Among seven servant leader behaviors emerged from Liden et al.’s (2008), I would choose conceptualizing, helping followers grow and succeed and Empowerment.
With conceptualizing, servant leader should understand the organization with a big picture. Leader also needs to concern with the mission of the organization and the long term-vision. Besides that, A servant leader need to grasp how the situation is going on. Servant leader. When leader empathized and concern followers first, there may be a risk that the leader is stucked with the followers feeling or requests and loose the long vision. Helping followers grow and succeed may be not always satisfy the followers’ request. Leader with long view can lead the followers in proper direction. Empower is another behavior which servant leader provide. Empowering is to give some power for followers to let them control the situations by themselves. These behaviors remind me Adler psychology. In Adler psychology, we trust people that they can improve naturally and use encouragement to support their grow or improvement.
Among these three behavior, empower is the most challenging for me. Often in the cases, doing something by myselves is much easier and faster than waiting for somebody is growing to do that. But for prosper of the organization, empower is very important. When each employee becomes aware of their situations and motivated to manage by themselves. Employee can behave more independently.
I feel servant leadership takes longer time to penetrate to the organization because leader urge and wait for followers’ improvement. Also leader should know both small precise information about followers but also big picture of long-term goal.
What kinds of business are good to have servant leader?
References
Northouse, P. G. (2019). Leadership: Theory and practice (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Liden, R.C., Wayne, S.J., Zhao, H.,& Henderson, D. (2008) Servant leadership : Development of a multidimensional measured and multi-level assessment. The Leadership Quarterly, 19,161-177.
Hiromi,
As you continue to read Northouse (2016), you’ll find that the leadership concept of empowerment is found in several different theoretical perspectives about leadership, including “transformational leadership.” It seems that, in general, leaders must be able to create the conditions for those they lead to thrive in their work, in order for an organization to achieve its goals or purpose.
I’m inspired by the connections you have made with the psychological theory of Alfred Adler, which do seem to align with the concept of empowerment.
“According to Adler, when we feel encouraged, we feel capable and appreciated and will generally act in a connected and cooperative way. When we are discouraged, we may act in unhealthy ways by competing, withdrawing, or giving up. It is in finding ways of expressing and accepting encouragement, respect, and social interest that help us feel fulfilled and optimistic” (http://alfredadler.edu/about/alfred-adler-theory-application, n.d).
Even though this theory was developed in a different time and different culture, it rings true today.
Thanks for expanding our thinking about this concept!
— Leadership Prof