Servant leadership can be identified as a leadership style where the leader becomes a servant first. This style begins with the natural feeling that an individual wants to serve first. The feeling is often accompanied by the aspiration to lead. Servant leadership is different from other leadership styles in such a way that the leader ensures that the needs of the highest priority are being met and the followers are able to become wiser, healthier, more autonomous and freer while they are being served. The aim of servant leadership is to ensure that the followers benefit from this experience or are not further deprived from accessing a need or service.
The people in the videos “ Iron Man Helps the Homeless Smile ” and “ Band of Sisters Trailer ” have a number of servant leadership qualities that can be identified. For instance, in both videos, the leaders display the quality of awareness to the current situation. Awareness can be identified as a leadership quality that makes the leader accustomed and receptive to their environment. Both Iron Man and the Band of sisters are aware of the situation that the people are experiencing and the leaders make a conscious choice to try and help with an intention of enhancing the situation.
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Both leaders also display the quality of building the community. Building the community facilitates the development of the community. From the video, the bands of sisters educate the people, go on peaceful demonstration and also try to convince the leaders to support a certain bill that would help the community. Similarly, Iron Man walks around giving food, drinks, clothing and a pillow to the homeless people in an attempt to make them more comfortable during the night. The actions from both videos makes the members of those respective communities to feel connected as well as safe even though they maintain their own individuality.
Leaders from both videos share a similar characteristic of healing. Healing, as a leadership quality recognizes the leader’s ability to care for the well-being of the followers. Through this quality, the leaders are able to support their followers by helping them to overcome their own persona problems. Iron Man provides the homeless people with basic needs that they are unable to provide for themselves. He offers them clothes, food, beddings and drinks. Similarly, the band of sisters go on peaceful demonstration as well as try to influence the leaders to support a certain legislature that would help solve a particular problem for the community. The actions from these leaders help the people to become whole while at the same time providing a satisfaction for the leaders. They strive to help the people solve a certain problem even when it seems like a temporary solution.
One characteristic of a servant leader that would be challenging to embody or enact
Even though servant leadership can be identified as an ideal leadership style, there are challenges that may come with implementing all of the qualities especially at the workplace. The challenges may be experienced by an individual or by the team of followers. Personally, the quality of empathy is challenging for me to enact at the workplace. The quality of empathy dictates that the leader needs to stand in the shoes of the other person and view the world from their point of view. The quality is challenging at the workplace since the business focuses mostly on its own goals and objectives instead of those of the employee. This notion is supported by the rules and regulations that provide directions on what to do in different situations. For instance, if an employee makes a mistake, it might be hard to be an empathic leader without being seen as biased when the rules clearly call for disciplining the employee. However, I can achieve empathy by openly listening to the employee before making decisions. In addition, I can also try to identify new and effective ways of serving discipline at the workplace while at the same time ensuring that the regulations of the company are followed.
