Not Everyone Can Be a Servant Leader Essay -- Servant Leadership

There are ten characteristics of a servant leader: listening (communication between leaders and followers as an interactive process that includes sending and receiving messages), empathy (â€Å"standing in the shoes† of another person and seeing the world from their point of view), healing (to make whole by caring about the well-being of their followers), awareness (being acutely attuned and receptive to physical, social and political environments), persuasion (clear and persistent communication that convinces someone to change), conceptualization (ability to be a visionary for an organization and providing a clear sense of its goals and direction), foresight (ability to know the future and predict what is coming based on what is happening now and what has occurred in the past), stewardship (taking responsibility for the leadership role and accepting responsibility to carefully mange the people and organization), commitment to the growth of people (helping each person grow per sonally and professionally), and building community (fostering the development of the community), (Spears, 2002 as cited in Northouse 2013). I think that most people are probably capable to be servant leaders; however, I do not agree that everyone can learn to be a servant leader or even desire to be a servant leader. A servant leader as stated above has to have certain characteristics. Not everyone has all of these characteristics nor do I think these characteristics can be learned. It seems to me, either you have them or you don’t. If you don’t have all these characteristics, it would seem to me that servant leadership wouldn’t be as effective and therefore, would have greater chance of failure on both the leader and the follower. For example, some people sim... ...ply don’t want to put forth such a tremendous amount of behavior that is required to be a servant leader. I think that if the right type of individual is selected, servant leadership can produce very good results not only for the leader, but also the follower and ultimately the organization. As Norhouse (2013), explains, servant leadership has been used in a variety of organizations including Starbucks, AT&T, Southwest and more. It has also been taught at many colleges and universities as well. I think that with the right individual and the right training, it is a very successful type of leadership; however, I still don’t agree that everyone can learn to be a servant leader. References: Northouse, P.G. (2013). Servant Leadership. In L.C. Shaw & P. Quinlin (Eds.), Leadership theory and practice (6th ed.) (pp.219-252). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.