Category: UNIT 4

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Unit 4, Learning Activity 2, Servant Leadership

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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Unit 4, Learning Activity 1, Transformational Leadership

Precis:

Transformational leadership, coined by Downton (1973) and rooted in the writings of Burns (1978) and Bass (1985), is the process whereby a person engages with others and creates a connection that raises the level of motivation and morality in both the leader and the follower. Transformational leadership, always mixed with charismatic leadership by most people, contains two elements: charismatic and affective elements of leadership; emphasizes on intrinsic motivation and follower development; is concerned with emotions, values, ethics, standards, and long-term goals; includes assessing followers’ motivation, satisfying their needs, and treating them as full human beings (Northouse, 2016).

There are seven factors illustrated on the Full Range of Leadership model that can be divided into three parts: transformational factors, transactional factors, and the nonleadership factor. These seven factors can also help understand and distinguish transformational leadership from transactional leadership and other leadership styles. The four factors included in transformational leadership are idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Transactional leadership comprising contingent reward and management-by-exception focuses on expected outcomes, while transformational leadership results in performance that goes well beyond what is expected (Northouse, 2016).

Transformational leadership is stressed by many scholars that it is more of a bunch of behaviours can be learned and developed than a set of traits the leaders possess naturally (Kouzes & Posner, 1987). Transformational leaders usually empower followers and nurture them in change; become strong role models with high moral values for the followers (Avolio & Gibbons, 1988); create a meaningful vision; become social architects; are effective at working with people. Also, The most widely used measure of transformational leadership, Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Bass & Avolio, 1990b), can help leaders pinpoint the weak areas and leadership attributes they could improve.

Discussion:

I would like to present my teacher of Leadership 490 in the last semester, professor Carol C. Molcar, as the transformational leader for this blog. There were other choices. But considering the four typical factors of transformational leadership, I thought my professor Molcar was the perfect one.

Professor Molcar has very high standards of moral and ethical conduct on teaching. She devotes a lot to teaching and is the favourite teacher among us. She is my role model, and the teaching method presented by her is what I would like to incorporate in my teaching career. She always assigned the students into teams with novel themes and let us work something out within the team. The sense of teamwork, collaborating with team members, and breaking the limitations of our imagination were the most useful thing we had learned from her class. Also, She likes to talk with her students. I always found her chatting with the students on the campus happily and warmly. I had talked with her several times after the class. She patiently listened to my situation, my dreams, and my worries, and provided with very useful and inspirational thoughts to help solve my issues. She not only offered generous help to me but also taught me to take wider perspectives into account during decision-making process. Even till now, we are regularly writing Email to each other, and she is willing to reading my concerns and help me to make the best decision for myself. The most impressed thing for me is that she mentions many times she has also learned a lot of things from me and other students. This is an important reason that motivates her to be a teacher, learning from the students and carrying these beautiful traits of the previous groups with her to the next group of graduates.

References

Avolio, B. J., & Gibbons, T. C. (1988). Developing transformational leaders: A life span approach. In J. A. Conger, R. N. Kanungo, & Asssociates (Eds.), Charismatic leadership: The elusive factors in organizational effectiveness (pp. 276-308). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectation. New York: Free Press.

Bass, B. M., & Avolio, B. J. (1990b). Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.

Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.

Downton, J. V. (1973). Rebel leadership: Commitment and charisma in a revolutionary process. New York: Free Press.

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (1987). The leadership challenge: How to get extraordinary things done in organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage publications.

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Unit 4, Response

This is a response to Leona post found here: https://create.twu.ca/soleona/2018/01/28/ldrs591-unit-4-activity-4-5/

Leona’s questions are: What detracts you from reading a certain study? Do you have an example of a time where you could not will yourself to read past the introduction?

There are three things which would detract me from reading a study. First, too much literature containing in a study makes me feel exhausted during reading it. I think we all understand that the literature is one of the most important elements in a study. But it does not happen to be a good thing if the literature is the more the better. The author has to pick up the most useful articles to strongly support his idea, and the quantity of the literature should be contained in a reasonable amount. Second, the subtitles of the study are not clear enough. We can gain from the learning activities of this week that there are several principal parts of an article, such as the purpose of statement, literature review, and method section. If the subtitles were not clear or did not separate the whole article into distinct parts, it would make the reader boring. At last, my personal preference would affect me in reading different types of articles. For example, I am very interested in psychology. Therefore, regardless of the major content and the length, reading an article about psychology will make me excited and energetic. To the contrary, I am not a fan of the business. Any article related to business would make me sleepy during reading it.

I do have an example that perfectly reveals the third factor mentioned in the last paragraph. Last year, I had one assignment about writing an argumentative essay of physician-assisted death. I planned to write it from different perspectives including national law, religions, and health-care. Then I found myself extremely reluctant to review the articles related to law. I even could not finish reading the introduction part. I thought that I did not familiar with the terminologies of law. At last, I admitted to myself that it was actually because I was not interested in this realm.

