Servant Leadership Is Often Associated Essay

This is why the journal article advocated more empirical research that is still lacking ten years later (Russell & Stone, 2002, 145).

B. Servant Leadership-Greenleaf

The primary aspect is that a servant leader is first a servant who feels a natural need to provide for the needs of others (Greenleaf & Spears, 2002, 27). A concrete example of this would have been a leader such as Martin Luther King Jr. who exhibited this capacity. Certainly, his leadership without doubt changed the face of the American landscape forever. Without it, the United States might still be the segregated and less equal place that it was in the days of separate rest rooms, lunch counters and segregated buses. The impact upon America's racial situation was immediate and positive. While things may not be ideal today, without such leadership, things would be worse. For this reason, more research is necessary.

C. Explain the importance of Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence

Self-awareness flows from the concept of individuality and the individuality is inspired by the self-sacrificing example of the leader. The vision causes the followers to share the same goal. Nothing would happen without the dream of the leader. Without this dream, nothing would happen. As Greenleaf points out, much more than the dream is necessary, but without it, nothing can happen.This is based upon intuition and gut feeling, which would indicate that emotional intelligence is a necessary part of this mix (ibid., 28-37).

Conclusion

As stated in the essay, this author was critical of the servant-leader model. We critiqued this by using "great man" theory and participatory leadership in order to explain inadequacies in Greenleaf's characteristics of servant leadership. While the egalitarian ambitions of the servant leadership approach were found to laudable, they can not really be documented empirically in real situations. As we saw in the great man theory and in the empirically documented participatory leadership theory, there is a need to inspire followers to carry out the wishes of the leadership. Great leaders do this through inspiration. The characteristic of humility in servant leadership may be adequate in religious or charitable organizations, but is probably not valid in the real world and just simply does not hold up empirically.

References

Greenleaf, R.K., & Spears, L.C. (2002). Servant leadership: a journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. Mahweh, NJ: Paulist Press.

Russell, R.F., & Stone, a.G. (2002). A review of servant leadership attributes: developing a practical model. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 23(3), 145±157.

Somech, a. (2003). Relationships of participative leadership with relational demography variables: a multi-level perspective. Journal of Organizational Behavior,.....