Understanding The Servant Leadership Style

22nd July 2021

There are numerous different management styles that we can use in the workplace when it comes to leadership. In order to run an organization smoothly, it is necessary to formulate strong teams with members who are gratified both personally and professionally. As a skilled leader, you also need to identify who can contribute high-quality work that supports your company success. Here, servant leadership plays a significant role.

Servant leadership is a management approach. In this approach, you lead by stroking the requirements of your team first. To produce higher quality work more competently and prolifically, it is necessary that your team members feel personally and professionally satisfied. In servant leadership, employee satisfaction and teamwork are vital concepts. The expression "Servant Leadership" was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf that was first published in the 1970 essay, The Servant as Leader.

Major Principles of Servant Leadership

Here are the primary principles servant leaders abide by:

1. Listening

To become an effective leader, you need to listen to your team well. Operative servant leaders don’t just speak but listen and understand what their team has to say. They provide sufficient opportunities for all associates of the team to be perceived and listen cautiously. By listening to observations and awareness from all team members, an effective leader can understand his/her opportunities for development.

2. Empathy

Needless to say, it has its power. You will understand your team at the human level when you are empathetic and concerned enough. Effective servant leaders care about their team on a personal level. This contributes to accomplishment in their professional life. For skilled servant leadership, being empathetic means understanding others' feelings without any verdict or condemnation.

3. Healing

Able servant leaders appreciate the importance of fixing preceding problems before being able to move on to new aims and projects. You need to understand the fact that to be able to face the new challenges of a new quarter, your team needs to be able to heal if you have experienced a bad quarter and come to an agreement first.

4. Self-Awareness

It is essential to be aware of yourself and your team. By understanding your strong points and weaknesses, you can regulate where you best fit within the team. Additionally, you need to be able to admit and raise from your weaknesses. Self-awareness is one of the critical principles for servant leadership as reinforces the servant leader.

5. Valuation

For the forthcoming of an organization, assessment is important. You need to understand the leadership qualities of your team members to allocate them future leadership parts. Successful servant leaders make goals and ground-breaking strategies to bring out the positive qualities and motivate employees to take charge. The basic idea is to aid establishments make the most of their leadership by placing employees in an imposing place where they flourish and drive business.

6. Encouragement

Implying positive persuasion is crucial to run a team effectively. It is a convenient tool for servant leaders as it allows them to create harmony and encourages team members to invest in the teamwork. Also, by doing so, team members are more stirred to safeguard the success of the team as a total.

7. Visionary

Positive servant leaders know the importance of learning from past mistakes. They support their team do the same as they are rapid to discover the scrawny associations in the organization. Positive servant leaders also believe that everyone has their potential and consequently push them to enhance their receding qualities.

8. Assurance

Servant leaders are always in quest of ways to advance their team to support them achieve their goals and become better professionals. Servant leaders are dedicated to aiding others to understand their ideas. They keep the employees driven by showing the supreme will-power and commitment to their effort. Commitment and work integrities are transmissible.

Till now, it may sound like servant leaders do enjoy their works a lot but there are certain times when they also go through some tough situations. Servant leaders occasionally experience compression from their superiors to speed the employee-development procedure along as most industries exist to make revenue. Moreover, as servant leaders aim to be a united part of the team, it can moderate their authority. Believe it or not, meeting the requirements of others is draining and it’s common to experience fatigue in work environments too.

Additionally, it is also important to understand servant leadership style doesn’t work for everyone. Some individuals prefer a direct or no-nonsense approach while others work best to an analytic approach. Explore the trainer training program for HR, to start leading your team better than ever before by evolving your managerial assistance.

Written By : Victoria Lewis