the business matters and assign the task to people whom they feel more competent and qualified. They use to discuss the business matter in an informal meeting and sort out the problems in a very comfortable environment. Rational persuasion behavior of the servant leaders is another tactic which use factual evidence and logical arguments to persuade others. They use physical evidence while making a decision and most of the time the decisions are rational due to this practice. Ingratiating is used by the servant leaders in which they meet people in a good mood and ask them about work and think favorable of them before engaging them to do something.

Describe how situational leadership applies to your model?

Situational leadership is an adaptive style of leadership in which the leaders choose that style of leadership which suits best to circumstances and goals of an organization. Servant leadership is also a flexible style of leadership like situational leadership. Situational leadership adopts the need of the organization and the existing work environment (Thompson, 2015). Servant leaders analyze the situation of the existing work environment and decide after consultation from subordinates. The servant leadership and situational leadership both are ethical ways of leadership. Both leaders are focused on the achievement of the goal to gain success in a competitive environment. Adequate knowledge and skills are required in situational and servant leadership to assist the followers efficiently. The leaders behave ethically refers to interacting openly, honestly and fairly with followers. Both leaders used the actions and words and make it clear to the followers that fulfill their need for work at top priority (Yasir & Mohamad 2016).

Explain the barriers and opportunities that may affect the implementation of your leadership model. 

           To give up the absolute authority by the servant leaders is an obvious limitation of servant leadership style. This authority gives up is against the traditional workplace authority structure in which all the decisions made by the CEOs, communicate those decisions to the subordinates and then get credit when those decisions are successful. The sublimation of egos is a problem in a servant leadership style. The whole credit goes to employees on the succession of the project. The servant leadership may cause less motivation in employees and the results produced by them is getting poorer with time. Loss of productivity and motivation is the major problem of servant leadership. The employees believe that the manager will take care of the task and they step back from the task or put less effort into it. The servant leadership style can also decrease the managerial authority from the business overall management functions. The authoritative figure is less when employees feel that managers are ready to cater to their needs extremely. When senior management is influencing the middle-level management to improve the efficiency of the business then the servant manager feels difficult to sustain his dominant role. Servant leadership is not fit in every business. This type of approach is specifically suitable for some type of businesses. It takes time to establish successful servant leadership because it is difficult to practice this system due to lack of stability. The managers take care of the feeling of employees more despite their performance and they are reluctant to take hard decisions which may be good for the welfare of the organization. The servant leaders avoid the honest critique of the job performance of the employees. Servant leadership makes employees lazier and less motivational. This may create less motivation among employees and it may create hurdle in the way of goal achievement.

References

Spears, L. C. (2010). Character and servant leadership: Ten characteristics of effective, caring leaders. The Journal of Virtues & Leadership, 1(1), 25-30.

Thompson, G., & Glasø, L. (2015). Situational leadership theory: a test from three perspectives. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 36(5), 527-544.

Yasir, M., & Mohamad, N. A. (2016). Ethics and morality: Comparing ethical leadership with servant, authentic and transformational leadership styles. International Review of Management and Marketing, 6(4S), 310-316.