As a practitioner of servant leadership reading through Northouse\u2019s chapter on team leadership, there were three characteristics of servant leadership that I thought stood out in leading teams set with A specific tasks: Commitment to the growth of people, awareness, and persuasion.<\/p>\n
To me, commitment to the growth of people lies at the heart of servant leadership because everything a servant leader does should be for the good of their teammates and the community. When coordinating projects, a servant leader should constantly ask him or herself: \u201cwhat can I do as a member of the team to elevate every member of the group?\u201d This may include checking in with each member to determine if anyone is having difficulty or spending time with each member to find out what their individual goals are or how they prefer to work in groups. From this, servant leaders must do what they can to meet their teams\u2019 needs, both internal to the project or externally in their lives. Individuals who aren\u2019t assigned the leadership role in their group can still implement this commitment as it boosts overall morale and strength of the team if every member feels supported and respected.<\/p>\n
Awareness is crucial as well because it helps leaders understand how their team is working together and the impacts (or lack thereof) they\u2019re having on their teammates. Having awareness as a servant leader can help one determine if situations needs intervention and provides insights on the type of action to take as well as who to act on; whether this be members of the team or on the external environment such as upper management or outside teams (Northouse, 2016, p. 373). This also helps leaders determine whether dysfunctions in the team are task-related or relationship-related and allows them to act accordingly. Teams often go through phases Tuckman & Jensen (2010) identify as forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning so applying the appropriate timing and intervention strategy for problematic phases of the group\u2019s development is important (as cited in Northouse, 2016). Northouse identified three strategies tailored for each stage of the group development process: motivational coaching to be used at the start of the group process, consultative coaching to be used midway through, and then educational coaching to be used near the end of group cycle. Awareness is important for a leader to identify which stage his or her group is currently in and then applying the appropriate strategies to intervene at certain stages if necessary.<\/p>\n
Persuasion is the last servant leader characteristic that\u2019s crucial to team leadership especially when intervening. Persuasion is needed for a leader to communicate a problem the team may collectively be having and guiding teams to overcome this problem. Without it, leaders would be ineffective in having an influence on their team if needed which signals that the team may benefit from having another member lead the group. Servant leaders also need to be accomplished in communicating to the group in a way that\u2019s gentle and non-judgemental (Northouse, 2016, p. 228).<\/p>\n
Essentially, all servant leadership characteristics should be used in the team leadership context. However, the three highlighted above are crucial to the immediate success of team whereas other characteristics of servant leadership are more applicable for long-term growth (such as building community or empathy) or in specific situations (such as healing).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
References<\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice, Seventh Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN 971452203409<\/p>\n Spears, L. C. (2010). Character and servant leadership: Ten characteristics of effective, caring leaders. Journal of Virtues & Leadership, 1<\/em>(1), 25-30<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a practitioner of servant leadership reading through Northouse\u2019s chapter on team leadership, there were three characteristics of servant leadership that I thought stood out in leading teams set with A specific tasks: Commitment to the growth of people, awareness, and persuasion. To me, commitment to the growth of people lies at the heart of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":889,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[114,97,124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-ldrs500","category-unit-5","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":474,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions\/474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/insightsofakahuna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}