Greenleaf (1970) defines that “servant leadership begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first” (p. 15). Additionally, Spears (2002) identifies 10 characteristics of a servant leader which contain listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. In order to better understand the complexities and the phenomenon of servant leadership, a servant leadership model is established by Liden, Wayne, Zhao, and Henderson (2008) and refined by Liden, Panaccio, Hu, and Meuser (2014). The model comprises three parts: antecedent conditions, servant leader behaviours, and outcomes. To be more specific, servant leader behaviours, the core of the servant leadership process, includes conceptualizing, emotional healing, putting followers first, helping followers grow and succeed, behaving ethically, empowering, and creating value for the community. When comparing with other types of leadership, servant leadership is unique for being the only leadership approach that frames the leadership process around the caring for others. Also, servant leadership does not incorporate influence, or power, in a traditional way (Northouse, 2016).
Awareness in servant leadership includes understanding oneself and the impact one has on others (Northouse, 2016). Clearly, awareness is presented as one of the 10 characteristics of a servant leader rather than servant leadership behaviours, which means awareness is a quality of servant leaders. In another word, the individual has to initially possess or to be cultivated to form the trait of awareness. All servant leaders share a common ability to be aware of the needs of other people. For example, Colleen Barrett, president of Southwest Airlines, mentions that she thinks herself more of a follower, also addresses that servant leaders care about other people’s needs and help them achieve their dreams (KnowledgeAtWharton, 2008). I think the awareness in servant leadership equals to sensing and respecting the needs of other people. In turn, the leaders could make a change in the greater context of the situation for other people. Ian Fuhr in TEDx Talks (2016) makes it clearer that the difference between servant leadership and other types of leadership is servant leaders give people dignity, and respect; they sense the needs of staff not only in organization but also in life; they put the needs of the staff the top priority and try their best to help the employees.
On the other hand, emotional intelligence, including self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skill, is addressed and applied more in the context within a team or an organization (Goleman, 2017). For example, emotional intelligence could effectively help leaders solve conflict within the group during the decision-making process. Leaders with high emotional intelligence can timely be aware of the uncomfortable interpersonal disagreements in the team and help the team members realize the open discussion and disagreements can sharpen decision making (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002). The awareness in emotional intelligence is more like a tool for leaders to solve problems in the working context and to gain the ideal outcomes. Whereas the awareness adopted by servant leaders is to perceive the needs of the followers and to help them and satisfy them. Basically, servant leaders do not mind the outcomes such as money, power, and influence, they value more making a difference in people’s lives (TEDx Talks, 2016).
One of my colleagues, also my best friend, is a typical servant leader in teaching. Unlike other teachers who value the scores of the students the most, she cares about the real concerns of the students. She invests plenty of time in reading the blogs full of the students’ feelings and trivial stuff of life. She cares about what makes them unhappy and why. The students love her so much. Although she has not put too much effort in demanding the students to achieve the highest score, the results always appear to be the best. She explains that once the caring and warming environment is formed, the students would actively motivate themselves to learn. It perfectly echoes the words said by Ian Fuhr that servant leaders do not motivate people, they inspire people and create a working environment which is conducive to people motivating themselves (TEDx Talks, 2016).
References
Liden, R. C., Panaccio, A., Hu, J., & Meuser, J. D. (2014). Servant leadership: Antecedents, consequences, and contextual moderators. In D. V. Day (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of leadership and organizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J, Zhao, H., & Henderson, D. (2008). Servant leadership: Development of a multidimensional measure and multi-level assessment. Leadership Quarterly, 19, 161-177.
Goleman, D. (2017). Leadership That Gets Results (Harvard Business Review Classics). Harvard Business Press.
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2002). The emotional reality of teams. Global Business and Organizational Excellence, 21(2), 55-65.
Greenleaf, R. K. (1970). The servant as leader. Westfield, IN: Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.
KnowledgeAtWharton. (2008, July, 9). Southwest Airlines’ Colleen Barrett on ‘Servant Leadership’ [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TgR95vnM0c
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Spears, L. C. (2002). Tracing the past, present, and future of servant-leadership. In L. C. Spears & M. Lawrence (Eds.), Focus on leadership: Servant-leadership for the 21st century (pp. 1-16). New York: Wiley.
TEDx Talks. (2016, February 22). The subversive power of servant leadership | Ian Fuhr | TEDxJohannesburg [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKrTEEHID50
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