According to Northouse (2016), leadership can be defined as \u2018a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal\u2019 (p. 6).<\/p>\n
Sometimes the process of leadership can be lost in pursuit of the goal, but there is growth in the process that would not occur through any other way. In the process of influencing followers, not only do the followers change and grow, but so does the leader. This process of growing together in pursuit of a common goal can not only help achieve the goal at hand, but can also equip both the leader and the followers to better achieve goals in the future.<\/p>\n
This growth that occurs could not occur outside of a group context. The group is what creates an \u201ciron sharpens iron\u201d (Proverbs 27:17, English Standard Version) environment. This growth best occurs when leaders practice servant leadership. When leaders influence followers through the model of servant leadership they \u201c\u2026should make every attempt to share their power and enable others to grow and become autonomous\u201d (Northouse, 2016, p. 239). By sharing their power with followers, leaders take a humble position that allows them to grow alongside followers. Sharing their power is also a way for leaders to influence followers. Influence is not something that is aggressive; rather it is something that is earned through mutual respect and dialogue. Taking a position of servant leadership fosters an environment for this kind of respect and dialogue to be formed with followers, making the leaders influence more genuine.<\/p>\n
Are there other, or better, ways for a leader to gain genuine influence than servant leadership?<\/p>\n
References:<\/strong><\/p>\n Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice, Seventh Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to Northouse (2016), leadership can be defined as \u2018a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal\u2019 (p. 6). Sometimes the process of leadership can be lost in pursuit of the goal, but… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ldrs500","category-unit-1"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/padnTM-2g","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/b121\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/b121\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/b121\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/b121\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/b121\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/b121\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/b121\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/b121\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/b121\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/b121\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}