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Leadership

Demystifying The Six Misunderstandings About Servant Leadership

1. Servant leadership is a new age movement.

The concept of servant leadership isn’t new, and most certainly, it isn’t the product of our age and generation. It is as old as human history. In ancient times, many philosophers, poets, and writers admired the serving kings and masters.

In the beginning of the first century, Jesus of Nazareth underlined the importance of serving. He embodied servant leadership by serving the physical, emotional, health, and spiritual needs of his followers. At one point, he even washed the feet of his students.

In recent history, leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela dedicated their lives in serving the social and freedom needs of others. Leaders like Mother Theresa left their comfort zone and devoted their lives to serve the physical, health, and emotional needs of the needy.

However, the father of modern era servant leadership who first coined the term in the late 60’s and early 70’s is none other than Robert K. Greenleaf. He advocated the leader as a servant in his classic work “The Servant as Leader”.

2. Servant leadership is irrelevant to the corporate world.

Servant leadership has been well embraced within the religious, academic, and research circles. It attracted a great deal of interest from leaders, scholars, and students from these circles. Unfortunately, some reports show that servant leadership hasn’t gained the attention and priority it deserves, especially from the corporate world.

Nonetheless, though their number is fairly small, there were and still are some great corporate leaders like the former CEO of Herman Miller- Max DePree. In his extraordinary book ‘Leadership is an Art’, Depree said, “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” There is no wonder why employees of this wonderful company take ownership and serve it back with great commitment and delight.

Like Herman Miller and other similar corporations, today’s businesses should adopt servant leadership as one of their leadership styles, and enjoy its full benefits. However, in order to experience the full-scale benefits that come from adopting servant leadership, the following requirements and more should be met:

 

  • Service should be one of the shared values of the organization
  • The corporate culture should be able to create conducive atmosphere for servant leaders to flourish.
  • Training and development programs should incorporate the theme servant leadership.
  • The promotion system should consider serving as one of the important parameters.
  • The incentive system should favor the serving leaders, and more

 

3. Servant leadership is all about meeting the physical needs of people.

Some people limit the scope of servant leadership as if it is all about meeting the physical needs of people. Some even narrow it down to washing feet. In many parts of the world, unlike in the agrarian era, the contemporary generation doesn’t have this need every night. I am not criticizing the act of those who practice feet washing as a sign of humility. I rather admire their commitment and they should continue to do it but here, I am putting things in perspective, that is, servant leadership’s scope should go beyond meeting the physical needs of people.

The real needs of the generation are beyond meeting physical needs. The 21st C generation is overwhelmed with so many new challenges specific to the information age, and therefore, servant leaders should also serve the intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of their constituencies.

4. Servant leadership is serving once and then getting service forever.

Some people think that you should first serve (follow) before you take leadership. Leadership begins in our childhood, the moment we take some responsibilities in our family. We shouldn’t wait forever to take leadership, and become a servant leader. On the other hand, there is no scenario where someone follows (serves) once and then remains a leader afterwards. Following someone’s lead continues in the life of the leader. As much as the latter has people under his influence, he is also a follower of someone somewhere. That is to say, there is no precedence, and tit for tat in servant leadership. It is a lifetime commitment where a servant leader serves throughout her leadership journey.

5. Servant leadership is about extinguishing any fire of need that comes on the servant’s way.

One of the invaluable services in an urban setting is its fire department. Wherever there is a need to fight fire or accident, they are there to serve. I watched some episodes that allowed me to appreciate the critical roles firemen play. In some circles, they believe that servant leaders are fire extinguishers. They should be where there are needs. Such servants will quickly burnout. A servant leader should serve from his strength. The firemen had lots of choices to make but they chose a particular service for which they have passion and strength. A servant leader doesn’t mean she goes out to serve everyone, everywhere, and on everything. A servant leader should know her mission, and that should dictate whom & where to serve, and the kind of service she should render.

6. Servant leadership is about feeding/serving others first.

Servant leadership is a selfless style of leadership but can a servant leader undermine his/her own needs and go out to meet the needs of others without a consequence? Can that kind of approach remain sustainable and relevant in the long run? I like Tim Elmore’s metaphor entitled “The starving baker”. This baker is a servant who is busy feeding others while neglecting to eat himself, and in turn ended up starving. In order to generate lasting impact and serve continually, servant leaders should also look after their own needs, especially their personal development needs.

