SERVANT LEADERSHIP

SERVANT LEADERSHIP

INTRODUCTION

Leaders are a significant part of any company or organization as they spearhead and align the organization’s resources towards the success of these organizations they work for. They act as the responsible party for any company or organizational problems and fundamental questions that may occur and create the bridge between the owners or shareholders and the company’s technical and output team. They comprehend the intended results by shareholders and come up with strategies to accomplish any goals hand down to them. Servant leaders, on the other hand, are more attuned to the company goals and also to the juniors’ feelings emotions of the company personnel. They act more like servants than bosses speaking and persuading as compared to ordering around.

This paper will deal with the qualities of a good leader and the qualities of a servant leader, taking into consideration the contrast between servant and normal leaders.

Major Traits of a Leader

Self- managing

Leaders do not require to management to perform in their job descriptions effectively. Leaders are self-motivated and take it upon themselves to lead by example in terms of motivation and are often first to arrive and last to leave.

Strategic

Strategy is a huge reason for employing a leader in an organization. Strategy is important as it creates the companies direction and interaction, how it will manage its resources in the fulfilling of company goals. A leader with a good strategy translates to success for the company, while bad strategies result in losses for the company.

Effective communicator

Effective communication allows for the effective direction of the company personnel as to the direction in fulfilling company goals. An effective communicator can address the company’s term and long term goals effectively, allowing for efficient application of such with little supervision o the employees.

Accountable and responsible

A good leader can account for his or her actions, meaning that he contemplates everything he or she does in the company name and will take responsibility for any results that come from any company venture. A good leader will not place blame on others; rather, they will undertake to account for the losses out of the understanding that they are the sources of any direction that followed.

Vision

Team building

Good leaders are effective team builders, meaning that they can pinpoint the right people for the company based on company goals and ensure they join the company. They can manage the teams and put affective teams together for maximum synergy.

Major traits of servant leadership

Empathy

A servant leader is conversant with the feelings and the well being of his or her employees, he or she is aware and accommodate them in the company goals. He or she ensures that not only are the company goals being achieved rather, in so doing the team is incorporated and considered such that their utilisation is effective on behalf of company goals.

Listening

Servant leaders listen to all involved in the pursuance of certain goals. Listening to everyone allows for servant leaders to acquaint themselves with all issues underlying on all levels of the company, giving them a clear picture of the company position, which in turn allows them to lead more effectively.

Awareness

Servant leaders are fully aware of themselves, fro their strengths to their weaknesses, which allows them to know where to seek help and where they can offer help. Servant leaders are also aware of their values, emotions, and feelings, which allows them to e more conversant and in control of themselves in the discharge of their duties.

Persuasive

Servant leaders are persuasive as opposed to commands. Persuasiveness involves explanation and convincing their team, employees or personnel as to the reason for doing whatever being done, which allows for increased participation, and self-motivation for the companies team, as having the full picture they can pursue the goals efficiently as compared to fulfilling orders from above regardless of the bigger picture.

Stewardship

A servant leader takes up the mantle for the stewards of the company resources, where they take charge n terms of planning and managing all the company resources for the prosperity of the company.

Community building

Servant leaders are not only involved with the companies success, rather they understand the value of positive impact on the community, as it holds the community together. They strive to ensure a positive impact in society through infrastructural, civic, and other means of assistance for the betterment f the community.

Committed to the growth of others

Servant leaders are known to assist in the growth of others within and without the company to even grooming their replacement with a view of the bigger company goals, as compared to normal leaders who sabotage potential replacements to keep a tight hold on the seat of power.

Compare and contrast servant leadership qualities and the qualities of a good leader.

Servant first

As compared to the qualities of a good leader, servant leaders are servants first, rather than executives. Servant leaders take care of the needs of their personnel and company before taking care of their own needs. Ordinary leaders whom self-interest and company interests go hand in hand, are such that any success for the company is a success for the individual, while success for the servant leader is a success for all.

