The aspect of leadership is defined to be the process of perceived social influence that is exerted by an individual within an organisation or in a group and through which that individual is able to enlist other individuals and support them to accomplish certain common goals and objectives that have been envisioned by the leader. Leadership has been characterised as an attribute of personality that helps an individual to take the initiative in guiding and leading others to realise a common shared goal or purpose (Kantharia, 2012). Followers are the persons who voluntarily and proactively engage with the leaders and respond to their call for identifying a shared purpose and vision which would eventually help them to pursue a shared action towards realising the main goal and objective. According to Banutu-Gomez, (2004) for ensuring success, it is important for the leaders to teach their followers the aspect of followership and this would enable them to become good followers.
The term servant leadership had been coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, an essay which was published in the year 1970. As the name suggests, the servant leader is a servant first and he/she has a natural innate tendency to serve and help out others in need. This inherent tendency to serve others in need is what aspires an individual to lead others. This aspect invariably distinguishes that person form the other people who consider themselves to be the leaders of their group (Rachmawati & Lantu, 2014). The leader-first and the servant-first leaderships are considered to be two ends of the spectrum and within these two models there are different types of leadership that inherently exposes the diverse aspects of human behaviour and nature.
The main characteristic component of the servant leadership is that the servant leaders always provides the highest amount of importance and priority towards ensuring that others people’s need are constantly satisfied. This plays a vital role in empowering the people who are working under the servant leader. The aspect of empowerment has been considered to be the main characteristic of servant leadership. Empowerment means entrusting others with greater power and authority, which invariably make them feel more significant at their workplace (Olesia et al., 2013). This is usually achieved by emphasising on the aspect of teamwork, love and mutual respect for each other at the workplace. This is what provides greater dimension and completeness to the servant leadership. It involves the aspect of both “serving” (might be for monetary gains or otherwise) and “leading” (which involves guiding and leading others) which are considered to be the most important determinants of employee satisfaction and motivation (Van Dierendonck, 2011).
According to Robert Greenleaf, the main problem associated with the servant leadership is the negative connotations that are associated with it. Both serve and lead are overused words which are mainly utilised in a negative effect and this inherently provides a bad name to the servant leadership. However, when both the words are combined to form the phrase Servant-Leader, the aspects of personal egoistic or monetary gains inherently become silent (Kantharia, 2012).
There are various models of servant leadership which could be followed by the modern day business establishments to serve their business needs and requirements and they include the Patterson’s Model, Modified Wong and Page’s Expanding Ring Model, Spear’s Model, Winston’s Extension of Patterson Model and Leader-Exemplary Follower Exchanges (LEFX) (Manala, 2014).
In the present times, when change is the only constant aspect in our lives, the servant leadership has become an imperative leadership style. The developed countries have nearly exhausted their resources or they have costlier internal resources and their internal markets have also reached a point of saturation. Under such a situation the developed nations are increasingly looking towards the emerging and lesser developed nations for minimising their product and services costs which would eventually enable them to ensure steady economic growth while sustaining their influence on the global economy (Van Dierendonck, 2011). The world economy has moved on from being an agrarian economy to one that is based on technological innovation. Nowadays, there are multiple sources and mediums of knowledge acquisition such as internet, television, mobile communications and interactive computer systems; and all of them has played a vital role in reducing our focus and concentration. We are living in an age where collaboration and coordination are the main ingredients for inclusive growth and development and this is where the servant leadership comes to the forefront (Moll & Kretzschmar, 2017). Servant leadership is the only way forward as it helps in fostering greater understanding and teamwork among the employees in the modern day workplace. It fosters greater motivation and inspiration among the staffs by providing the employees with a sense of empowerment and as a result the employees are able to work in a more independent manner. This invariably provides a sense of job satisfaction among the employees and as a result business establishments are able to retain their employees for the long haul (Mahembe & Engelbrecht, 2013).
There is a close similarity between the transformational leadership and the servant leadership however there are also many differences by identifying which we would be able to better understand and differentiate both these styles of leadership. Graham, (1995) have concluded that both the charismatic and the transformational leadership are inspirational and moralistic in nature however the main aspect that distinguishes them from each other is the fact that servant leadership helps in encouraging a “spiritual generative culture” whereas the transformational leadership mainly encourages an “empowered dynamic culture”. According to Bass, (1997) the transactional leadership mainly occurs when the leaders promise their workers about rewards and incentives in exchange for the timely fulfilment of their individual work goals and targets. There is often an aspect of transaction that is involved in the working style of the transactional leaders and hence the name. The primary focus of the transactional leaders is the organisational goals and objectives while ensuring the development and empowerment of the employees become secondary (Jackson, 2008). However, the servant leader continuously focuses on his/her followers and ensuring the empowerment and growth of the followers are their primary concern. Servant leaders do not have any particular affinity or loyalty towards their organisation and they mainly value the people and their contribution towards the growth and success of an organisation. According to Gregory Stone et al., (2004) the transformational leader’s focus is entirely directed towards the successful realisation of the organisational goals and objectives while the servant leader’s focus in entirely on improving and building up over the existing skills and competencies of his followers. While servant leaders are motivated by the aspect of egalitarianism, the transformational leaders are motivated by a sense of mission in helping their respective organisation to successfully survive the challenging market environment and sustain the market competition with their business rivals (Freeman, 2011).
