Video Transcript: Week 9

Hello, class. So we are going to be talking about servant leadership today, and that's such an exciting one, and that's one that you're probably all familiar with. So so this would be a good refresher for you. You know, I talked about Jesus as the authentic leader, but Jesus also is known as the servant leader as well. So we will get into that in our ninth module here and on our way to 12. So let's get into it and start with prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for our time together, Lord. I thank you for the opportunity for us to come together and learn about you in by looking at, in many ways, secular leadership theories. But you know, you are the author of all good things. You are the creator of the universe, and your hand is through everything. So we can see you in all good that's out there. And I look forward to, we look forward to learning about how you are a servant leader, as well as an authentic leader and as well as a transformational leader, and all those different things. So Jesus, as we begin our time together, Lord, I just pray that you'll bless us and you'll help us to be able to focus on the material in Jesus name. I pray Amen. All right, so servant leadership is kind of my path to servant leadership is kind of interesting, and I want to describe it. First of all, you may have noticed I had a wardrobe change, and that is because it is freezing outside. So CLI was gracious enough to lend me a long sleeve shirt, which I was ill prepared for, because I am from the south, so I did not come prepared for the for the weather where I'm recording from. So, so that's a lesson to you, to always be prepared. But anyway, let's get past that. Let's talk a little bit about servant leadership. So what's cool about servant leadership is, you know, it's, it's kind of a newer theory, but it's one that a lot of people have used in churches, right? Everybody says, I want to be a servant leader. I want to put the needs of my follower first, the followers first. And that's, that's such a great thing, that such Christian principles of taking care of others and putting others first, and making is taking a step back from yourself for the needs of others has become such a ubiquitous Leadership Theory, as well as being one that that that resonates with all kinds of people, you know, it really makes you Think about how we all have that heart and that yearning for God, and what a cool thing. So let's talk about servant leadership, and we're going to follow the same format we do always. We're going to talk about the theory. We're going to talk about how it works, we're going to discuss some of the strengths and criticisms. We're going to recognize the applications of it, and then we'll have some questions that you may see again. So, you know, it's, I want to take this from the book, because I think it's well done. Is this says that it's a paradoxical approach to leadership, which means that it that it kind of when a leader steps back, it's kind of a different view of leadership, right? And and servant leadership, really is that way. It said, until recently, little empirical, peer reviewed research had been done, which is now have changed. There is actually quite a bit of research on the area, and most academic and non academic explorations have been prescriptive rather than descriptive meaning. They tell you about it rather than describing it. So servant leadership is an approach that has point of view of the leader and their behavior toward the follower. Now there is an extension of the model Patterson. Kathleen Patterson, who was actually on my dissertation committee, was when I was getting my doctorate, she came up with a Leadership Theory model that has been it's considered one of the foundational models of servant leadership. Certainly talked about the leader perspectives, and then Winston, Bruce Winston, who I mentioned in earlier lecture, he came around and he said, Well, that's incomplete. We're going to look at the follower side as well. So there has been a full development of the leadership model. But when we get into the criticisms, one of the criticisms is primarily servant leadership takes a view from the leader perspective and not the follower perspective. But that has been addressed a little bit anyway. The whole point of servant leadership is that the leaders need to be attentive to the concerns of their followers. They need to empathize with them, and then they need to nurture them. So they put followers first, they empower them, and they help them develop to their full potential. It's a moral form of leadership. In other words, it's a form of leadership where one's moral compass is what drives them, and that's important. So there's several definitions. So basically, let me mention servant leadership was developed by Robert Greenleaf. So Greenleaf 1978 actually, in 1970 he defined it, but then he had a book in 1978 which further defined it. But leadership that begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first, then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant first to make sure that other people's highest priorities needs are being served. And that's Greenleaf. In addition to Greenleaf, you know the basic ideas are putting the follower before yourself, emphasize the follower development. So you want to develop the follower along their path and find out what motivates them, and then help them realize their dreams, and then a strong moral behavior toward followers the organization and and other stakeholders, and it can be innate or it can be developed. And the thing about this leadership theory is that's interesting is often they will say, if you're putting the follower first, then you're ignoring the wills of the organization. That's not necessarily true in servant leadership theory. What they say is, if you are tending to your followers, then that's going to make them be organizationally committed to yourself and not organizationally. That's going to make the followers be committed to yourself and want to follow you, and the organization outcomes, which then you want to follow as well. So if you think about it, that kind of goes back to an earlier theory that we talked about, where we talked about charismatic leaders, and they portray certain characteristics that make people want to follow them. So Greenleaf, as I said, he's the one who who developed it. He actually got the idea from a novel from 1976 called the journey to the east, which people went on a mythical journey and were significantly impacted by a servant. So Greenleaf believe that servant leaders have a social responsibility to be concerned about the have nots and the underprivileged, and their purpose is to remove all in inequities and also social injustices, which is what