Ambition towards business, not personal growth

Most servant leaders are more concerned with business goals and take their time to ensure such. Servant leaders credit the companys success to everyone rather than taking the credit for themselves, and will associate success with luck and great personnel but will associate loss with personal pitfalls, and try and rectify the situation. Leaders, on the other hand, associate success with personality, and try and take credit for it, while associating failure with others and never themselves.

No enormous ego

Servant leaders have no enormous ego; however, this does not mean they are ego-less; rather their egos are not based on personality rather on output and company goals. Normal executive leaders, on the other hand, are more egocentric, with huge public profiles that border on celebrity.

Results don’t involve personal strides to claim success

Servant leaders credit the company and the players involved in the success attained by the company, on the other hand, executive leaders credit themselves and try to reap all benefits helping their curriculum vitae in case of advancing their careers.

Deep strong executive teams

Most servant leaders have a deep executive team that helps in an advisory capacity, ensuring the leader has a multi-sighted idea and awareness of the goals at hand as compared to normal executive leaders who have a myriad of assistants whom task is to follow his or her directive, leaving the company functioning at the whims of the executive.

Persuasive as opposed to dictatorial

Most servant leaders have a persuasive approach to dealing with others within the company, where they explain their position and allow for rebuttals and discussions on matters. On the other hand, executive leaders mostly issue directions meant to be followed, with little to no opposition to such.

What would it look like to bring servant leadership to police organizations

Increased co-operation as opposed to orders

The introduction of servant leadership in police organizations would result in increased co-operation in all levels of service from the chief to the police officers to the community served. Increased co-operation would arise from the nature of servant leadership, which offers a listening ear to everyone and not just superiors within the organization. Also, due to reduced combative techniques in dealing with the community, more people would be inclined to work with the police due to reduced fear of the police.

Impact based as opposed to goal-based

Servant based leadership has an impact based result rather than goal-based results. The goal-based system where a certain number of arrests have to be made, and or certain numbers of squad trips and police rounds have to be done in a day would be replaced by the impact of policing arising from the effect of policing has on the community. The number of crimes solved, the reduced rate of crime, and well being of the community would spearhead the reason for policing, changing tactics, and involving more players in policing activities from the police to the community members themselves.

Freer work environment

Servant leadership depends on a co-operative, consultative based work environment. The workplace will be freer, as ideas will be allowed and appreciated, with a consultation resulting in more likable and generally agreeable decisions.

Reduced egos and increase shared success.

Servant leadership has reduced egos, as it advances the results rather than the person. Reduced egos mean the work environment is more tolerable, more consultative, and cooperative, resulting in increased output and self-discipline, which has more shared success. servant leadership ends with everyone getting credit as opposed to one executive reaping the benefits on behalf of the whole team.

Would this change require a culture change

Servant leadership would require a culture change; this is due to the tradition of policing, which is more combative than co-operative. Police chiefs used to a method of orders hierarchically, may find t hard to take advice or listen to their juniors. Police officers may find it hard to work in a consultative manner with members of the community, this is beacause they are used to interrogatory techniques with threats of arrest, which has an effect of being feared.

Benefits and pitfalls of servant leadership in a police organization

Benefits

Boost morale

Having a police environment where everyone’s input is respected and heard, with increased consultations on all levels as opposed to ordering people around, has the effect of boosting morale . Ordering people around, on the other hand, without finding out what they want or need would have an effect of boosting the morale of the police officers, which would in turn increase output in service delivery, with a police force working wit on mind following the same direction each police officer being comfortable as all their inputs were considered before making any decisions.

A journey towards positive change

Servant leadership has increased positive changes, as the values and principles of servant leadership are those of inclusion, empathy, and co-operation. The police service would I time see the effect of servant leadership through improved work conditions and positive work outputs in the society.

Works with community

Servant leadership would see police officers working with members of the community rather than policing them. Members of the community would get a new view of the police service as people who are there to serve them, rather than a force that is there to control them. This would increase co-operation within the community, between the people and the police.

Increased openness, honesty and collaboration

Servant leadership will turn the police officers from a force to approachable servants of the people, which will have a direct effect of increased trust between the people and the police service, which will, in turn, increase openness, honesty, and collaboration.

