Servant Leadership in the Bible - Dissertation Example

Servant Leadership in the Bible Servant leadership is all about making the right choices for the sake of ensuring the people achieve their goals and improve performance by being their role model. Leaders take this as a chance to maximize on their closeness with the society and utilize the best ways of meeting the goals throughout the society (Eicher-Catt, 2005). In many of the settings, servant leaders are the epitome of service delivery to the people, showing the growing need for a better means of dealing with the tasks at hand (Russell, & Stone, 2012). The Bible portrays this by showing Jesus as the best servant leader. In Mark 10: 42-45, Jesus is seen washing his disciples’ feet and asking people to be servants rather than masters (Joseph &Winston, 2005). The Holy Quran also portrays the leader of the people as the servant who should work to satisfy the people rather than be the master commanding them. The religious connotation looks at leadership in this form as being a part of the self-actualization factor as noted in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Joseph & Winston, 2005). Robert Greenleaf saw a servant leader as the person who acted as a servant first (Parris, & Peachey, 2013). The individual does not begin acting as a leader if deep within the urge to serve is absent (Gonzaga, 2005). The main idea should be to create new platforms that will make it easier to serve the people and make a conscious choice to administer as it appears based on the autonomy required for the growth of the individual’s satisfaction (Gardner, Cogliser, Davis, & Dickens, 2011). This test is administered in harder situations where the difficulty tests the leader’s ability to come up with better means of dealing with failures as well as the relationship between leaders and workers (Kernis, & Goldman, 2006). Greenleaf argues that the deep-seated need and desire to serve others provides the core need for one to be a servant. Servant leaders have the natural feeling that emanates from this desire (Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing, & Peterson, 2008). It can be created by making conscious aspirations and sticking the core attributes that define the way this can happen without losing track of the benefits derived from such an action. Most of these benefits are intrinsic (van Dierendonck, 2011). The paradoxical nature of servant and leadership is not to be missed. When Jesus was washing the disciple’s feet, they were apprehensive of this act (Kool &van Dierendonck, 2012). They wanted to be the ones doing the washing and not Jesus. They knew he was the Son of God, and His work was to spread the Gospel. However, Jesus showed that humility was the starting point for all the leaders aspiring to make a change in the society (van Dierendonck, Stam, Boersma, de Windt, & Alkema, 2014). Jesus knew that the only way of sending the right message to his followers was by making good use of his platform to teach about the need to take up leadership as a calling rather than an opportunity to subject others to domination. The best way of knowing a servant is by observing their traits. A gauge to determine who is a servant leader or not may be inaccurate, though the exhibited burning desire to serve will be the best way of determining the commitment one has to the society (Mittal, & Dorfman, 2012). In most settings, the best leader is one who listens and shows empathy (Peterson, Galvin, & Lange, 2012). The leader with such traits reveals to the employees their selflessness when it comes to a relationship between a master and servant. The individual shows that the issues the employee is airing deserve more attention as the employee determines the level of performance within the organization (Peterson, Galvin, & Lange, 2012). The leader has to understand that the employees have first-hand information regarding what is happening in the organization, and that implies having a better choice of dealing with the issues taking place within the organization (Liden, Wayne, Liao, & Meuse, 2014). If the leader reflects on the information gathered, it will be easy to provide the kind of assistance needed. If the leader listens, employees will work knowing that they have a chance to air their grievances and interact with a communication system that traverses both top-bottom and bottom-top channels (Parris, & Peachey, 2013). Servant leaders have foresight (Kool &van Dierendonck, 2012). They understand that they need to place a good foundation or the future of the company. Jesus had the foresight to leave as many converts as possible to meet the core demands of spreading His ministry to the rest of the world. This was made possible by leaving a dedicated team that understood his mission (Joseph & Winston, 2005). The same was true for the Islamic and Hindu religions which showed their followers the need to work on ideals that will spread the religion to many nations. As a servant leader, this concept must always linger (Parris, & Peachey, 2013). References Eicher-Catt, D. (2005). The myth of servant-leadership. Women and Language, 28(1), 17-25. Gardner, W. L., Cogliser, C. C., Davis, K. M., & Dickens, M. P. (2011). Authentic leadership: A review of the literature and research agenda. Leadership Quarterly, 22, 1120-1145. Gonzaga, U. (2005). Servant leadership. The International Journal of Servant-Leadership, 1(1), 3-27. Joseph, E. E., & Winston, B. E. (2005). A correlation of servant leadership, leader trust, and organizational trust. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 26(1/2), 6- 22. Joseph, E. E., & Winston, B. E. (2005). A correlation of servant leadership, leader trust, and organizational trust. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 26(1), 6-22. Kernis, M. H., & Goldman, B. M. (2006). A multicomponent conceptualization of authenticity: Theory and research. Advances in experimental social psychology. 38, 283–357 Kool, M. & van Dierendonck, D. (2012). Servant leadership and commitment to change, the mediating role of justice and optimism. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 25 (3), 422 - 433 Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Liao, C., & Meuse, J. D. (2014). Servant Leadership and Serving Culture: Influence on Individual and Unit Performance. ACAD MANAGE J, 57(5), 1434-1452. Mittal, R., & Dorfman, P. W. (2012). Servant leadership across cultures. Journal of World Business 47(4), 555–570. Parris, D. L., & Peachey, J. W. (2013). A Systematic Literature Review of Servant Leadership Theory in Organizational Contexts. Journal of Business Ethics, 113(3), 377-393. Peterson, S. J., Galvin, B. M., & Lange, D. (2012). CEO Servant Leadership: Exploring Executive Characteristics and Firm Performance. Personnel Psychology, 65, 565–596. Russell, R. F., & Stone, A. G. (2012). A review of servant leadership attributes: developing a practical model. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 23(3), 145-157. van Dierendonck, D. (2011). Servant Leadership: A Review and Synthesis. Journal of Management, 37, 1228-1261. van Dierendonck, D., Stam, D., Boersma, P., de Windt, N. & Alkema, J. (2014). Same difference? Exploring the differential mechanisms linking servant leadership and transformational leadership to follower outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(3), 544–562. Walumbwa, F. O., Avolio, B. J., Gardner, W. L., Wernsing, T. S., & Peterson, S. J. (2008). Authentic leadership: Development and validation of a theory-based measure. Journal of Management, 34, 89–126. Read More