an altruistic model? Is it not where? Where you focus on removing all the ills of the world and those that are mistreated, whether it's because of social class, in the case of social inequities and the book with the have nots, or whether it is based in other areas, such as racial justice, gender justice, religious justice and those kind of things. Servant leaders use less institutional power and control, but they shift the authority and the power to those who lead or those are being led, so the follower actually would gain a lot of influence, and then, in some ways, become the leader. So that's kind of interesting, as we think about remember the four characteristics of leadership and groups was one, influence was a big one, and then there were the others, right? I'm not going to remind you of them. You had to go back to lecture one and watch them. I don't want to give away all the answers, but certainly that's two of them. Servant leadership values community because it provides a face to face, opportunity to for people to experience interdependence, respect, trust and individual growth. So again, that's a group dynamic that we talk about when we talk about leadership theory, right? In this sense, a group dynamic, a community. That's a good thing, because it helps the follower gain all those attributes to grow in themselves and then become somebody who is concerned about the leader, concerned about organizational incomes, outcomes, and concerned about all those things. There are 10 characteristics of a servant leadership, as talked about in the book. There are some more. There are some less, in different theories, but these 10 are good so listening, and that's active listening, and that's interactive communication between the leader and the follower. It's empathy. It's being able to stand in the shoes of another person, be able to understand where they're coming from. It is awareness and and this is where servant leadership leaders are receptive and attuned to their physical, social and political environment, and it includes understanding oneself and the impact that they have on others. So I'll give you for a good example. I was on a camping trip several weeks ago with somebody, and I was making a social statement and commentary on a on a news organization and the particular leanings of that news organization, and the person responded to me that they disagreed, that they thought that news organization represented a different position. Well, they're wrong, and that's been proven in the research, the independent research that exists. But I didn't decided at that point not to engage with that person, and when I had the awareness that that all those things that physical, social and political environments at the time were one in which you do not engage with this person, because it would ultimately harm themselves, meaning their sense of self would be harmed by it. So I chose not to say anything. So that's an example of awareness. It's not really good example, but it's an example of awareness, and kind of being aware of those social dynamics that are occurring. Persuasion. You should be able to persuade others. And again, that goes back to influence conceptualization. That goes to being a visionary. We've talked about visionary leadership with authentic leadership and with several others. We even talked a little bit with behavioral approach and LMX, and certainly with transformational so, so being able to understand and have a clear sense of not only the follower, but the organization's clear sense of goals and direction, and then how the follower fits into that, right? And that also goes to foresight, which is your ability to know the future. Now, obviously no man knows the future, only God knows the future, but servant leader should be able to understand and anticipate where there was going to be a failure, and how to hold somebody responsible and how to act on potential outcomes. A good example of that is we had a meeting today at work, and I was not prepared for it, and certainly the person who was supposed to prepare for it did not prepare for it either. Well, I kind of knew the questions that would arise from that, so I immediately started off the meeting by taking blame for not being prepared for the meeting, even though it wasn't really my fault for not being prepared for the meeting, and I had the foresight to be able to understand what the dynamics there would be. So I wanted to get up and get out in front of it, and I wanted to be able to avoid any questions for the person who kind of failed in that task. Stewardship is another important one, and that's understanding the role that you serve as a leader and that you're entrusted with, and then being able to take that role and be able to be a good steward of the employee, the follower, who is giving you that trust, commitment for the growth of people. So it's hard to be a servant leader without wanting your people to grow and be able to find ways to motivate them, find ways to grow them. Find out what they're intrinsically. Remember the extrinsic, which is external rewards versus intrinsic, which is internal. There's internal, intrinsic value that they bring and be able to help them in their personal and professional growth, and I think that's an important distinction. You know, some of these leadership theories have mainly been focused on the professional side of it and what professional growth is. And I've been doing this all the time, but I can tell that my sound has been okay, but I'm gonna put that microphone on that may help a little bit, but, but a servant leader recognizes that there's more than just external growth, I mean internal growth in the workplace, but there's personal growth that needs to occur as well, and they're very focused on that, and then finally, building community, and that's developing a community. And when I think a community, not just the town you live in, but the community of the workplace and collection of individuals that have self esteem, interests and pursuits, and you develop a safe space for them to connect, where individuality is encouraged, and servant leaders can foster a growth environment where everybody is on a continuous, continual learning path in order to succeed. So, you know, Greenleaf came up with a theory, and then there's been a bunch of people that have tackled the theory, Russell and Stone, they developed 20 attributes that a servant leadership or servant leader would have. The theory I like a lot, is Patterson's theory, which is a value based model of servant leadership. And sometimes you'll hear servant leadership called values based because, the word Servant has negative connotations, and there were seven constructs that shaped her theory, and they were very, very, very good. In fact, I did a study