Increased care and concern

Increased care and concern arise from the principals of servant leadership, which empathy is a huge part of. Police officers will be more concerned about the community rather than arrests made, which in turn will lead to increased care and concern about the community, as they will learn more about the community in delivering their service leading to the effective application of the law based on intimate knowledge rather than the appearance of events.

Detriments

Rocky road to change

Introducing servant leadership to a police service used to power and force will be a hurdle. Most officers will view these principles as a way of reducing their power in the streets. Convincing the police officers to interact and cooperate with members of the community as opposed to their usual stop and interrogate techniques will be hard to sell, and only proof of success from servant leadership will change their minds. Servant leadership, on the other hand, does not have immediate effects; however, long term effects are guaranteed, meaning it will take time.

Not everyone is a servant.

Not every police chief is a servant, and their state of mind may not accommodate such. Most police chiefs are used to ordering people and not taking their word dependent on hierarchy, such that they will only take orders from their supervisors and in turn, order their juniors.

Reduced visibility

Servant leadership has reduced visibility, which means the achievements made through servant leadership will be felt, but the recognition will not be directly attributed to a said person. Good results from servant leadership may not result in individual recognition; rather, it may give credit to the whole group of participants, reducing any clout for larger than lie personalities, which may be a deterrent for such people.

Getting the right people and reducing the wrong ones will be slow, especially in public and non-business environments.

Due to the police organization being a public non-business organization, the police chief has reduced the capability of hiring and firing due to unions and other people he or she has to answer to. The police chief will, therefore, need to use his or her persuasive powers to reshuffle the police organization, and include both the unions and superiors in the case of firing or hiring much-needed employees. It will, therefore, take longer to put everyone on board, which will lead to reduced application o servant leadership principles and techniques in the organization.

A lot of time in introducing the right frame of mind for the position

Ensuring the right frame of mind for servant leadership will take a longer time than expected as police officers will initially need convincing that servant leadership is the way to go before undergoing training. Acceptance will be an individual issue, and although they may agree on the surface out of not wanting to argue with their superiors, inculcating it to their daily service will take longer due to lack of and longer time is taken in proving the effects of servant leadership.

Outline plan of implementing servant leadership in a police organization

To implement servant leadership in a police organization, the very first thing that would be of vital importance would be to identify and get the right police chief into the organization with the right frame of mind and principles of servant leadership. This is of vital importance as the leader in the police organization speaks a lot to the mentality and direction of the said organization, and would be instrumental in spearheading the servant leadership principles within the organization.

Thee would also be a necessity to start police training on the values and tactics of servant leadership. This would involve the explanations as to what it means to be a servant leader and practices that would, in effect, result in better servant leaders within the community. The police officers would have to be taught new methods of associations with the citizens and members of the community to inculcate the new tactics of servant leadership. The police would have to be shown ways of collaboration and interaction with the community that would foster increased trust, empathy, and transparency, as compared to intimidatory tactics.

It would also be necessary to get the right people on the bus; This means that the chief would have to assess his workforce and find ways of replacing those who are unwilling to change tact into servant leadership with those who can. Although it may be hard to fire police officers, the chief could shuffle them, through consultations with the unions and his or her superiors, the chief would have to convince police officers who don’t have the will to change, to join other departments. Getting the right people on the bus would have a huge impact as it would ensure the direction of the chief has increased support and reduced need for oversight and management out of increased self-discipline, meaning there would be increased efficiency in delivery.

The chief would then have to get his vision right, as stated by the hedgehog concept, the chief would have to identify one area of increased importance in terms of service delivery and focus all his energies on the said goal. The impact of service delivery is the most important in a police service; the police chief would have to focus on the impact of his or her servant leadership, in terms of reduced crimes and increased cooperation within the society. Police officers would have to work towards this mandate to enable the police chief to prove that there are benefits to servant leadership, which would, in turn, convince more police officers to use the tactic in the course of delivering their services.