Servant Leadership - meeting the needs of employees

Servant leadership has been around for quite a while 'time. Not everyone has heard but the concept has a growing number of devoted fans.

Servant leaders put the needs of followers before them. Instead of being arrogant and selfish, they put the needs of the first employees. The idea is that doing so will motivate them to perform at a higher level and help them reach their full potential, both for its own benefit and that of organization.

Servant Leadership by Robert K. Origin Greenleaf in 1970, when he read about a group of fellow travelers in a novel by Herman Hesse. The group has had a servant who accompanies them. At some point, the servant and the group left soon collapsed. They fought and lost their sense of collegiality, coordinated purpose. This has led Greenleaf to reflect on the role of their servant, to see him as leader of the group.

The merit of servant leadership is that you remember to be less self-centered. There is no doubt that the leaders can now self-destruct if they are not qualified to get the best from others and fostering collaboration. Leaders who are too competitive or selfish a bad example for everyone below them. They're saying, in effect, that it's okay to behave in a win-lose way with everyone around you. Until you get what you want, everyone else can look out for themselves. This attitude is a recipe for disaster in today's highly integrated organizations. Real team beat a group of individuals every day if the activity is such that a genuine effort is key to success.

In my opinion, however, the concept of servant is extreme. I think that the very laudable actions that proponents of servant leadership can be fostered by talking about partnerships between leaders and followers. Surely the leaders can not meet the needs of followers if it means putting them in front of the business. What happens if there is a need to cut some units behind to keep the whole ship to sink? Leaders have always needed to make these difficult decisions, many of which conflict directly with the needs of employees.

Moreover, if the leaders use to anybody, it must be shareholders and customers. The needs of both groups must be put ahead of those of employees. To do otherwise, a CEO may soon be without work. Some advocates argue that servant leadership is not so much to serve followers (employees) as it is to be of service to a higher cause. Well, the main cause was to better understand the needs of shareholders and customers, or even the CEO may have to seek work elsewhere. In addition, we are trying to understand what it means to be a leader. To say that leaders have, as one of their quality, the desire to serve, in general, does not really tell us much. This is because the same could be said of all professionals, including doctors, volunteers, civil servants, etc. In other words, be of service does not tell us much about how leaders differ from other professionals. It 's just too vague and incomplete. To say that leaders serve the employees is a much stronger claim, but difficult to defend in view of the fact that they really need to put others' needs before those of workers.

So, there's something useful about the concept of servant leadership? Or does not sufficiently recognize the complex realities of organizational life? I think the idea is feasible in some contexts, but not practical at all in other situations. In politics, being elected and remain in office, it is necessary to meet the needs of its constituency, your followers. Similarly, if you run a country club or association in which your constituency members only, there is some meaning to the concept of behaving like a servant to their needs. On the other hand, even here there is a distinction between employees who work in these organizations and the membership or the public that their elected leaders. You could see the members from among their customers and say that once again their needs should come before those of employees. The usefulness of the concept is even more questionable in the private sector, however, where a CEO should more clearly serve customers and shareholders first.

Yet the servant leadership is a useful reminder of the danger of being too selfish, too worried to put their needs before the organization and its employees .......