“At staff meetings, there would be more participation and open-ness to experimenting with the new curriculum.  Negativity, pride, selfishness and gossip would all flee.  If servant leadership were the central focus of strategic leadership in schools, there would be a new revolution”, (Change makers, 2018).

Thank you for sharing this thought as it really resonated with me.  Servant leadership as indicated by Northouse 2016, has a positive influence on the performance of the followers and its overall organizational outcome.  The change must always begin with leadership.

Relationships improvement is one of the key strategies.  “Strategic influence is engendering commitment to the organization’s strategic direction by inviting others into the strategic process, forging relationships inside and outside the organization, and using organizational culture and systems and influence” (Hughes et. al. 2014, p.49).  Strategic leaders understand in order to excel the performance of the organization; the overall environment culture has to harmonize as well.  When individuals within the organization are not on good term, and there if a lot of gossip the toxicity can spread very easily, leading to decreased overall function or the organization whether it is for health care or teachers or businesses.

In enlightenment to the critical thinking idea, I can speak for health care.  Ever since, I have been in a leadership position, I have found it challenging to fully practice servant leadership with employees.  Perhaps, my understanding and personal perspective was a bit unaligned with what I had read.  I find while I am there to guide and facilitate staff, at the same time, I really have to firm and direct and use authoritarian style of leadership from time to time.  Perhaps with more experience I will gain better communication style and utilize different language and paraphrase it differently when getting the message across.  At this point,  I find if too nice, the work isn’t being done.

References

Hughes, R. L., Beatty, K. C., & Dinwoodie, D. L. (2014). Becoming a strategic leader your role in your organizations enduring success. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Los Angeles: SAGE.