Category: Unit 1

Spears (2010) outlines ten characteristics of servant leaders in his article and I would like to highlight three of those ten and discuss how they transfer into actions when coordinating a group project. The three characteristics I will be discussing are: listening, persuasion and commitment to the growth of people (Spears, 2010, pp. 27-29).

Listening

The quality of listening in a servant leader is described by Spears (2010) as “a deep commitment to listening intently to others” (p. 27). In listening the servant leader aims at clarifying a collective direction from the group for how to move forward (Spears, 2010, p. 27).

In my experience of coordinating group projects, if you want your team members to really be on board with the project, listening is essential. I think in the earliest states of conception and planning it is best to bring your team members in and allow them to help brainstorm and feed into the process. When they get the chance to be heard and understood, and they see their feedback is having implications on the project, their buy-in comes more natural. I have found you also end up producing a better project, because you utilize the different ideas, gifts and strengths of other team members.

Persuasion

Persuasion is when the servant leader looks to convince others of the importance of something, rather than just telling them to do it. Spears (2010) states that servant leaders rely, “on persuasion, rather than on one’s positional authority, in making decisions within an organization” (p. 28).

I think this is really important to apply this in a team project environment, as you could just tell people what to do, but again that will not help them gain motivation and also will produce less effective results. I have found the best way is to communicate the importance of the project  from the start and also consistently throughout the planning process.  I think the importance is best communicated when the need or the why of the project is clear, and as a result the vision. This consistent communication will help foster group buy-in.

In my experience, I also think it is important (if possible in the situation) to allow for a democratic process. You could allow team members to vote on whether to move forward with the project and/or create space to allow team members to share honestly what they think, whether excitement or concerns, before starting a project. This action helps to gauge who is on board with the project and hear people out on concerns.

Commitment to the Growth of People

Spears (2010) states, “the servant leader is deeply committed to the growth of each and every individual within his or her organization” (p. 29). This characteristic in a servant leader can look like: taking an interest in the employees personal and professional growth and making funds available for that, showing interest in the input of ideas from all employees, encouraging everyone’s involvement in decision-making, and helping employees that were laid-off to find other positions (Spears, 2010, p. 29).

When it comes to helping people grow in a group project, it is important to make sure you delegate well. Delegation requires thought and insight to know who would be the best fit for a certain role and it is different from “dumping” tasks on people. Delegation also involves trust and some risk-taking (Simmons, 2015). Simmons (2015) principle of delegation is, “If you have someone on your staff who can do this task 80 percent as well as you can, delegate it.” This is very important to do as in a group project setting because if you do not delegate you will slow down and hinder progress, as everything ends up getting bottle-necked with you (Simmons, 2015). Delegation grows employees confidence and their professional skills as they feel trusted to take on a role that they are responsible for. I have found you have to be prepared to deal with any personal issues of “perfectionism” when you delegate. Personally, I am a “perfectionist”, so I sometimes find it hard to trust something to someone, if I know they might only do the job 80 percent as well. However, if I functioned in that way, I would be burned out and my staff would not feel trusted or experience professional growth.

In conclusion, the four actions I would recommend a team leader do to integrate servant leader characteristics, while coordinating a group project would be:

1) Allow team members a say early on in the planning process (listening).

2) Communicate a compelling vision/purpose/why for the project and give your team members time to get on-board (persuasion).

3) If possible in the situation, allow for a democratic process before starting a project, so team members have a say in moving forward (persuasion).

4) Help employees grow by trusting them through delegating aspects of the project well (commitment to the growth of people).

I would love to hear people’s thoughts or experiences with delegation, if you would be interested to respond to the questions below:

Question 1: When is delegating not helpful to an employee or how much risk can you take?

I ask this because sometimes I find it hard to gauge or predict, which people on the team could do the job at 80%. At times, people only come through at 60% or 70%, is that considered a fail in delegation? What if they really grew from the process?

Question 2: How would you distinguish between delegating well and “dumping” a task on a team member?

 References

Simmons, Mark (2015, February). The 80 percent rule for delegation. Thinking Bigger: Business Media Inc., 24 (2). Retrieved from https://ithinkbigger.com/80-percent-rule-delegate/;;

Spears, Larry C. (2010) Character and Servant Leadership: Ten Characteristics of Effective, Caring Leaders. The Journal of Virtues & Leadership, Vol. 1 Iss. 1, 2010, 25-30.

Here is the link to Chris Vacher article on Activity 4. I enjoyed reading his article and thought it was a really good point that he made that assigned leadership is top down, while emergent is bottom up, I also found his question very relatable and a good reflection:

As a leader, do you find yourself more comfortable when you are the assigned leader or the emergent leader?

I realized in reflecting on that question, that I am more comfortable as an assigned leader. I think the reason is that having a clear position gives me a sense of security in my role and what I can and cannot do.

I remember when I was an emerging leader, that I always worried about over-stepping or coming across too strong to the leaders I worked with. When leadership is assigned there are clearer expectations and boundaries I seem to thrive more. When I did the Birkman test, I came out as having a high Freedom score, but I do need some structure or at least knowing what is expected of me. I think this is because my Birkman score on Authority is fairly high. I generally respect authority, although I find myself often wanting to push against it. This was a really interesting question to reflect on and it made me wonder if that insecurity I have stems from a deeper issue in my life or if it is just a personality thing, like my Birkman might show. Probably a bit of both?

