Leadership is an important topic which has gained popularity in the 1900s because leaders have the ability to influence and motivate individuals which contributes to the success of an enterprise (Schuh et al., 2014). Leadership is about motivating, enabling and influencing individuals in order to achieve corporate goals of a company. There are many popular leadership styles which have gained popularity in the past few decades such as transformational, follower-centric, competency and managerial. Servant leadership is a management approach which has gained popularity as it is one of the key employee-centric approaches. The leaders who implement this approach focus on understanding the needs of employees and fulfilling their needs to ensure that they work towards achieving common organisational objectives (Liden et al., 2014). This essay will evaluate the key elements of a servant leadership approach to understand its importance in managing millennial employees and how this approach contributes to the success of a company. Many experts argue that servant leadership management style is the best approach when it comes to managing employees in workplace. Pros and cons of this approach will be analysed in this essay and recommendations will be given for leaders who wanted to implement this approach in the company.
Servant leadership management approach focuses on a view that the leaders should serve follower rather than vice versa; this approach helps the leaders in understanding and fulfilling the demands of employees as their facilitators, stewards, and coaches which lead to development of employees and the organisation. The objective of servant leaders is to ask employees how they can help them rather than expecting from them to serve them (Panaccio et al., 2015). There are key characteristics of servant leaders which distinguish them from other leaders. They are considered as egalitarian, nurturing, selfless, humble, ethical and empathetic coaches who support their followers rather than dominating them. The key goal of servant leadership approach is to support the overall development of stakeholders by fulfilling their needs. It is considered that the servant leaders have natural desire to help and support others by nurturing them. They did not help others just to achieve their objective; however, they help them to contribute to their overall development (Hoch et al., 2018). There are specific ethical and moral principles which guide the actions of servant leaders which guide them towards achieving common goals.
These leaders lead without being judgemental about their employees, and they serve them without evoking superior status. They avoid criticising others and prefer to work with them to ensure that improve their overall performance (Chen, Zhu, and Zhou, 2015). This leadership approach was introduced around four decades ago, and since then it has gained popularity especially among those leaders who leader millennial employees. This approach is suitable for handling millennial employees because they did not prefer a dominating leadership approach and it is hard to retain them in the workplace without providing them a healthy and nurturing working environment (Liden et al., 2015)). Studies have shown that organisations in which the senior level executives exhibit servant leadership traits are more likely to have higher performance (return on assets). Based on these elements, it can be said that implementation of a servant leadership approach resulted in increasing the chances of the company to achieve effectiveness. The leaders are able to fulfil the demands of employees which motivate them to improve their performance in order to achieve the organisational goals.
As per the above discussion, it can be said that the servant leaders approach is one of the best leadership styles which can be implemented by modern leaders. There are various pros of this statement which provides advantages to the leaders, employees and the corporation (van Dierendonck and Patterson, 2015). A key advantage of servant leadership approach is that it assists the leaders in fulfilling the social responsibility of the corporation towards its stakeholders. In the modern era, pressure has been created on companies, especially, multinational organisations to ensure that they take appropriate steps to fulfil their social responsibilities. These responsibilities are imposed based on the principle of corporate governance under which the leaders have to implement policies which are focused on maintaining a balance between the interests of stakeholders. Many companies implement a corporate social responsibility (CSR) structure in the workplace to ensure that they disclose the actions taken by them to contribute to the benefit of the stakeholders (Jones Christensen, Mackey, and Whetten, 2014). These objectives can be achieved by implementing a servant leadership approach which is focused on nurturing the employees.
These leaders are also focused on nurturing other stakeholders of the company that assist them in fulfilling its corporate responsibilities which improve the brand image of the organisation. A positive brand image attracts more customers to the company. For example, a recent study shows that 73 percent of millennial customers prefer to pay extra for products which are sustainable (Curtin, 2018). Similarly, millennial employees prefer to work under leaders who are nurturing rather than dominating which resulted in increasing retention rate of employees. Another benefit of servant leadership management approach is that it improves a company and society over the long term. Servant leaders are ethical coaches, and they are guided by various ethical principles. Similarly, they focus on ensuring that they comply with ethical principles which lead to improving society along with the corporation. Servant leaders attract employee trust and build strong bonds with improves credibility of the organisation’s brand (Van Dierendonck et al., 2014). Servant leaders usually develop a positive corporate culture which supports employees and creates a positive work environment which retains millennial employees. This approach also motives employees to perform better which resulted in increasing the profitability of the company.
The points mentioned above show that the servant leadership approach is the best way of managing employees in the modern era; however, there are various cons of this approach as well which creates challenges. A key challenge with servant leadership management approach is that it takes a long time for the leader to achieve the common objectives (Yoshida et al., 2014). It takes time to build relationship with employees that are based on trust; the leader has to show his/her commitment towards employees and nurture their needs to ensure that they work together as a team to achieve corporate goals. The leader is also required to consult with all employees to understand their views regarding the changes in the workplace which increases the time taken in decision making. It makes it difficult for the servant leaders to quickly adapt as per emerging changes in the market and ensure that they are ready for any recent factors which could adversely affect the growth of the enterprise (Chiniara and Bentein, 2016).
