Servant Leadership Vs Followership
The concept of leadership has been around for as long as civilization has existed. However, each leader tends to take up their own kind of leadership style. This is motivated by numerous factors, including but not limited to their role models. There are two leadership styles that have taken my attention and those are the followership and servant leadership styles. Leadership is all about leading a group of people or an organization towards establishing and attaining certain goals. The effectiveness of one method over the other is still up for debate but let’s get to know more about each of them as individuals and how they compare and contrast to each other.
Servant Leadership
Among the various styles of leadership, the servant leadership kind of style stands out and has been identified as a major factor in the growth of most companies. So what is Servant leadership and what makes it so special? Servant leadership is a kind of style in which the leader focuses on the people directly below them and whose main goal is to serve the people. In most scenarios, leaders have the interest of the firm coming first and then the interest of the employees come later, but not in this kind of leadership.
A servant leader has special traits that enhance essential cultures in an organization. Among the many traits is that they believe in the sharing of power, rather than a centralized system. This, in turn, motivates employees as well as gives them a sense of usefulness in the firm. Once duties and certain responsibilities are delegated, it is even easier to oversee operations and have an easy time handling the human resources in the organization.
The human resource is an underrated factor of production and the welfare of the employees is often under looked hence hindering maximum productivity of their skill and expertise. However, when these employees are assured that their leader is concerned about their well-being, then naturally morale goes up and productivity is at an all-time high. A servant leader is well known for this trait as well. He/she puts the needs of the employees first and this gives them a sense of security and entitlement to the firm.
In the workplace, having a leader that you can identify to is as essential as the work done. Developing organizations will mostly have a challenge in this area since the top managerial team dissociates from the rest and operate almost entirely from the comfort of their office and do not bond with the employees. In 1970, Robert K Greenleaf brought the whole idea of servant leadership to the attention of the world and through his book, ‘the servant as leader’, he achieved this. He linked the concept of leadership ad service into one and argued that they are co-dependent on each other. A leader should serve and service is a motivation for leadership as well. We cannot go without mention the immense contribution of Larry Spears towards this ideology. Among the characteristics of a servant leader are Good listening skills, foresight, community building, empathy, problem solver, reconciliation skills and good stewardship among others. However, Larry Spears only highlighted 10 main characteristics that he viewed to be of utmost importance.
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Followership
In any organization, the success or the decline of any endeavor of the organization has always been a burden for the managerial to carry. For this reason, they feel the urge to dictate how things are made. Given that they will bear the blame if anything goes wrong then they could as well dictate how things are t be done and henceforth stand by their decisions. However, this kind of style is quite different from servant leadership.
What is followership and what is its contribution to the success of a corporate body? How different is it from servant leadership?
As the name would suggest, followership, is the art of following someone else. Followership entails the relationship between a superior and their subordinates. Coming to the pyramid of hierarchy, you will realize that at the top of the pyramid, there are very few persons, often one or two and as it trickles down to the bottom, the pyramid widen and the task force expands. To get work done, communication needs to trickle down and instruction followed precisely.
For followership to work, accountability is key. In this concept, it viewed that a leader can both be a follower and a leader but to different audiences. Mid-level management is placed in this exact position. When receiving instruction from higher up and passing the same on the juniors emphasis is placed on accountability.
When it dealing with a huge group of people, it is only natural that these people will be of different traits and after a while, they start grouping themselves in circles that they feel fits them most. According to Kellerman, he grouped employees into five groups, and these groups are composed of four unique groups (Exemplary followers, conformist followers, alienated followers and passive followers) and one group (pragmatist followers), that tend to share traits from all the four groups. Think of this as analysis from a Venn diagram.
In these kinds of groupings, it is imperative that people embrace diversity in thinking and idea generation. Often corporations have resulted in hiring individuals who are not experts in the said area only to get a unique and external point of view. In the followership kind of leadership, the subordinates, engage actively in helping the leader achieve certain set goals. The leader is always open to ideas.
Conclusion
It is possible for a firm to incorporate both of these two styles but on different levels of management. The common ground is that subordinates are incorporated in the active decision making but on different levels. Both of these have been credited with the success of companies and even though they have their own strengths and unique traits, they are similar in some qualities. Leadership and management institutions open up these styles of leadership and one will choose what works best for their organization.
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