Assegid Habtewold (Dr.) is the lead coach, consultant, and facilitator at Success Pathways, LLC. He is also the author of “Redefining Leadership: Navigating the Path from Birthright to Fulfillment in Life!” For more information about his book, please visit http://www.successpws.com/?page_id=25

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Assegid_Habtewold/1218809

 

Leadership

5 Steps to Developing Your Leadership Potential

Leadership development is defined by Wikipedia as “any activity that enhances the quality of leadership within an individual or organization.” As one might expect from this definition, what constitutes leadership development is highly dependent upon the definition of leadership. We define leadership as follows:

Leadership occurs when one person determines, undertakes, and sustains a favorable and/or productive direction and others follow. It’s not the nature of the direction that determines leadership; it’s the presence of a direction and the existence of a reciprocal relationship between leader and follower.

From this perspective the two primary things that one must develop in order to become a leader are the ability to “determine, undertake, and sustain” a direction and the ability to attract and hold followers. That these are the two main factors in leadership development is nothing new. What is new is our belief that the way one perceives the world determines a great deal of how and in what types of directions one chooses to lead, and how one attracts and holds followers.

While most leadership development focuses on the most obvious and popular definitions and descriptions of leadership characteristics, at Your Talent Advantage we take a different approach. We identify six distinctly different leadership profiles. Each leadership profile supports a set of natural leadership skill potentials that “belongs” to it.

Developing leadership skills is a process that at the macro level is the same for any of the six leadership profiles. But while the process is the same, the specific content – what skills and behaviors are to be developed – changes depending on which profile is being developed. In addition, the type of activities used to develop the skills chosen with each person must be customized based on their specific circumstances. This is true even for people who share the same leadership profile and who need to develop the same skill. This is because no two people will be in the same place in terms of their development nor will their life circumstances be identical.

Everyone has the innate potential to lead, but obviously not everyone undertakes the efforts necessary to turn potential into behavioral skills. While each leadership profile describes a distinctly different type of leadership that varies in approach, values, focus, communication, strengths, and blind spots, each represents an expansion of an individual’s skill that has gone beyond the scope of personal development.

To be a leader requires that an individual step beyond an understanding of themselves and a claiming of their own natural skill base. Development beyond the individual level is what leadership development is about. As such people who aspire to leadership or who represent themselves to others as leaders are held to a “higher standard” than those who do not seek leadership. For this reason, the five skills that all highly effective leaders must develop require more from an individual than other types of personal development. An effective leader must not only understand themselves, but must understand others as well. They must know the skills and blind spots of others, not just their own, and they must be able to adjust and accommodate their behavior to the multitude of differences between themselves and their followers while not losing the distinct leadership profile that makes them effective.

Effective leadership development is driven by these five universal leadership skills. Each builds upon those that come before it, and an individual’s skill as a leader increases as each is developed.

It is these five skills that drive leadership development:

 

  1. Leaders’ build on their natural strengths.
  2. They are aware of their limitations, and seek input from people with perspectives different from their own.
  3. They are aware that any group of followers contains people who see the world differently than they do, and they find ways to communicate effectively to each of them.
  4. They recognize the talents of others, and seek to build teams based on complementary skill sets and perspectives.
  5. They learn to accept/own their natural limitations and develop techniques to mitigate them.

 

Each of these skills and how to apply them will be discussed individually in a series of five articles.

Gary Jordan, Ph.D., has over 32 years of experience in clinical psychology, behavioral assessment, individual development, and coaching. He earned his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology – Berkeley. He is co-creator of Perceptual Style Theory, a revolutionary psychological assessment system that teaches people how to unleash their deepest potentials for success. For more free information on how to succeed in life and business doing more of what you love, visit http://www.YourTalentAdvantage.com.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Gary_M._Jordan/22166

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7684664

Leadership

Making Leadership Everyone’s Business

Community Readiness. Leadership is Everyone’s Business.

