Three principles of Servant Leadership I want to highlight are: Healing, Persuasion and Building Community (Spears, 2002, pp.1-16).
Healing
The characteristic of Healing means to “care about the personal well-being of the followers” (Spears, 2002, pp.1-16). An example of this, from my experience, comes out of recognizing where the person is coming from and their past experiences. There have been cases where I have taken people onto my team, who have either come from toxic ministry situations recently or in the past. In one of these situations, I found the experience that this person had come from, to be similar to one I had been through and was still healing from. Listening to this individual’s experience and being able to offer advice and support, was a healing experience for me as I worked through the situation I had dealt with.
Persuasion
“Persuasion is clear and persistent communication that convinces others to change” (Spears, 2002, pp.1-16). Recently, the ministry organization I am with, have rolled out a lot of changes. We are entering a season of adaptive change and part of my role as a team leader was to communicate those changes to our staff team this summer. This communication required persuasion and that meant I had to be clear on what the changes actually were and also highlight the need for them to happen. In regards to the implications of the changes I wanted to invite our staff team into that process to explore and to join us in discovering what to do next, not to look to myself and the other ministry leader to have all the answers.
Building Community
I enjoy building community and this comes naturally to me. An example of this is in our ministry team we take time to do something fun together, at least once a month as a team, during work hours. This allows us to build a sense of community through shared experiences. We also take time at the end of every ministry year to go away and do a staff retreat together in one big house for a week. This is a great time of bonding, where we share openly and grow in a sense of unity as a team. I have also found praying for each others needs in our team check-in time is a way for team members to feel connected and support each other (Spears, 2002, pp.1-16).
I think currently the principle that will be most challenging for me to consistently realize in my context is Persuasion, because as the characteristic is described it requires “clear and persistent communication that convinces others to change” (Spears, 2002, pp.1-16). The persistent part is what will be most challenging because of all the other priorities I have in my ministry role. The only way things are going to change, is to persistently communicating the need for change and give my team space to explore and try new ideas. The couple meetings we had as a team, are not going to facilitate adaptive change happening, we need to come back to our need for adaptive change over and over for something to really change.
Question: In your experience, what were some barriers that hindered your team or organization from changing?
Monica
Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: theory and practice (8th ed.). Thousand Oaks: 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, NY: Wiley.
Monica, thanks for your post. I think your question about organizational change is very complex. In my experience, it seems that there has to be a conducive environment for change to occur smoothly. A large scale change really requires that all people are committed to the vision, they feel valued and part of the process, and there is infrastructure and clarity to the procedures that will facilitate change.
I liked the model of servant leadership that visually represents change that was presented in the chapter . The Antecedent Conditions (context/culture, leader attributes, follower receptivity) really need to be cultivated first. Then, through some time of the leader leading using Servant Leader behaviours, the group is ready to move on to produce Outcomes. The following performance and growth, organizational performance and societal impact, then, are very positive if the antecedent conditions are healthy to begin with (Northouse, 2018, p. 233)
I have seen this in my context before, and sometimes change is positive while following this model, other times change is very bumpy. The biggest barrier in this model in my experience has been follower receptivity. If people don’t understand why change is necessary, don’t feel heard, aren’t clear on the process of change, and if there are too many questions, then it is very difficult to implement change of any kind without conflict and resentment. Sometimes this has meant losing staff members as a result, which has been very unfortunate. I think that if a leader cultivates follower receptivity through servant leadership before introducing levels of change, the process can run more smoothly.
Thank you Dawn for your helpful comment.
Yes, people knowing why the change is necessary is very important, I think it isn’t such a problem for some of the changes and people are on board. However, I’m noticing for some things the change really needs to start from within and some people (myself included) may have blind spots and don’t realize when they are functioning in the “old ways.” Thoughts?
Monica,
You have identified an essential component of leadership: influence. As defined in your blog, persistence is one important aspect of influence. I also think often about how we can invite others into a shared vision. So many of the leaders who have influenced my life (through thought-provoking writing, podcasts, leadership, etc.) have done so because of their compelling, infectious visions that made me feel like I could be part of something bigger than myself. (You’ll see this reflected in Northouse’s (2016) discussion of transformational leadership). What you point out here — that the message is not just powerful, but also repetitive — is an important observation. Leaders with the most influence often also exhibit a sustained level of commitment to the vision, which inspires trust as well as enthusiasm among followers.
Thanks for the thought-provoking post!
— Leadership Prof