In Larry Spears’ article titled “Character and Servant Leadership: Ten Characteristics of Effective, Caring Leaders,” he discusses the qualities that contribute to effective servant leadership. This unique style of leadership incorporates followers into the decision-making process. Servant leadership is heavily based on strong ethical and moral principles, and improving both the lives of followers as well as the organization (Spears, 2010: p. 25). Spears identifies ten characteristics of servant leaders that are critical to an organization’s performance including “listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community” (Spears, 2010: p.25).
When a team leader is coordinating a group project in an organization, he or she should ensure that all members are competent with the required knowledge, experience, and skillset necessary to complete the task. This means that a leader must effectively communicate with potential team members to determine if they would have a significant impact to the team. Ultimately, the leader is beginning to develop a community of individuals who are like-minded with shared interests and relatedness (Northouse, 2017: p. 230). Building community creates unity and provides members with a cause to serve that is greater than themselves (Northouse, 2017: p. 230). I believe that building the community that fosters connectedness is one of the first steps a leader must do to create an effective team for an organization. He or she must be sure that the individual’s personal goals align with the group’s vision.
Before an individual commits to the identity of the team, the servant leader must be able to properly convey the vision and direction of the team; he or she must be a visionary. Conceptualization means that a servant leader is a “big picture” person, transcending the day-to-day operations of an organization to envision a better future (Northouse, 2017: p. 230). A leader must see the future vision of the team before it is created in reality. In addition, he or she must clearly communicate to potential team members what the vision is and what is required to achieve it. This is to determine if the individual will fit well into the team’s community as they work together to achieve the vision.
This directly relates to the servant leadership characteristic of Foresight, which means that the leader has an ability to understand future trends based on what has occurred in the past (Northouse, 2017: p. 230). He or she has wisdom to understand “lessons from the past, the realities of the present, and the likely consequences of a decision in the future” (Spears, 2002: p. 28). Visionaries use a different lens to analyze the world to identify trends, creative solutions, and potential opportunities. The leader must have intuition to determine if the individual will have skills and talents that will be valuable to the team’s performance. Perhaps the leader had past experiences with a team member who had a certain level of knowledge and skill but it was not directly related to the vision; therefore, the team spent a significant amount of time and energy trying to catch the person up to speed. As a result, this put the team behind performance objectives. Or, perhaps, the leader predicts a technological shift, so he or she seeks out an individual who has technical knowledge and skill of a particular software program. Each of these examples show that a leader must use wisdom and foresight when making crucial decisions on how to build an effective team.
What is an example of a company that has embodied at least 5 characteristics of Spears’ list of servant leadership characteristics?
Christina
References:
Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: theory and practice (Eighth ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Spears, Larry C. (2010). Character and Servant Leadership: Ten Characteristics of Effective, Caring Leaders. The Journal of Virtues & Leadership, 1(1), 25-30.