BUSI 310 Week 6 Discussion Board Forum 3 Thread and Replies Example

Discussion Board Forum 3: Servant Leadership in Practice

BUSI 310 Principles of Management, Discussion Board Forum 3 Thread and Replies

Thread by [Student Name]

The clinic example and the classmates are composites; the textbook, Scripture and research cited are real.

Thread

Servant leadership turns the usual picture of leadership upside down. Ask a servant leader what the job is and the answer begins with people: what does each person on the team need in order to grow? Bateman et al. (2018) present several modern approaches to leadership, including transformational leadership, which inspires followers toward a vision. Servant leadership shares that concern for followers but differs in its motive: the transformational leader develops people to achieve the organization's goals, while the servant leader treats followers' development as a goal in itself.

The idea is popular, so it is worth asking what the research shows. Eva et al. (2019) looked back across almost thirty years of servant leadership research and boiled the idea down to a leader who acts for others' sake, tailors attention to each person and cares about the wider community too. They also noted that early research suffered from inconsistent definitions and measures, a weakness more recent work has addressed with better-validated scales.

The stronger question is whether servant leadership adds anything beyond transformational leadership, since the two overlap. Hoch et al. (2018) tested this in a meta-analysis that compared several value-based leadership styles. Servant leadership explained meaningful variation in outcomes such as job performance, employee engagement and organizational citizenship beyond what transformational leadership explained, while two other styles, ethical and authentic leadership, added little. Serving followers is not just a gentler way of inspiring them; it predicts outcomes that inspiration alone does not.

A composite example makes the behaviors visible. A manager of a busy outpatient clinic begins each week by asking each staff member what is getting in the way of their work and then removes obstacles, such as fixing a scheduling system nurses had complained about for months. The manager covers front-desk shifts during staffing shortages, invests in training medical assistants for advancement and credits the team publicly for improvements in patient satisfaction. The manager still sets clear expectations and addresses poor performance, but does so by asking what support the employee needs before applying consequences. Staff turnover falls over the following year, and employees describe the clinic as a place where they can grow. Patients notice as well: when staff feel supported, they have more patience for anxious patients, and complaints about rushed visits decline. The manager's influence comes less from the title than from a reputation, built over months, for being on the staff's side. That reputation also makes hard conversations easier, because employees trust that criticism is meant to help them succeed.

Servant leadership also has deep roots in Scripture. After washing the disciples' feet, Jesus explained that He was setting a pattern for them to follow toward one another (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, John 13:14-15). For Christian managers, the model is not a technique but a calling to use authority for others' good. Mark records Jesus teaching that greatness among His followers is measured by service (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Mark 10:43-45), which reverses the usual link between status and being served. Applied at work, that teaching suggests a manager's success should be judged partly by how much the people under that manager have grown.

The approach has limits. Servant leaders can be slow to make hard decisions, and in a crisis followers may need direction more than support. A balanced conclusion is that servant leadership is a strong foundation for everyday management, especially in service organizations, but it works best alongside the clarity and decisiveness the textbook's other approaches emphasize. There is also a risk that followers misread service as softness, especially in organizations used to command-and-control leadership. A servant leader in that setting needs to explain the approach and show that serving people includes holding them to high standards. Leaders who combine genuine care with clear expectations seem to get the benefits the research describes without the drawbacks critics raise.

Reply to Andre

Andre, your thread explained situational leadership clearly, the idea that leaders should shift among telling, selling, participating and delegating depending on followers' readiness. It is an intuitive model, and many companies teach it to new supervisors, which explains its appeal.

I would add what research has found when the model has been tested. Thompson and Vecchio (2009) examined several versions of the situational leadership model with a sample of employees and their supervisors. They found limited support for the model's specific prescriptions; the predicted matches between leadership style and follower readiness did not consistently produce better outcomes. Some of the general ideas, such as giving new employees more structure, received modest support, but the detailed rules did not hold up well.

That does not mean the model is useless. Its central insight, that good leaders adjust to the people they lead, is consistent with much of the leadership research in our textbook. The finding suggests treating the model as a reminder to diagnose followers' needs rather than as a precise formula. A supervisor who gives a new hire clear instructions and gradually steps back is following a reasonable approach, even if the exact stages are less tidy than the model suggests. Part of the problem may be measurement: judging an employee's readiness is itself difficult, and supervisors may misjudge it, which would weaken any model that depends on matching style to readiness. Training supervisors to ask employees directly what support they need might accomplish more than training them to classify readiness levels.

In your own work, have you seen a supervisor adjust style for different employees, and did it seem to follow the model's stages or something less structured? I have noticed that the best supervisors I have worked for seemed to adjust almost instinctively, giving more direction on unfamiliar tasks and more freedom on familiar ones, without labeling what they were doing. That may be the model's real value: it gives new supervisors words for something experienced supervisors already do. Bateman et al. (2018) present situational approaches as one of several ways of thinking about leadership, which fits this more modest reading.

Reply to Brianna

Brianna, your thread on charismatic leadership described well how leaders with vision, confidence and strong communication skills can energize a whole organization, and Bateman et al. (2018) discuss charisma as part of the broader transformational approach. Your example of a founder who rallied employees through a difficult year showed charisma's power.

I would add a caution from research on charisma's darker side. Some studies suggest that charismatic leaders can create dependence, discourage dissent and pursue risky visions without the checks that more collaborative leaders invite. Hoch et al. (2018), in their comparison of leadership styles, found that the value-based styles that emphasized followers' development and ethical conduct explained outcomes that charisma-centered transformational leadership did not fully capture. Followers seem to need not only inspiration but also leaders whose motives they trust. Charisma can also make an organization dependent on one person, so that when the leader leaves or stumbles, the energy goes with them. Succession planning is harder in charismatic organizations for exactly that reason. Boards in such companies often struggle to find a successor who can match the founder's presence, and employees may compare every new leader unfavorably with the one who built the company. Developing several strong leaders beneath a charismatic chief executive, and giving them visible responsibility, is one way to reduce that risk.

One protection is structural: a founder with a magnetic style still answers to directors who can say no and a team expected to push back. In your example, did the founder have people around who could challenge the vision, and do you think that mattered to how things turned out? Your thread made me think about how often the most admired founders are the ones whose companies later struggle once the founder steps back, which seems to support the idea that charisma needs structure around it to last.

References

Bateman, T. S., Snell, S. A., & Konopaske, R. (2018). Management. McGraw-Hill Education.

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Eva, N., Robin, M., Sendjaya, S., van Dierendonck, D., & Liden, R. C. (2019). Servant leadership: A systematic review and call for future research. The Leadership Quarterly, 30(1), 111-132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2018.07.004

Hoch, J. E., Bommer, W. H., Dulebohn, J. H., & Wu, D. (2018). Do ethical, authentic, and servant leadership explain variance above and beyond transformational leadership? A meta-analysis. Journal of Management, 44(2), 501-529. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206316665461

Thompson, G., & Vecchio, R. P. (2009). Situational leadership theory: A test of three versions. The Leadership Quarterly, 20(5), 837-848. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2009.06.014