History has demonstrated that it is easy to get others to do something. All we need is the promise of a promotion, and award, or favorable review. If the incentives don’t work we can report them, demote them, or impose some other consequences. But what happens when you don’t have bonuses or promotions to offer and you don’t offer compensation (at least not monetary) for your team?

Leadership is the ability to mobilize others to want to do or act toward a shared aspiration. This article discusses the 4 most cited leadership characteristics that mobilize others to want to do things and provide strategies to integrate these characteristics into your daily experience.

You do want leadership to be everyone’s business in your community, right?

Characteristic #1: Honesty In Leadership

People want to be led by someone they can trust, someone who does what they say they are going to do and someone who is personally invested in the direction of the future. Community members need to believe in the messenger or they won’t believe in the message.

Characteristic #2: Forward-Looking Leadership

Forward-looking leadership guides the team to a better tomorrow. Foreword leadership promises a sense of direction and confidence. Visions are about possibilities. Only when people understand how they are truly different will they want to be a part of the journey. Think about it like this, “welcome to our place. We are just like everyone else.” This is not how you want to be viewed by your community and forward focused leadership reads more like, “welcome to our place. We are different than everyone else and offer something unique.”

Characteristic #3: Inspiration In Leadership

What makes something intrinsically motivating? What inspires people to form their best and wants to reach their greatest potential? Research shows that intrinsic motivation and inspired by a “clear set of challenges.” Many studies uninspiring intrinsic motivation show that the key to getting others involved in something that requires us to look at a situation in a new way. Leadership lessons identify the exceptional leaders know the abilities of their constituents.

 

  • Do you know what the members of your team can do?
  • Do you recognize what others find to be challenging opportunities and identify their skills and abilities?

 

As leaders we have the responsibility to create opportunities and support that allow extraordinary things to be accomplished challenging opportunities and the ability to identify one’s skills and abilities that people don’t know they have is a key leadership characteristic.

Characteristic #4: Innovation In Leadership

Quality leaders search out challenging opportunities to change, grow, innovate and improve. Innovation and change must be identified as opportunities rather than threats.

 

Action strategy: Here’s an action strategy idea that can help you foster innovation in your community and with your team. Send people on your team shopping for ideas. One of the top strategies for innovation is gathering information from customers, employees, stakeholders, suppliers, others, etc. Putting idea gathering, as a priority, demonstrates an openness to continuously improving. We recommend that you dedicate at least 25% of each meeting (that’s 15 minutes per hour) to gathering new ideas for improving your processes and becoming more efficient. Where can you get these ideas? The ways are numerous: focus groups, advisory boards, mystery shoppers, mystery guests, evaluation forms, customer suggestions, suggestion boxes, breakfast meetings, brainstorming sessions and more.

 

Exemplary leaders learn from their mistakes and encourage others to do the same. They also promote hardiness and foster risk-taking. Most importantly exemplary leaders take action.

The 4 most cited leadership characteristics are honesty, forward-looking leadership, inspiration and innovation. How do you foster these characteristics of leadership in your day-to-day experiences with your team?

Five Reasons to Demonstrate Leadership Qualities

Leaders know where they are going and when they showcase these qualities and characteristics they provide a long-term vision and direction for the team. When your team perceives that you have these characteristics they are significantly more likely to:

 

  • be proud to tell others they are part of your organization or team
  • feel a strong sense of team spirit
  • see their own personal values is consistent with those of the organization or team
  • feel attached and committed to your efforts
  • have a sense of ownership of the organization or community group

 

When your team perceive their leadership to have low credibility and not demonstrate these 4 key characteristics they are significantly more likely to:

 

  • produce only if there watched carefully
  • be motivated primarily by financial compensation
  • say good things about the organization and public but criticize it privately
  • consider looking for another job if the organization experiences the problems
  • feel unsupported and unappreciated

 

These differences provide clear reasons why leaders should seriously consider the perceptions of their team and the community in which they work and strive to demonstrate these key leadership qualities.

How are you making leadership everyone’s business? How are you demonstrating these four key characteristics to build a strong, healthy, and resilient team?

Are your ready to take your leadership to the next level? Are you looking for new and exciting ideas to inspire and motivate your team toward optimal performance?

