Evaluation of Nestle S.A based on Servant Leadership - Case Study Example

Evaluation of Nestle S.A based on Servant Leadership Introduction Nestle S.A is a food and beverage company based in Switzerland and ranked among the top nutrition companies. The company’s management is guided by stipulated leadership principles including leading to win, managing for results and mutual commitment, which have been associated with its success on the global market. Nestlé’s leadership is decentralized to promote optimal response and actions to increase it efficiencies and customer satisfaction. This paper evaluates the opportunities and potholes involved with the adoption of a servant leadership style in Nestle. Servant leadership describes a leader that leads by serving others, which involves focusing and fulfilling the employee’s needs. The servant leadership style focuses on ensuring that the employees’ needs are fulfilled for the achievement of the company goals and objectives. Servant Leadership Greenleaf (2002) states, “The servant-leader is first a servant.” The philosophical concept of servant leadership entails a leadership style that focuses on satisfying the needs of the employee and the consumer. The leader focuses on helping others and desires to serve them and not to be served by his subjects. Greenleaf Further explains that a servant leader is empathetic, perceptive, persuasive, foresighted, aware, listening and understanding (Day, 2014).A servant leader is identifiable in the work place because he constantly interacts with the employees. He tends to the employees with love, care, and concern. He can be identified out of the workplace because he is able to values such as empathy, concern and the willingness to serve are not easy to subdue. Subsequently, it is easy to identify him in a family, home or any other community service. Impact of Servant Leadership in Nestle Nestlé’s leadership stresses on a long-term commitment to develop the company while also satisfying the customer’s needs. The company needs its employees to have experience, on an international level which is achieved through peer coaching, mentoring, and assignments to global projects. Incorporating the servant leadership framework into the current leadership structure will strengthen its leadership principles in many ways. Nestle is built on a culture that ensures that it readily adapts and changes to suit the dynamic business environment. It will easily adapt the framework and incorporate it to its current leadership culture and framework with ease (Chartrand, Day & Coughlin, 2010). One of Nestlé’s cultural values is mutual commitment, which is creating share value as a basic method of conducting business (Nestle, 2011). Another value is its need to build personal relationships in its leadership that are based on mutual respect and trust (Nestle, 2011). The servant leader primarily focuses on the followers and their needs; hence, he fosters a proper channel of communication. This is a major way to create a shared value, mutual respect, and trust. Nestle needs servant leadership because it will foster teamwork among the employees (Nestle, 2011). Servant leadership will ensure that employees engage in activities that foster their progress and encounters with experience. A servant leader constantly holds meetings with his team and listens to their opinions and strategies. During the process, employees are engaged in the growth of talents and teamwork as required by the principles of leadership at Nestle. The principle stipulates that a leader at Nestle should have the passion to promote and sustain a working environment in which the employees have a sense of commitment to their work and make their best efforts to promote the company’s success (Nestle, 2011). The leader’s appreciation of the employees’ contributions creates a sense of commitment in the employee. It will build and sustain an environment that the employees enjoy because they are involved in decision-making processes. Nestle requires its leaders to care for and develop the future leaders for the company by addressing the factions that allow employees to expand their capabilities and progress in their work. Servant leadership focuses on the leader taking care of the employee’s needs. Consequently, it will result in team potency and accountability because the employees were part of making the decision and they observe the way in which the leader reaches a decision (Chartrand, Day & Coughlin, 2010). Employees will further be able to accomplish their tasks because they have evaluated the strategy and decided on their ability to execute the necessary procedures and process of the task. The availability of the servant leader to assist Nestle employees in doing their work will increase their productivity because the leader engages in mentorship in the process of teamwork (Chartrand, Day & Coughlin, 2010). The open lines of communication also mean that Nestle supervisors will groom the next generation of leaders because the employees can enquire questions and receive assistance in solving the challenges at work. The company’s employees can receive suggestions from the servant leaders about helpful resources to complete tasks, evaluating the progress of employees and assisting them in developing better results. The ability of the servant leader to solicit and provide the required resources will also help the company achieve its goals. The departments in Nestle will be organized and function flawlessly because open communication fosters clarity (Chartrand, Day & Coughlin, 2010). Each team understands its duties and executes them without being in conflict with the other team. Nestles leadership principles also require the employees to compete and connect externally. They have to work together toward the benefit of the stakeholders. Servant leadership framework ensures that the competition between the employees remains minimal because the leaders set a good example. The leader will not seek to steal their credit, but rather, help them add value to their work. If he is not attempting to compete with them or get their credit, then he sets a good example, which further encourages the employees to work toward the organization’s vision as opposed to competing against each other to get recognition from him or the supervisors. Nestlé’s leadership principles want leaders that manage for results. They must embrace courage and personal commitment in their execution of duties which includes taking initiatives, risks, and remaining calm under pressure (Nestle, 2011). The individuals must also believe in achieving business goals rooted in sustainable practices and compliance. Employees and their leaders must be motivated to perform the tasks in accordance with the company values, principles and goals. Incorporating the servant leadership framework in Nestle will has a positive impact on employee motivation. Company leadership, communication, opportunities for development and working conditions are factors that affect an employees’ motivation. Servant leadership consists of many attributes that will help the company ensure that the conditions are suitable for employees. Through servant leadership, employees