On the other hand the authentic leadership emphasises on the aspect of authenticity and genuine behaviour on the part of the leaders in order to realise the business goals and objectives of an organisation. An authentic leader has certain principles that he/she strictly adheres to under any situation. Their awareness towards their values and principles invariably help them to act accordingly while leading and guiding their subordinates. This self awareness is what enables them to earn the trust and credibility of both the management and the employees/followers who are working under them (Lapina, 2018). There are four distinct characteristics of Authentic Leadership which invariably helps in distinguishing it from the other styles of leadership and these are self awareness, balanced processing, relational transparency and internalized moral perspective. These characteristic traits allow an authentic leader to understand their own strengths and weaknesses in an effective manner and this enables them to become aware about how their behaviour and interaction process is having an impact on other individuals (Freeman, 2011). The process of self awareness essentially means that the leader gains knowledge about themselves through their interaction with others. The aspect of relational transparency essentially means that the leader intends to communicate openly about their feelings and thoughts to their followers. The aspect of balanced processing signifies that the leaders make use of available data and information to arrive at logical and informed decisions. Lastly, the aspect of internalized moral perspective enables the authentic leaders to follow their own morale and values while leading their followers. The aspect of internalized moral perspective is what helps the authentic leaders to self-regulate the behaviour of their followers while resisting any kind of societal and group pressures (Moll & Kretzschmar, 2017). While comparing the authentic leadership with the servant leadership, the main drawback of the authentic leadership that is witnessed is the fact that the personal interests of the employees are not considered. The authentic leaders try to impose their own set of values and principles upon their followers and this plays a vital role in inhibiting the professional growth and development of their staffs (Lapina, 2018). The staffs feel like their activities are being controlled by the authentic leaders and this limits the individual creativity and freedom of the employees at their respective workplace. This could invariably hamper the job satisfaction levels of the employees and bring down their commitment and motivation levels. Thus, it can be stated that overall the servant leadership is better than the authentic leadership in a modern day organisational setting (Rachmawati & Lantu, 2014).
The situational leadership is another leadership model that is widely popular and is being increasingly used by the modern day business establishments. This situational leadership style inherently emphasises on the aspect of adjustment to the extent of employee readiness for achieving and realising certain organisational goals and objectives that inherently depnd on the existing competency and dedication of the employees. This situational leadership model is sub divided into three situational components which includes the level of task assigned or directed by the leader, the existing relationship between the leaders and their subordinate staffs and the existing skills, confidence and competency levels of the followers (Lapina, 2018). The main advantage of the situational leadership is that it is ideally suited to help business establishments to tackle tough and challenging market situations by controlling the functioning and activities of the followers. Compared to the servant leadership, the situational leadership is mainly aimed at addressing the business needs and requirements of an organisation. The situational leadership also does not emphasise on the personal growth and development of the employees (Jackson, 2008). The situation leadership mainly helps organisation to tackle and manage emergency market situations by helping the business establishments to adapt to the market changes and developments that are taking place over time). While the servant leadership emphasised on the aspect of personal growth and development of all the employees, the situational leadership takes a more biased approach towards the employees and this is evident from the fact that only the followers that enjoy better working terms with their leaders are able to get the support and guidance from their leaders (Manala, 2014).
Lastly, the autocratic leadership is another style of leadership which have lost its essence in the modern day business but was once utilised widely by the organisations. This style of leadership is absolutely averse to the concept of employee well being and employee satisfaction at the workplace. The autocratic leaders do not consider their employees to be an important component of the organisation and they do not take their views and opinions into consideration at the time of business decisions making (Mahembe & Engelbrecht, 2013). The decisions undertaken by the autocratic leaders are forcefully imposed upon the employees and the employees do not have a choice but to follow them strictly. The employees do not have the option of complaining or questioning the decisions of their leaders. The autocratic leadership is completely opposite to that of the servant leadership in the fact that the growth of the employees is never an issue for the leaders and what eventually matters for them is the organisational growth and productivity (Freeman, 2011). This is the main reason why over the years, the autocratic leadership has lost its significance and has presently become obsolete for the modern day business establishments. The autocratic leadership harbours employee dissatisfaction and discontentment which eventually hamper the individual creativity and motivation levels at the workplace. This invariably leads to greater attrition levels and increased absenteeism among the staffs.
References
Banutu-Gomez, M. B. (2004). Great leaders teach exemplary followership and serve as servant leaders. Journal of American Academy of Business, 4(1/2), 143-150.
Bass, B. M. (1997). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Leadership: Understanding the dynamics of power and influence in organizations, 318-333.
Freeman, G. T. (2011). Spirituality and servant leadership: A conceptual model and research proposal. Emerging Leadership Journeys, 4(1), 120-140.
Graham, J. W. (1995). Leadership, moral development, and citizenship behavior. Business ethics quarterly, 43-54.
Gregory Stone, A., Russell, R. F., & Patterson, K. (2004). Transformational versus servant leadership: A difference in leader focus. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 25(4), 349-361.
Jackson, D. (2008). Servant leadership in nursing: a framework for developing sustainable research capacity in nursing. Collegian, 15(1), 27-33.
Kantharia, B. (2012). Servant leadership: An imperative leadership style for leader managers.
Lapina, A. (2018). A Review of Five Leadership Models | Pangaea Journal. [online] Sites.stedwards.edu. Available at: https://sites.stedwards.edu/pangaea/a-review-of-five-leadership-models/ [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018].
Mahembe, B., & Engelbrecht, A. S. (2013). The relationship between servant leadership, affective team commitment and team effectiveness. SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 11(1), 1-10.
Manala, M. J. (2014). Servant leadership: A required leadership model for efficient and effective service delivery in a democratic South Africa. Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 40, 249-266.
Moll, J., & Kretzschmar, L. (2017). An investigation of the suitability of a Servant Leadership model for academic Group Leaders at German universities. Journal of Leadership Education, 16(2).
Olesia, W. S., Namusonge, G. S., & Iravo, M. E. (2013). Role of servant leadership on organizational commitment: An exploratory survey of state corporations in Kenya. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 3(13), 85-94.
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