The Office of Community Research, Inc. provides consulting services that strategically evaluate your strengths and areas of opportunity. To learn more about building your team and community through evaluation consulting visit [http://www.officeofcommunityresearch.com].

On our website, you can sign up for our free CD, “3 Keys to Successful Program Evaluation” and learn more about how to promote and support key leadership characteristics and principles today!

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Jennifer_L_McGahan/1493579

 

Leadership

Leadership Makes the Difference

John Maxwell has a saying that everything rises and falls on leadership. There are various definitions of leadership. A simple definition says that leadership is “the position or function of a leader, a person who guides and directs a group” (Dictionary.com). We can add that leadership helps an organization to accomplish its strategic goals. The quality of leadership determines the success of an organization. Weak leadership can potentially undermine and destroy organizations while strong leadership can facilitate the success of organizations. There are numerous characteristics of weak leadership, which must be avoided.

Weak leadership lacks vision and purpose. Vision is a picture of where the organization needs to go and in some instances a picture of where the organization must go. Leaders must be forward looking while realistically assessing the status of the organization. The 21st century is a fast paced, rapidly changing period; everything seems to be in fluid motion. This is the context in which leaders have to operate. While there may be various ways to develop vision-such as reflection, praying, meditation, talking to others, assessing trends-leaders must find that vision. Likewise, leaders must have a strong sense of purpose. They must know why they are in the organization; they must know their role; they must know why the organization exists. Weak leaders’ struggle to find vision and purpose has a detrimental impact on an organization.

Weak leadership is characterized by poor relationships with others. The old adage says, “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.” A model of leadership that is totalitarian and treats people indifferently will not be successful over the long term. People are not commodities to be readily discarded when leaders feel they have outlived their usefulness. Strong leaders value people and invest in building win-win relationships that are mutually affirming and empowering. When people are treated well, they will generally be more productive and are more likely to be committed to their tasks and to the organization.

Weak leadership can often be attributed to insecurity. Weak leaders are plagued by self-doubt. They question their competence to get the job done. Unfortunately, they try to disguise this by pretending to be confident: a false sense of bravado that masks the fear inside. They tend to hinder the development and potential of others because they feel threatened by the success of others. Weak leaders are often afraid to take the risks that are essential to growth. They readily maintain the status quo because they are intimidated by and afraid of change. Strong leaders know who they are and are comfortable with who they are. They approach their responsibilities from a perspective of confidence without giving into the vice of arrogance.

Weak leadership is evident in the inability to resolve problems and conflicts. Weak leaders often have poorly developed problem-solving skills. Much innovation in organizations is due to attempting to solve a problem. Leaders who can’t come up with creative solutions to challenges are going to be unable to propel an organization forward. Organizations involve a complex of relationships, which makes conflict inevitable. Strong leaders are not people pleasers, but they implement strategies to deal with and eliminate conflict. They foster healthy give and take relationships that keep the organization vibrant and productive. Morale is high in environments where conflicts are resolved. High morale is one of the critical factors in a high producing environment.

Weak leadership is marked by the lack of integrity. Dictionary.com defines integrity as “adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.” The scandals in various sectors-government, church, business, education-reveal the damage that is caused by a lack of integrity. Morality has become a highly subjective matter and it is those damning shades of gray that put us in trouble. However, the rule of thumb is to do to others what you would have them do to you and don’t do to others what you won’t want them to do to you. Taking unethical shortcuts will always return to bite you in the derriere.

Weak leadership is seen in a lack of organizational skills. Leaders may not be first rate administrators but they must still have the ability to organize themselves and their tasks. Without such organizational acumen, leaders will be inefficient and ineffective. The triple constraints in project management are time, cost and quality. Any imbalance in these three areas will affect the viability of a project. Project managers as do other types of leaders must be able to organize. Weak leaders “fly by the seat of their pants” and land very painfully. A key component of organization is planning. A cliché states that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Weak leadership is evident in the lack of solid core values. Core values are those values that leaders strongly believe in and practice. Martin Luther King Jr. stood for the value of racial equality and he was willing to and did die for this value. Leaders must be passionate about their core values. A passionless leader without strong convictions will not motivate persons with any substance. Core values are more caught than taught, so leaders must get inspired by other leaders who are having an impact in their sphere of influence.