Another problem with servant leadership is that leaders find it difficult to control the team who they are serving which leads to chaos. The responsibilities are distributed by the leaders among employees in servant leadership approach; therefore, the leader finds it difficult to establish his/her authority back in the organisation if the employees are not able to handle the pressure or work accordingly (Winston and Fields, 2015). Critics such as Deborah Eicher-Catt have argued against the servant leadership management approach by providing that they are vastly overrated and gender discriminatory (Eicher-Catt, 2005). Corporations also find it difficult to find leaders who are ready to adopt this leadership approach since they have to cater to employees’ needs rather than establishing their authority in the company. Many times these leaders are perceived as weak that are not able to handle the workplace operations on their own.
To conclude, servant leadership approach focuses on fulfilling the needs of employees and nurturing them rather than dominating them to motivate them. This approach has gained popularity in the past few decades because it assists leaders in building strong relationships with employees which leads to the effectiveness of the enterprise. There are various pros of considering servant leadership as the best management approach such as fulfilment of corporate responsibility, strong relationship with employees, retention of staff members, positive workplace environment, growth of employees and others. However, there are cons of this approach as well which include perception of leaders as weak, lack of leadership authority in case of chaos, time-consuming decision-making process, and others. There are various recommendations which can assist leaders in effectively implementing a servant leadership approach in the organisation.
Leaders should value people while implementing this approach to build trust and strong bond with employees without which this leadership approach cannot become effective. Leaders should engage in development of other employees and build strong communities which lead to overall growth of the company and society. Servant leaders should not completely delegate their authorities to employees; instead, they should remain in charge without being dominating to ensure that they are able to handle the operations of the company without adversely affecting the needs of employees. The leaders should be genuine towards employees while engaging in their personal matters to ensure that employees trust them. It will lead to a positive work environment which is important for retaining millennial staff members in the workplace which contributes to the overall success of the enterprise.
References
Chen, Z., Zhu, J. and Zhou, M., 2015. How does a servant leader fuel the service fire? A multilevel model of servant leadership, individual self identity, group competition climate, and customer service performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(2), p.511.
Chiniara, M. and Bentein, K., 2016. Linking servant leadership to individual performance: Differentiating the mediating role of autonomy, competence and relatedness need satisfaction. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(1), pp.124-141.
Curtin, M., 2018. 73 Percent of Millennials are Willing to Spend More Money on This 1 Type of Product. [Online] Available at: https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/73-percent-of-millennials-are-willing-to-spend-more-money-on-this-1-type-of-product.html [Accessed 13/12/2018].
Eicher-Catt, D., 2005. The myth of servant-leadership: A feminist perspective. Women and Language, 28(1), p.17.
Hoch, J.E., Bommer, W.H., Dulebohn, J.H. and Wu, D., 2018. Do ethical, authentic, and servant leadership explain variance above and beyond transformational leadership? A meta-analysis. Journal of Management, 44(2), pp.501-529.
Jones Christensen, L., Mackey, A. and Whetten, D., 2014. Taking responsibility for corporate social responsibility: The role of leaders in creating, implementing, sustaining, or avoiding socially responsible firm behaviors. Academy of Management Perspectives, 28(2), pp.164-178.
Liden, R.C., Wayne, S.J., Liao, C. and Meuser, J.D., 2014. Servant leadership and serving culture: Influence on individual and unit performance. Academy of Management Journal, 57(5), pp.1434-1452.
Liden, R.C., Wayne, S.J., Meuser, J.D., Hu, J., Wu, J. and Liao, C., 2015. Servant leadership: Validation of a short form of the SL-28. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(2), pp.254-269.
Panaccio, A., Henderson, D.J., Liden, R.C., Wayne, S.J. and Cao, X., 2015. Toward an understanding of when and why servant leadership accounts for employee extra-role behaviors. Journal of Business and Psychology, 30(4), pp.657-675.
Schuh, S.C., Bark, A.S.H., Van Quaquebeke, N., Hossiep, R., Frieg, P. and Van Dick, R., 2014. Gender differences in leadership role occupancy: The mediating role of power motivation. Journal of Business Ethics, 120(3), pp.363-379.
van Dierendonck, D. and Patterson, K., 2015. Compassionate love as a cornerstone of servant leadership: An integration of previous theorizing and research. Journal of Business Ethics, 128(1), pp.119-131.
Van Dierendonck, D., Stam, D., Boersma, P., De Windt, N. and Alkema, J., 2014. Same difference? Exploring the differential mechanisms linking servant leadership and transformational leadership to follower outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(3), pp.544-562.
Winston, B. and Fields, D., 2015. Seeking and measuring the essential behaviors of servant leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 36(4), pp.413-434.
Yoshida, D.T., Sendjaya, S., Hirst, G. and Cooper, B., 2014. Does servant leadership foster creativity and innovation? A multi-level mediation study of identification and prototypicality. Journal of Business Research, 67(7), pp.1395-1404.
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