Category: Business & Non-Profit

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In Response to “Servant leadership as a central focus in the use of the strategic leadership” by ANDREAMARQUIS

Hi Adrea.

Thank you so much for your insightful contribution on the matter regarding; the benefits of keeping servant leadership as a central focus in the use of the strategic leadership principles.

According to Atha, Castellon, Imbenzi, Mitchell, Page, Peregrym, Strong, Willaume, Wollf, and Wu, (2018) Servant-leaders aspire to be great only in their service to others. Good leadership motivates and mobilizes others to accomplish a task or think with creativity, vision, integrity, and skill for the benefit of all concerned. (p. 3). In this context, therefore, servant leadership ideally would foster strategy implementation, adoption, communication and commitment with great ease as long as the servant leader fulfills his/her role of focussing on the highest priority needs of the followers.

When I consider the expectation on strategic leaders in today’s VUCA environment, a servant leadership may not deliver desired results. Hughes, Beatty, and, Dinwoodie, (2014) stated:

There is a common but unhelpful stereotype of great strategic thinkers as gurus—individuals possessing extraordinary knowledge, expertise, and foresight. Not surprisingly, therefore, some people in organizations carry around unrealistic and counterproductive expectations that to be seen as “strategic” requires coming across as a self-sufficient expert having all the answers.

This sort of expectation may become a stumbling block for a servant leader as they are expected to produce some unrealistic results in isolation.

As a servant leader, faced with such an environment, what would be your best response stance to remedy such expectations supposing even your senior management have communicated such expectations of you?

Regardless of the pressures ascribed to different environments, a servant leader possesses qualities including self-awareness and a strong ability to communicate in humility. These values enable them to garner support from both followers and management through articulating organizational aspirations that inspire members to higher levels and quality of effort. (Hughes, et al., 2014).

It can be said if a servant leader with less experience is faced with such a situation, humility will go a long way in getting the desired results and support needed.

References

Atha, D. L. (Ed.), Castellon, A., George, I., Laird, P., Mitchell, K., Page, D., Peregrym, D., Strong, H., Willaume, D., Wollf, R., Wu, T. (2018) MA leadership and MA in educational leadership monograph 2018. Unpublished manuscript. Trinity Western University: Langley BC.

Hughes, R. L., Beatty, K. C., & Dinwoodie, D. L. (2014). Becoming a strategic leader your role in your organization’s enduring success. Jossey-Bass.

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In Response To: “A Perspective on the Influence of TSL on the Strategic Process || BT1” by Boyder

Hello Lillian,

Thanks for your discussion on matters around critical thinking principles and TSL and strategy development. As I read through the section on critical thinking at the end, I was reminded of some factors that come into play as mentioned by (Hughes, Beatty & Dinwoodie, 2014) where they spoke about strategic leadership approach to thinking patterns and strategy.

The danger in organizations is that if people look only for signs that they are on the right path (that their theory of the business is valid), they can often find them. But if they do not also look for signs that they are wrong, they will miss critical information. (p. 101).

Our theories and beliefs affect the data we select for making conclusions. This type of thinking leaves us closed to critical thinking as we do not challenge our beliefs and founded theories. This perspective suggests leaders may have the traits and qualities of TSL’s but may fail to exhibit critical thinking skills.

In support of this perspective, as leaders, we can look at the results we want and not question our own judgment or relevance of the questions we are asking. Hughes, et al., (2014). This line of thinking and approach leaves us open and vulnerable to scrutiny and compromising our integrity in the eyes of our followers.

Having said that, would you think it a fair observation that some TSL’s may fall into this category owing to lack of a wealth of experience in leadership?

Herholdt, Ungerer, and Ungerer, (2016) suggested that:

The challenge to use more than just muscle power, but also the intellect of people requires from us to re-think the assumptions we make about the abilities of people to contribute and the way we open up these spaces for them. We have to accept that all workers are knowledge workers and respect them for that. (p. 16)

Following this suggestion, TSL’s will have a greater impact on the lives of their followers when they start to consider and value their intellectual input. This fosters co-creation and collaboration which is a concept of the “new economy” and, thus, promoting critical thinking in the organization rather than individual leaders.

The twenty-first century is the age of knowledge workers. And as such we as leaders should re-think the assumptions we make about the abilities of people to contribute and the way we open up these spaces for them. (Ungerer, et al., 2014).

The greatest challenge facing the VUCA environment we live in today is how do you measure critical thinking and how do you measure progress, (of critical thinking) in a leader?

Afterthought:

I encourage all prospective TSL to develop their thinking to a level where after synthesis of analyzed evidence, to arrive at the “both and” type of responses rather than the “or”.

References

Herholdt, J., Ungerer, G., & Ungerer, M. (2016). Navigating Strategic Possibilities: Strategy Formulation and Execution Practices to Flourish. KR Publishing.

Hughes, R. L., Beatty, K. C., & Dinwoodie, D. L. (2014). Becoming a strategic leader your role in your organization’s enduring success. Jossey-Bass.

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In Response to “TSL, Strategy, Self-Sacrifice and Christian Ministry // CM1” by Oliver Parsons

Thanks, Oliver for your post on Christian Ministry and transformational servant leadership(TSL).

In an ideal world, the church should embody TSL in its very nature, however, departure from being people-centric into organizational strategy thus prioritizing revenue, numbers of people coming through the doors, buildings, and vehicles etc lead to failures in strategy implementation. Each time the focus is not on people, strategy suffers.

The church ministry is robust, encompassing many factors as those mentioned above however agreeably so, human personal and emotional needs must stay at the center of focus for TSL to be effective leading to the successful application of strategic leadership. These strategies depend on successful implementation of TSL which entails; the deliberate emphasis of the leader on building follower commitment to organizational goals through transformational leadership and through servant leadership which shifts the leaders focus from organizational goals to the followers highest needs. As a result of this combination, the leader should be able to combine the two focal points into one to form TSL. (Northouse, 2016)

It is important for strategic leaders to track their progress as you mentioned in (para 2, 2018), it can be difficult to determine if the numbers alone can give an indication of progress. It is easy for leaders to think they are making progress by looking for information to confirm what they know rather than look more intentionally for information that could disconfirm their perceptions. This kind of thinking has been given a name: “confirmation bias” (Hughes, Beatty, & Dinwoodie, 2014).

To remedy this kind of erroneous thinking, (Hughes, et al., 2014) recommends that: “first, identify some specific and testable implication of your current theory of business/church. Then determine what kind of result or data would be consistent with that implication. Also, try to identify what data or result could disconfirm it”

This way a leader exhibits open-mindedness which promotes critical thinking through self-awareness.

Looking at both businesses and church organizations, I would be tempted to agree with (Hughes, et al., 2014) on who state at the core of strategy should be an inward examination of leaders to reflect on how they go about the strategy process and ask ourselves these three questions:

  • Have we achieved the leadership outcomes of shared direction, alignment, and commitment?
  • How are we personally and collectively navigating the key leadership challenges in today’s VUCA world? These are challenges of leveraging polarities, leading change, spanning boundaries, and leading culture.
  • How am I personally demonstrating the core strategic thinking, strategic acting, and strategic influencing?

Resources

Hughes, R. L., Beatty, Collarelli-Beatty, K., & Dinwoodie, D. L. (2014). Becoming a strategic leader: Your role in your organization’s enduring success. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Imbenzi, G., Williaume, D. & Page, D. (2013). Transformational servant leadership. Unpublished manuscript, Master of Arts in Leadership. Trinity Western University: Langley, Canada.

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Los Angeles, Calif.: SAGE.