When conducting a study, we could not imagine what kind of source or knowledge might be useful. Obviously, we all have our preference for different types. But, I deem the attitude towards scholar inquiry should be unbiased, and our personal preference should be placed in a lower hierarchy during conducting a study.

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Unit 4, Learning activity 4.5

As a consumer of research reports, the most important things for me in the introduction section of a high-quality research report are identifying the five elements of the study’s Statement of the problem (Plano-Clark & Creswell, 2015) and  figuring out the study is a quantitative or a qualitative one.

Before this week, I was not aware that the topic, research problem, and the purpose statement were three different things in a study. Then I realized that the topic was a broad subject matter and an overall topic. Next, the authors would narrow the topic to a research problem (Plano-Clark & Creswell, 2015). I used to mix the two notions and did not consider them as two different things. The Figure 3.2 on page 91 in the textbook distinctively shows the consequence of identifying them and illustrates the meaning of them. I find these five elements significantly useful for understanding the intent of the researchers and getting a whole concept frame of the article in my mind.

I was very unfamiliar with the idea of either quantitative or qualitative study. I even made a mistake when doing the article review this week. The article was actually a quantitative one, while I thought it was a qualitative study because I found some keywords like “exploration” at the very start. After reading the chapter five, I noticed that the 10 hypotheses in the article were evidently the alternative type of the quantitative research hypothesis. Also, the variables were clearly defined in the introduction. I confess I still need to practice and to read more to identify the quantitative or qualitative studies. This is very crucial for making sure the understanding of the article is correct. Also, the figure 5.4 on page 179 clearly demonstrates the differences between the foundations of considering the two types.

Since I did not mention literature review in the previous paragraphs, and it is equally important of an article. Then, my question is: How would you organize the literature to form the theory or conceptual framework when conducting the study?

Reference

Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Unit 4 Learning Activities

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Unit 4, Learning activity 4.4

Article

Servant leaders inspire servant followers: Antecedents and outcomes for employees and the organization

Quality Criteria

1.The study’s purpose is clearly specified.

Rate

2=Good

Evidence and/or Reasoning

a) The purpose statement does not contain any signal words such as “The purpose of the study is…”. Instead, it uses “There remains a need to better understand….” followed by “more research design and more explorations of… are necessary…”.

b) The authors use four paragraphs with four main topics to interpret and support the purpose statement, and the independent variables, dependent variable, participants, framework, and intent.

Quality Criteria

2. The focus of the study is appropriate.

Rate

2=Good

Evidence and/or Reasoning

a) The focus of the study is set of major variables (such as leader agreeableness, leader extraversion, the follower perceptions) that are clearly identified and worthy of study, especially the leader agreeableness and leader extraversion.

b) The variables are clearly grouped into five categories including independent variables (leader personality and values, individual-level servant leadership, store-level servant leadership), dependent variables (follower perceptions of servant leadership, follower needs and well-being, sales behaviour and store sales performance), and control variables (the mediating role of service climate).

c) I failed to find the relevant confounding variables in the study.

Quality Criteria

3. The overall intent of the study is appropriate.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

a) The overall intent of the study is to explain, describe, and predict the major variables.

b) The intent is illustrated in 10 precise hypotheses, and demonstrates what is to be learned about the identified variables

Quality Criteria

4. The participants and sites are appropriate.

Rate

2=Good

Evidence and/or Reasoning

The participants (followers, managers, leaders) and the sites (stores) are clearly identified and clearly fit the study’s intent. The precise information of the participants and sites are presented in the method part.

Quality Criteria

5. The purpose is narrowed through appropriate research questions and/or hypothesis.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

The authors present 10 hypotheses that clearly address the purpose of the study and exactly examine the relationships among the variables. The predictions about the relationships are demonstrated thoroughly based on the literature.

Quality Criteria

6. The purpose follows logically from the statement of the problem and literature review.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

a) Reasons for the study’s intent, theory, participants and sites are well argued after the purpose statement and precisely analyzed through four paragraphs with a figure which helps better understand the whole study’s intent.

b) The purpose and the hypotheses clearly build from extensive knowledge, address an important problem. They will make up the deficiencies of the existing knowledge because no study has investigated the personality of the servant leader.

Quality Criteria

7. The purpose is consistent with the study’s overall approach.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

a) The purpose and the hypotheses are narrow and specific.

b) The purpose and the hypotheses are based on high-quality literature and applicable theories.

c) The purpose and the hypotheses are clearly aimed at describing the relationships among variables, and at describing the differences between groups.

Total Score = 18 (17-21 = High quality)

Reference

Hunter, E. M., Neubert, M. J., Perry, S. J., Witt, L. A., Penny, L. M., & Weinberger, E. (2013). Servant leaders inspire servant followers: Antecedents and outcomes for employees and the organization. Leadership Quarterly, 24(2), 316-331.

Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Unit 4 Learning Activities

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Unit 4, Learning activity 4.3

Article

Servant leaders inspire servant followers: Antecedents and outcomes for employees and the organization

Quality Criteria

1.The review includes the relevant literature.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

  1. There are more than 19 literatures providing important background information of theories and analyses of servant leadership.
  2. There are more than eight literatures presenting as supporting basis and models tested by other researchers. The authors depict a figure as the proposed model expanding upon and building on those models provided by other researchers.
  3. At last, the authors illustrate eight literatures to introduce the deficiency of the servant leader personality.

Quality Criteria

2.The review examines sources that are recent and of high quality.

Rate

2=Good

Evidence and/or Reasoning

All of the literature in this journal article are of high quality, while I identified about nine literatures which were published before 2000. I believe some of them are necessary, for example, the definition of servant leadership is printed in Greenleaf’s seminal essay published in 1991. The Greenleaf’s essay is the most profound literature of servant leadership, and nearly every article about servant leadership will introduce this one.

Quality Criteria

3.The literature review is appropriately documented.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

  1. All the citations are in correct format, both in-text references and end-of-text references.
  2. All the citations are provided as sound support for the ideas.

Quality Criteria

4.The literature is thoughtfully synthesized.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

The authors create two subtitles to organize and synthesize the literature which are easy to grasp the theme and clear to identify a visual map

  1. Servant leadership as a construct
  2. Servant leadership and the cycle of service

Quality Criteria

5.The literature is critically examined.

Rate

2=Good

Evidence and/or Reasoning

The authors use most of the literature as sound basis for providing background and what have been done by other researchers step by step. And the authors expand their hypothesis on the deficiencies of the previous literature.

Quality Criteria

6.The study has a strong foundation in the literature.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

  1. This study’s problem, purpose, approach and method are clearly and closely connected to the literature.
  2. It is easy to find out how the literature is being used in the study to generate hypothesis and to provide a guiding theory.

Quality Criteria

7.The use of the literature fits the study’s overall research approach.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

As a quantitative study, the literature review provides direction by identifying the major variables and 10 hypothesis, supports the procedures, and is used to compare the results.

Total Score = 19 (17-21 = High quality)

Reference

Hunter, E. M., Neubert, M. J., Perry, S. J., Witt, L. A., Penny, L. M., & Weinberger, E. (2013). Servant leaders inspire servant followers: Antecedents and outcomes for employees and the organization. Leadership Quarterly, 24(2), 316-331.

Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

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Unit 4, Learning activity 4.2

Article

Servant leaders inspire servant followers: Antecedents and outcomes for employees and the organization

Quality Criteria

1.The topic is interesting.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

  1. The topic is introduced by a famous essay and how it has affected the real world. (the first two sentences)
  2. The topic is depicted in a broad way.
  3. I found the subject matter appealing because the authors provide two possible explanations for the main topic which pique my interest of keeping reading it.

Quality Criteria

2.There is a meaningful problem.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

  1. The authors claim that the existing understanding of servant leadership is not enough.
  2. Two problems are clearly addressed and stated explicitly.
  3. The first problem is about “the need to better understand the scope and magnitude of the influence that servant leadership has on a range of multilevel outcomes and…”
  4. The second problem is the need of more advanced research designs and more comprehensive explorations to help managers better apply servant leadership in the real world.

Quality Criteria

3.The importance of the problem is justified.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

Clear evidence of the importance of the problem is provided by plenty of references in the literature.

For example: Hofmann, 2002; Yammarino & Bass, 1991; Liden et al., 2008; Walumbwa et al., 2010a; and so on.

Quality Criteria

4.There are deficiencies in the knowledge about the problem.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

The authors have identified several deficiencies about the problem:

  1. The results of Walumbwa et al. (2010a) were not clear, therefore, the results need to be extended;
  2. The individual-level outcomes have received little attention by servant leadership scholars, therefore, need to be noticed;
  3. The traits linked to servant leadership and its outcome remain unclear.
  4. There is only one study has linked leader agreeableness to servant leader behaviors; no studies have investigated leader extraversion.

Quality Criteria

5.There are audiences who can benefit from the missing knowledge.

Rate

1=Fair

Evidence and/or Reasoning

The authors have not specifically mentioned in the end of the introduction, but in the second paragraph, scholars and managers are noted.

Quality Criteria

6.The passage clearly argues that the study is warranted.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

The topic, problem, justification, deficiencies, and audiences form a quite logical and convincing argument that the study is of important and needed.

Quality Criteria

7.The passage is well written.

Rate

3=Excellent

Evidence and/or Reasoning

  1. Concise enough, easy to follow.
  2. The proposed model (Figure 1) are especially helpful and visualized.

Total Score = 19 (17-21 = High quality)

Reference

Hunter, E. M., Neubert, M. J., Perry, S. J., Witt, L. A., Penny, L. M., & Weinberger, E. (2013). Servant leaders inspire servant followers: Antecedents and outcomes for employees and the organization. Leadership Quarterly, 24(2), 316-331.

Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Unit 4 Learning Activities