when them the military, and I was actually the first person to use Patterson or any servant leadership theory, actually, to study the military. So that was a distinct honor to be able to use Catherine Patterson's work and have her affirm my work. And I'm so thankful that I've had that experience of getting to know her as a person. I'll tell you, she lives servant leadership completely, as do Russell and Stone. Russell and Stone, both of them, I know them very well as well, and they live as well. So anyway, you know, there's different ones Coty and I bring this up because I think there's a test question on it, but Coty kind of reduced those original contracts by Russell and Stone and down to eight characteristics, and a lot of these, you're going to reckon recognize from other things that we've talked about, but authenticity, we've talked about that obviously authentic leadership, if you remember from last time, humility. We've talked about that integrity, listening, compassion, accountability, courage and altruism. So based on that, one thing to think about is the different conditions that have to exist for servant leadership to be present. Now what I have proposed, and I think what the literature has has found, is that servant leadership can be found in any kind of organization, whether it's a very authoritative organization like the US, military or or hospitals, which are more servant based models, but still very authoritative with the hierarchical structure between nurses and doctors teaching, definitely in any organization, Police Organizations, servant leadership has been found to be present, but there are some things that impact it nonetheless, and those things are context and culture. So some cultures are very, very, very authoritative. Certainly some Asian cultures are, and that makes a servant leadership, though it's been proven to work in those cultures as well. That's hard, because culturally in China, a leader generally has to project a certain image, and putting himself lower than his followers is something that isn't always socially acceptable. So that's something to consider. Another thing is leader attributes. So qualities and disposition of leader influence the servant leadership process. So a good example of that would be a narcissistic leader or a toxic leader. They think that they're the best and that they have all the skills, so they're certainly not going to put their self second and allow their follower to be first follower receptivities, some followers just don't want to have that kind of control and have that kind of power. So certainly, then that impacts this model as well. So in cultures where power distance is low, such as Nordic Europe, power is shared equally among all people, so servant leadership may be more common than it would be in say, a country where power distance is very high, such as China. EQ emotional intelligence, that's a leader's ability to monitor their feelings, beliefs and internal states of themselves and also their followers. So somebody with low emotional intelligence, again, we look at narcissistic leaders as these kind of people. They would, they would not be able to implement servant leadership if they have low emotional intelligence. And then remember that not everybody wants a servant leader like and I just said this, but I'm going to just say it again. Some see servant leadership as micromanagement. And then, you know, others don't want real people to get to know them or help them or develop them. They don't really care about that. They just want to come in, punch in, do their eight hours of whatever, and then go home. And they just don't want to see it. So you know that's something to guard against as well. Is recognize that not everybody wants that there are some servant leadership behaviors, and some of these are from Patterson, actually, but putting the followers first, you got to make sure that in every action that your desire is to put others before yourself, and that's an important contribution. So put followers first. Another one is to help followers grow and succeed behaving ethically, which I think we talked about ethics in a later module. Uh, more specifically, but behaving ethically, doing the right thing all the time, and doing it the right way, is something that is a characteristic of a servant leadership, and it's a behavior certainly, if you're putting followers first, but you're serving your own self interest, or you're doing something dishonest, then certainly it's going to be hard to put others first, because you're putting your interests above them, empowering people. And that's so hard for some people to give up and to empower people to do their best work. There's a variety of reasons for that, but that is something that is important and in creating value for that community. And we talked about that, and that's consciously and intentionally giving back to the community. Again, when we talk about community, it can be a community within the workplace. Could be the actual community you live in. It could be community of believers. It could be different community for different things. And again, servant leadership is situational. So the definition of what community means differs amongst organizations. So what are some of the outcomes? So an outcome in which a follower achieves greater self actualization, they will realize their full capabilities. They're going to have a lot of organizational commitment. They're going to have higher important, excuse me, in roll performance, and then they become servant leaders themselves, which implement the culture. So there is a company out there that so much believes in servant leadership that they taught their fortune 100 company in the world, and they call all their employees the servant leadership model. They actually called it serving leader. But same thing the servant leadership model, because they wanted all their employees to become servant leaders and then help each other out and become servant leaders for others, and perpetuate that cycle and build a very caring, loving organization. I'm kind of curious now that it's been a couple years, if that has been successful. I was involved in this project about, I'd say a couple years. There's probably five years ago or so, maybe more six years, I think it was six years ago or so. So I'm wondering how the culture has changed. I wonder if anybody's looked at that. I think I'm going to make a call about that tomorrow, find out organizational performance. So again, if you have good citizens, which are followers, that are exhibiting good behaviors, then your organizational citizenship behaviors, those people are going to do things that are going to benefit the organization more, because they feel empowered, they feel fulfilled, and they want to