There are many things that characterize weak leadership. However, the good news is that leaders can improve – the lid of your leadership can be raised. Leadership is about ongoing development – the more I learn and apply, the more I grow. Weak leaders must recognize their deficiency, be willing to do something about it and do something about it. There are numerous, excellent resources that can help struggling leaders to improve from books to articles, to mentors, to conferences, to coaching; the resources are limitless. Invest in your leadership development; you will feel better about yourself and your organization will thrive.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Edison_D_Bynoe/1404290

 

Leadership

Where Christian Leadership Principles Begin

Recently our country has been overloaded with far too many incidents of leaders in business, sports, and politics who have been exposed or destroyed through “leadership” failures. The headlines, tabloids, and blogs today continue to tell the sad stories of people whose flaws are now pubic domain as well as late-night comedian disdain. This is a particularly daunting challenge for Christian leaders in business. It is far to easy for all of us to base our fundamental leadership principles upon currently popular yet misguided core principles.

So how can Christian business leaders avoid these same failures? Where should Christian leadership principles begin?

Before I answer that question, I need to mention the two primary ways society’s most popular leadership principles fall short (and even Christian business leaders get caught).

Where Society’s Leadership Principles Begin… and Fail

First, today’s society focuses far too much awe and reverence on leadership charisma. Peter Drucker, the world-renowned author and management expert, once said that, “Charisma has nothing to do with leadership. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were the most charismatic leaders of the 20th century. It that is leadership, I want no part of it!”

Second, society also places far too much emphasis on leadership skill. Be it brilliance in strategy, finance, marketing, innovation, or any number of important competencies, an over reliance on leadership skills alone is wholly inadequate for higher level leadership success.

“Whoa, Dr. Jim, are you saying a leader’s high skill level is a bad thing?” No, not at all. For example, would you prefer the leader(s) of your company to be:

•a highly skilled professionals of questionable character, or

•a moderately skilled professionals of unquestionable character?

I bet I know (and I just gave away the answer to the title of this article.)

Where Christian Leadership Principles Begin

Christians leadership principles must first and always begin with our character. For it is our character that is the wellspring of everything we do: from how we treat our colleagues and customers, how to talk to employees, when we pay our bills, how we manage and discipline, and everything else. It’s the depth of our character, the combination of our wisdom, integrity, and self-discipline, that can separate us from society’s expectations of leaders and propel us and our teams to a higher level of success and significance.

The incredibly gifted military leader, General Norman Schwarzkopf, may have said it best when he stated, “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character, but if you must be without one, be without strategy!”

Regardless of a person’s political power, net worth, position rank, social status, or professional skills, without a solid foundation of character, any leadership house will crumble – including believers in business!

How To Get Started

To help you clarify your core Christian leadership principles, here is a three-step plan I encourage you to begin now (This is a system I use in both professional coaching and business team strategic planning/culture transformation.).

 

  1. Craft a character-development plan for yourself and your team List and define those core convictions you and your team refuse to negotiate, the lines-in-the-sand you refuse to cross, in how you treat your colleagues, customers, constituents, community, and competitors.
  2. Develop operational definitions for each conviction, how others will actually “see” that conviction played out. In other words, how will you and your team walk-the-walk of your core convictions?
  3. Create a feedback system that recognizes rewards behaviors that align with your core convictions.

 

I firmly believe that your Christian leadership principles should first and foremost be based on your character, not your charisma, competence, or any other quality.

For more insights on how to begin with Christian leadership principles, download my white paper ” Taking Leadership to a Higher Level ” and tell me your thoughts.

Dr. Jim Harris teaches thousands of professionals every year how to crystallize their goals, leverage their strengths, energize their teams, and realize their significance as a professional and as a leader. From keynotes and workshops to 1-on-1 coaching and digital learning products, Dr. Jim helps transform your potential into productivity, and your passion into results. An author of eight books, Dr. Jim offers you, your team, and your audience a unique combination of perspective, insight, passion, and integrity.

He is currently the President of the Ropella Leadership Transformation of The Ropella Group. To learn more, subscribe to our videos.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Dr._Jim_Harris/1261279