will be encouraged and empowered. These values will help create an accommodative work environment for the employees. The ability of servant leadership to empower Nestle employees means that employees will have opportunities for growth. Nestle cannot rely on global assignments alone to promote experience among its employees. Global assignments may be limited in number and not everyone is fit for international assignments. Servant leadership technique will provide the employees’ opportunities to develop their capabilities by learning new skills through mentorship and training by experienced leaders (Chartrand, Day & Coughlin, 2010). The company will benefit from leadership continuity through the technique because it can promote leaders from the junior employees to senior employees. Most companies recruit senior managers from outside because they require new opinions and insights from an outsider. Nestle requires its employees to have embrace diversity and maintain open-mindedness (Nestle, 2011). Its established corporate culture of open- minded employees will ensure that they are able have diverse opinions and insights after promotion. Nestlé’s managers and leaders are encouraged to have contextual approach to conducting business as opposed to a dogmatic approach (Nestle, 2011). They must make pragmatic decisions and take proactive measures to protect the business. A servant leadership structure in the company will ensure that the leaders make decisions that consider future consequences and implement measures that prevent the business from disaster. The organization will be able to foresee problems that may occur in future and protect it or prepare to face the challenge. The framework encourages leaders to anticipate the factors that may affect the business in future. It resonates well with Nestlé’s requirement to fathom the external consequences of the company’s activities and proactively resolve any issues in coordination with shareholders, community members, authorities and other stakeholders. Challenges Nestle will face various challenges as it attempts to incorporate servant leadership in its leadership framework. Servant leadership according to Greenfield is a natural willingness. For instance, most leaders at Nestle are probably comfortable with the current leadership structure. Servitude is not a natural attribute for many people. The company leaders may find it hard to serve their employees whom they govern using a different style of leadership. Moreover, Nestle already has an established leadership system that heavily focuses on satisfying the stakeholders’ needs. It will be challenging to transfer the focus to serving the employees while still aiming to serve the stakeholders. The framework will seem very complicated to nestle leaders at first. The time required for them to learn to become servant-leaders might be too much leading wasted time for a large company like Nestle. A certain degree of difficulty exists in relinquishing the control of major decisions to the employees for decision-making. Like most leaders, Nestle leaders are accustomed to making the final decisions based on cognitive and emotional factors. The transition from making the final decision to putting matters into the hands of a group of people he serves will be difficult (Chartrand, Day & Coughlin, 2010). Personal obstacles will also exist because the managers and supervisors might be reluctant to adapt the form of leadership because they do not want to lose their control. Servant leadership also presents a situation where the leadership pyramid at Nestle will be overturned. The chain of command might be upset if the concept is applied in the organization. For instance, the employees make the decisions and strategies and execute them. This creates some level of redundancy in the organization’s leadership because all it does is support the needs of the employees (Barte, 2015). Alternatively, the employees may become too dependent on the leader whereby they always rely on his guidance when conducting business without taking time to figure things out on their own. A manager or supervisor at Nestle is a busy individual; the framework will be a strenuous addition to the individual’s work. Therefore, the organization might suffer because it remains unattended. The employees focus on satisfying each other’s individual needs and neglecting the company’s vision and mission Evaluation In reference to Nestle, servant leader should erodes the authority system in an organization and focus on mutual commitment in achieving the company’s set goals. The leaders cannot give direct orders and the employees expect the leaders to meet their needs. Nestlé’s C.E.O is accorded more respect than the workplace psychologist is. The C.E.O has more authority than the psychologist that results in the sacred respect. Subsequently, Nestle should not adapt the servant leadership framework. A leader that commands respect does not have to be an authoritarian leader (Barte, 2015). He is simply an individual that delegates tasks and supervises. He may also be a participative leader that welcomes the opinions of the employees. This kind of a leader maintains a good relationship with the team while maintain the necessary professional boundaries with employees to prevent an awkward social relationship. Many companies are claimed to use servant leadership models. Some are in the fortune 100 magazine as the best company (Baron, 2010). However, as much as it is praised for its advantages not many organizations apply it. There is a rationale as to why servant leadership system is not used in most companies, which is detrimental effect on authority and professional relationships. Additionally, there are Nestle leaders that use many different techniques of servant leadership in their leadership styles despite them having a title or no title. The leader may be unable to commit all his time to serving the employee; however, he finds time to meet some of the employees’ needs as directed by the organization’s leadership principles (Baron, 2010). For instance, most leaders ensure that they hold team meetings and resolve the challenges facing the team, which is revealed by situations where the leader meets the employees individually to explore the work quality as well as find solutions to the employee’s weaknesses. Servant leadership is also seen in leaders that are considerate about the employee’s personal problems or other personal matter. References Day, D. V. (2014). The Oxford handbook of leadership and organizations. New York : Oxford University Press. Chartrand, G. R., Day, C., & Coughlin, T. (2010). Unreasonable leadership: Transforming yourself, your team, and your organization to achieve extraordinary results. Indianapolis, IN: Dog ear Publishing. Barte, A. (2015).Farmer Able: A fable about servant leadership transforming organizations and people from the inside out.Wheatmark, Inc. Baron, T. (2010). The Art of Servant Leadership: Designing Your Organization for the Sake of Others. Wheatmark, Inc. Nestle. (2011). The Nestle Management and Leadership Principle. Vevey, Switzerland: Nestec Ltd. Greenleaf, R. (2002). Servant leadership. New York: Paulist Press. Read More