I know in leadership something that makes me feel insecure and I struggle with, is when I feel disrespected by team members. This usually happens when boundaries are pushed or crossed and expectations that I clarified are not met.

Question: What have you noticed makes you feel insecure as a leader?

Monica

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.

To quote Northouse (2018), “Assigned leadership is based on a formal title or position in an organization. Emergent leadership results from what one does and how one acquires support from followers” (p. 15).

There have been several instances where I “emerged” as a leader. One particular instance was a couple years ago when I was overseas on a mission trip with the organization I do ministry with. The two leaders (directors) gave me a fairly large role on the mission trip and I accomplished it well. I also helped organize other aspects of the trip and sometimes would be thinking ahead and reminding the directors of things we needed to get done. The directors expressed appreciation for the role I played and how I supported them. Through leading in my role on my team and helping take responsibility for other parts of the trip, that were not expected of me, I demonstrated emergent leadership to the directors and other team members. The following year I was asked to co-direct that same trip.

The section on managers and leaders was very interesting, Bennis and Nanus (2007) described the difference as the following:

“To manage means to accomplish activities and master routines, whereas to lead means to influence others and create visions for change” ( p.221).

I identified that my ministry organization has a very combined approach to their assigned leadership roles.  Their roles often entail both management and leadership combined. However, I have found that the management side always seems takes over and it becomes 80% management, 20% leadership. There are good changes being made, but there is still a constant barrage of management tasks do, as well as national and local priorities that still make management a huge part of the role.

Personally, I appreciated Zaleznik’s (1977) viewpoint that narrowed it to the fact that managers and leaders should be distinct (p. 14). I have been thinking about what that would look like in my ministry context. Potentially we could have an assigned managers and an assigned leader who leads a team together. This could be a personal bias, but because I naturally lean towards leadership, I think if I had less management on my plate, I could really thrive in leadership. Our organization has entered a season of adaptive change and through this I am noticing more of my natural bent towards leadership, rather than management.

To conclude, it is clear there definitely is a difference between management and leadership. I think dependent on the context, personalities of the leaders and the goals of the team, it is important for companies and organizations to define how management and leadership interact, especially when trying to apply change. In defining how they interact, it could be decided whether to divide management and leadership between two individuals or combine it together in their assigned leadership roles.

Question: In your context, do you think there should be a distinctive management role and leadership role, for two seperate people or do you think that it should be combined into one role, for one person? Explain.

Monica

Bennis, W.G., & Nanus, B. (2007). Leaders: The strategies for taking charge (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: theory and practice (8th ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Zaleznik, A. (1977, May-June). Managers and leaders:  Are they different? Harvard Business Review, 55, 67-78.

I appreciated Ryan’s blog post on Northouse’s definition of leadership linked here.

His thoughts around Northouse’s definition are centred around the relationship between the leader and the group and how this dynamic works. It was well synthesized and concise and I appreciated his comment on allowing members of the group ownership of the common goal and how this allows for the group to go further and tap into their potential.

I liked his question at the end, so I wanted to comment on it:

“How then should a leader respond to an individual who is no longer working toward the common goal?”

This is a tough question and I think it is a different answer for each person and it is situational. It depends on where the root of the issue is coming from.  In my experience, it is helpful to first take a look at your interactions with the person and your leadership. Then after evaluating, have a sit down with the person. To diagnose what is going on, you could ask yourself and them:

• Have you (the leader) made the common goal (s) clear to them?
• Ask them if they understood the common goal (s) ?
• Assess: do you think they have understood and are on board with the common goal (s) of your team?

If you have a good relationship with them and trust has been built, it would be good to dive deeper and ask the following:

• If they said yes to understanding the common goal of the team, ask: is this also what they think the common goal (s) should be or do they have other ideas?
• Also ask: do you find yourself getting side-tracked by other pressing priorities? What are those?
• If they say no to understanding the common goal, dig and find out where the misunderstanding happened. It could be that you failed to communicate the common goal clear enough.

Sometimes people just need help managing priorities or knowing what is expected of them. They may hear you when you say the common goal is X, but they have many other pressing priorities that they also think you expect of them that crowd that out. Clarify expectations around the common goal always!

In assessing and asking these questions you could discover some of these 5 possible situations:

1) The person misunderstood or was not clear on the common goal of the group.

2) The person is feeling crushed by other expectations and cannot move towards the common goal.

3) The person is being deliberately defiant.

4) The person has many pressing priorities outside of work that are leaking into work. These priorities could be related to tough circumstances: physically, emotionally or relationally.

5) The person has deeper personal issues, that could be: emotional, relational or spiritual issues that are affecting them in all aspects of life.

In relation to 1 & 2, they are easier to correct. Situations 3, 4 and 5 may be longer processes and not easy to work through.

I find the stronger the common goal and direction, the clearer it is who is really on board. When goals, mission and vision are not clear, its easier for people on a team to do their own thing and have their own priorities.

QUESTION: What would you do if situations 3, 4 and 5 were the case with a person on your team? You can answer for just one of the situations.

Monica

Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: theory and practice (8th ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.