1. Emotional Healing
Example: I think my husband is playing the servant leader role in my entire family, which includes my parents, his parents, and other relatives. When my parents got divorced two years ago, I was completely depressed and my parents were frustrated as well. I could not offer my help and understand to them, and they were unable to comfort me as well. Even my husband’s parents were confused about the whole thing. He briefly explained to his parents to seek support and understanding, and then he spent as much time as he could to stay with me. He tried everything to make me talk to him, he even learnt the related knowledge of psychology to solve my emotional issues. In the meantime, he had to cope with my unstable parents separately. He comforted my mother and made my father calm. I appreciated that he never blamed me for being with depressive disorder, and he told me that he had become a better person after undergoing all these things.
2. Putting Followers First
Example: One of my teachers in high school, Mrs Chen, is an example of how a leader puts followers first. The students in China are under great pressure of endless examinations. After being assigned as our reading teacher, she required all of us to write daily note about our concerns and feelings. There were 64 students in the class. In addition to correcting our papers and tests, she kept reading our notes day by day. She wanted to find out what her students were worried about and spent a lot of time to chat with the students individually. We all knew that Mrs Chen always missed her lunch and supper, but she never allowed us to miss any meal. She placed what we needed and concerned higher than her needs.
3. Empowering
Example: I am a lecturer in an organization and my job is providing skills and passing the technical knowledge to the employees. Last year, I found the content of my course outdated and the timetable overlapped with another teacher. We reported the situation to our new manager. Instead of arranging the courses and assigning the timetable to us like the previous manager did, the new leader told us we could decide the content by ourselves and negotiate the time with each other. He just needed us to hand in the whole timetable and teaching plan after our decisions. We were thrilled when we heard him, and the new teaching plan satisfied all the lecturers. We became more involved during teaching, and the responses of the staff were positive and delightful.
Among all three principles, the most challenging one for me is emotional healing. I chose this one for concerning that my depression disorder might be the barrier in the process of emotional healing. Although I am not depressed now, I perceive that I am still reluctant to open my heart and share my feelings with the other people at times. I am a good listener, and all my friends enjoying staying with me. But the emotional healing is a two-way event (Northouse, 2016), I am afraid that I cannot make the best of the healing for the team when I could only use it as a one-way approach. I am working on this mental issue and I believe that I could be a competent servant leader in the very near future.
My question: Which characteristics of a servant leader do you possess?
Reference
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage publications.
Layla,
What a compelling discussion of servant leadership — and how you have applied these concepts in your own life. Certainly, we all bring our emotions and life experiences to our work, our learning, and our leadership. I believe that scenarios like this, despite their challenges, can also help us become more compassionate leaders, as we realize how challenging personal situations can impact our way of being in the world for some time.
I hope this class, too, can continue to bring healing to your own life, as you lead others.
— Leadership Prof