Collective Knowledge about Servant Leadership

Your Group's Assignment:  When you have completed your reading and web search, collectively respond to the questions below in preparation to "teach" your concept with your original "home group."

Using This Wiki

1. Select a recorder.
2. Recorder will enter in the space below the group's collective knowledge in each category. While the recorder is entering text into the wiki, group members stand behind, providing input!
3. To add text, click on the "Edit Page" button at the top left. You will be prompted to enter a password. The password is the name of our program. You will also be asked to enter your name so we can know who edited the page.
4. After you have logged in with a password and your first name, insert your cursor where you want to begin typing, and begin!
5. Don't forget to click the "Save" button at the bottom of your screen occasionally!

NOTE: Feel free to delete these instructions once you have read them!

Define the Theory

Servant leadership encourages leaders to serve others while staying focused on achieving results in line with the organization's values and integrity. It is a very moral position, putting the well being of the followers before other goals. Servant leaders tend to be helpers first and leaders second.

The following quote helps to better understand servant leadership.

In approximately 600 B.C., the Chinese sage Lao Tzu wrote The Tao Te Ching, a strategic treatise on servant leadership:

FORTY-NINE

The greatest leader forgets himself

And attends to the development of others.

Good leaders support excellent workers.

Great leaders support the bottom ten percent.

Great leaders know that

The diamond in the rough

Is always found “in the rough.”

(Quote from The Way of Leading People: Unlocking Your Integral Leadership with the Tao Te Ching.)

What are the outcomes?  When might this leadership style be used?

 Servant leadership style tends to be used more in the public domain than the private sector due to the constraints of maximizing profits versus human potential.

What are the critical skills an administrator would need to be able to demonstrate this leadership style?

The critical skills an administrator needs to demonstrate servant leadership are being a good listener, empathetic, high values and morals, committment to the growth of people, and a deep desire to help others reach their maximum potential.