Your Servant Leadership Assignment begins by reading the articles and overviews, watching the videos, and completing the Servant Leadership Assessment included in these instructions.
Write a four-page paper regarding organizational behavior (OB) from a servant leader’s perspective, with ten paragraphs aligning with Spears’ 10 characteristics of a servant leader. Following the OB/servant leadership overview, provide a brief explanation of your servant leadership (based on the assessment) and write a proposal for a leadership development plan to improve in the servant leadership areas that are not currently your strengths. This final section can be written in first person.
The concept of servant leadership was originally coined by Robert Greenleaf (1970) in his essay The Servant as Leader. Greenleaf’s background included 38 Years at AT&T, largely in management training and development, and 25 years consulting on servant leadership thereafter. He founded the Center for Applied Ethics (now Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership).
Greenleaf’s work on the concept was further developed by Larry Spears, who served as president and CEO of the Greenleaf Center for 25 years. Spears extracted 10 characteristics from Greenleaf’s work:
Listening
Empathy
Healing
Awareness
Persuasion
Conceptualization
Foresight
Stewardship
Commitment to the Growth of People
Building Community
https://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/jvl/vol1_iss1/Spears_Final.pdf
Sipe and Frick (2009) condensed these characteristics into their book Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading by Serving. Read about the seven pillars of servant leadership at https://melissagena.me/2012/05/26/seven-pillars-of-servant-leadership/
Blanchard and Hodges (2006) applied servant leadership in their landmark work, Lead Like Jesus. Watch the following video clip on Lead Like Jesus.
Having completed this review of the concept of servant leadership, now take the servant leadership self-assessment.
http://www.modernservantleader.com/servant-leadership/leadership-assessment/