give back. So, you know, there's been researchers out there that have found that leadership, servant leadership, enhances team effectiveness, which is not surprising, and that increasing the shared confidence of the team, so they can be a more productive work group. So actually, you gain a lot of efficiencies by implementing the servant leadership model, serving leadership model, servant leadership model, values based model. It's all the same thing, and then finally, as expected, when you put others first, that has major societal impact. That's actually not really measured in the studies to societal impact, because that's kind of hard to do. I think this study on the organization I'm referring to would probably be the best organization to study, but, but it's hard to study, but it's visible in everyday life. Obviously, if so, there's this game that they play Chick fil A sometimes, and sometimes you'll see the Starbucks if you have one, then you may know what I'm talking about, where somebody will pay for the drink, pay for the person drinks behind you, then that person will have the opportunity to drive to pay for the drinks of the person behind them, and so on and so forth. I once was part of that team, and it got up to 37 with me, 37 people had paid for the previous person's order all the way up until now, and that was pretty cool to see. So you know, do I think servant leadership certainly has an effect on that maybe, maybe not, but that's what I'm talking about. When you see those societal outcomes, when you put others first, when you put other needs first, when you think about other people, good things happen in your community which leads to better outcomes for your community, for society and for your organization. The seven leaders that foster the seven behaviors that leaders foster, conceptualizing, we talked about emotional healing, putting followers first, helping followers grow and succeed. Behaving ethically, which we talked about empowering and creating value for the community. Again, these behaviors are influenced by context, attributes and receptivity. So how. Does the model work? So basically, there's a servant leadership orientation, which is a culture of serving others within the organization, and and that works best when leaders tend to be altruistic. They tend to have strong motivation to a deep seated interest in helping others. So that almost comes from the leading from the heart, or leading for others, or looking at things that are above oneself, and you can see why this is a very popular theory in Christian churches, because typically, that's what Christians want to do, right? They want to make the world a better place. They want to show God's love. They want to make their organizations better, and they want to have some value and purpose in their life. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who is not a Christian, and I asked him, I said, What's your purpose like? What is your goal? What are you doing here? I would not consider him a servant leader, but certainly would call him an ethical man, but he is not a servant leader, and it was clear that he didn't have that same sense that and that community, and the same concern for others that we possess as Christians. So what is the end goal? Well, the end goal is that servant leadership will result in community and societal changes. So that is the goal. So what are some of the weekends weaknesses nobody likes the term servant leadership. They think that's a bad term. I tend to use, especially when I'm talking among secular audiences. I tend to use the term values based leadership, because everybody can understand leading from values, and then those concepts are universal values that most people hold there is some disagreement on the core dimensions, because their researchers have differed a little bit what the core dimensions are. I tend to and I would encourage you to follow Patterson's model. I think that's the most comprehensive model, especially with Winston's edition of the followers development. And maybe that's because I'm biased, because I went to the school that Patterson taught at, and Winston taught at and Stone taught at, so maybe there's some bias there. But I also think it's one of the most comprehensive models, along with Page and Wong. So what are some practical applications? I think it's pretty straightforward. You know, certainly it is a concept that puts others first. It is a concept that that says that the follower has the power. And I think that has a lot of very practical and important implications in business. So let's get to some multiple choice so in in the first model of servant leadership, empathy is considered a servant leadership characteristic. That is true. Some followers equate servant leadership with micromanagement. I believe I addressed that. I'm not going to tell you if that's true or false, but I know I said that servant leadership was proposed by Greenleaf. That is correct, and the servant leadership model has been tested in many organizational settings, including the United States military. And hopefully you remember the answer to that one as well a couple questions, just from the multiple choice, servant leadership has been chosen to increase citizenship behaviors. We talked about that and leaders willingness to make themselves available to others. Is called emotional healing. And then just something else to consider is this. One is a little bit tougher, but context and culture in a in a blank in servant leadership is that's an that's an outcome. Context and culture is an outcome in servant leadership. So that should get us through the questions, at least enough to get you to some answers and be able to think as you study for the quiz. And next we will be talking about adaptive leadership. But before we get to elected adaptive leadership, we always close in prayer. So let us do so, Heavenly Father, You are a servant leader, and you are somebody who we can follow, who certainly put others before yourself. I mean, you gave us the ultimate sacrifice by dying on the cross for sins that you did not commit, and what a great example of living an authentic life and living a life of meaning and value and and showing others through your example that it's such a powerful example that they want to serve others because of you and tell people about about your love. So so, Lord, thank you for that. Thank you for the servant leadership model. And as we move into other models here and we finish out the last three modules, I pray that you'll continue to be with the class, and you'll help them to continue to have all this tools necessary to succeed in this course in Jesus name, Amen. All right, my friends, that is it. And now we're moving on to module 10, which should be good one. Looking forward to it.