BUSI 502 Week 8 Servant Leadership Journal Example

Servant Leadership Journal: Closing Entries and Reflection on Eight Weeks

Entry: Week 7, Am I a Level 5 Leader?

The question this week asked how I compare with the Level 5 leaders Collins describes. Collins (2001) describes the leaders behind lasting turnarounds as unusually modest about themselves and unusually stubborn about results: they looked out the window to credit others when things went well and in the mirror to take responsibility when they did not. Honestly, I have more will than humility. When our billing office hit its accuracy target in March, I told my manager what "I" had changed. When we missed it in May, I explained what the software vendor had done.

Collins also found that great leaders got the right people on the bus before deciding where to drive it. I have spent more time on processes than on people. Proverbs 27:2 tells us to let another praise us, and not our own mouth (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016).

Action: in my next report to my manager, name the two team members who did the most and say nothing about my own role.

Entry: Week 7, What I Learned From the Interview

The executive I interviewed for my research paper names three possible successors and sits down with each of them every quarter. That practice exposed me. If I left my job tomorrow, no one on my team could run the monthly close, because I never taught anyone. Blanchard and Hodges (2003) describe developing others as one of the ways a servant leader's hands serve. I have been protecting my own necessity and calling it diligence.

Action: teach Luis the monthly close in June and let him run it in July while I watch.

Entry: Week 6, Which Habit Do I Skip?

This week's question asked which renewal habit I neglect. I pray in the car and read Scripture most mornings, but I never stop. Blanchard and Hodges (2003) list solitude first among the habits for good reason: without it, the others become one more item on a to-do list. Mark 1:35 describes Jesus going out before dawn to a solitary place to pray, on the morning after his busiest day. I tried a twenty-minute walk without my phone on Tuesday and Thursday. On Thursday, I realized during the walk that I had been short with Kendra all week because I was worried about an audit, not because of anything she had done.

Action: keep the two walks, and apologize to Kendra.

Entry: Week 8, Revisiting My Commitments

In Week 5 I committed to sharing a vision draft with my team, giving Kendra a checklist, asking Luis to lead a session on appeals and asking "What happened?" before reacting to problems. The first three happened. The team rewrote our values and put kindness to patients first, ahead of accuracy, which I first resisted and then accepted. Luis's session produced two changes that cut our appeal backlog by a third. The fourth commitment lasted about ten days; when a large claim batch failed, I took over without asking a single question.

Reflection on Eight Weeks

When the course began, I thought servant leadership was a set of techniques for getting more from people by being nice to them. Blanchard et al. (2016) changed that: the book's insistence that leadership begins in the heart made me look at my motives, and I did not like everything I saw. I found pride in how I report results and fear in how I control work. The forums and the group paper helped me see that service also requires courage, including the courage to give hard feedback, which I had been avoiding in the name of kindness.

Three things changed in practice. I ask my team for their ideas before giving mine. I thank people by name, in writing, every week. And I have started teaching others the parts of my job I used to guard. None of these changes is large, but together they have made my office quieter in a good way: fewer problems come to me last-minute, because people raise them earlier.

My commitments for the coming year are to train a successor for every task only I can do, to keep a weekly hour of solitude for prayer and planning, and to ask one trusted colleague each quarter where I am still edging God out. Philippians 1:6 reminds me that the one who began a good work will bring it to completion. The journal has shown me how much of that work remains.

References

Blanchard, K., & Hodges, P. (2003). The servant leader: Transforming your heart, head, hands, & habits. Thomas Nelson.

Blanchard, K., Hodges, P., & Hendry, P. (2016). Lead like Jesus revisited: Lessons from the greatest leadership role model of all time. W Publishing Group.

Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap... and others don't. HarperBusiness.

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