Another problem with servant leadership is that it can make employees less motivated and, over time, produce worse results.
Servant leaders
are naturally inclined to step in and fix problems when they occur, and this may include completing a task that an employee has not completed. The servant leadership cart is still in motion, but it must be derailed. It is a bad idea because it is paternalistic and gets in the way of employee engagement.Research shows that servant leaders can abuse authority and fade away in their attempt to 'lead from behind', becoming inadvertently invisible to the organisation in terms of their impact. They may retreat into the comfort of serving their employees, not wanting to engage as much with the chain (which can be the opposite of comforting) and therefore not establishing as strong a presence with their leaders. Think like an engineer, feel like an artist. Scott, I love this.
Yes, you can LEAD and still have a soul. A leader is someone who people follow, something difficult to achieve with the purest form of servant leadership. Great servant leaders usually have good listening skills, a lot of empathy, the ability to develop others, good persuasion skills and global thinking skills. Servant leadership often leads to high employee engagement, highly motivated employees and a strong sense of ethics.
Unfortunately, servant leadership can lead to a strong focus on individuals and consequently less focus on the real goals of the organisation. Furthermore, servant leadership is known to take a long time to establish and does not work in all organisations. A servant leader must have little or no ego, a rare trait among leaders. Another disadvantage of servant leadership is that it takes time to put into practice.
The theory is based on building trusting relationships, team building and an overall sense of belonging for each person in the workplace. This cannot be done in a short time. Service leaders need time to engage with workers, to know and understand what motivates them, and how they can merge the needs of the business with those of the employees to create a productive workplace. Any workplace that seeks rapid change using servant leadership will fail, and will probably have to start from scratch.
You might also consider creating leadership development plans for yourself and the managers who report to you. That is a far cry from going into the office and behaving like a servant to your employees rather than to the customers you are all there to serve. So here we can see the differences between the power of servant leadership and the weaknesses of servant leadership. The American delivery company, founded in 1971 by Fred Smith, developed a culture of servant leadership, which allowed the company to thrive and grow accordingly.
Remember that it must come from a genuine place; people can spot fake and inauthentic servant leaders. Selflessness The field of servant leadership asserts that effective leaders are not ego-centred or selfish. A good leader knows his or her own strengths and weaknesses, is self-aware and uses an appropriate approach to get the best result in a given context. It is not necessary to have a very influential role in the company to start practising the servant leadership style.
By following your leadership role, employees' commitment to the organisation is affected and enhanced. A servant leader asks open and follow-up questions as a matter of course, not only when something goes wrong. The servant leadership style can increase the motivation and courage of employees to be more creative and innovative. Classic servant leaders often come into conflict with bosses who do not share the same leadership philosophies.
Sipe and Frick state in their book on servant leadership that within each employee there is a desire to control their own growth and progress, and that support mechanisms aligned with the servant leader model are what develop this initiative within the employee. He was talking about his role in Black Panther, playing T'Challa, king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, but he could easily have given a lecture on leadership today.
