Tips for How to Improve Servant Leadership Practices

What is Servant Leadership?

Applying the servant leadership approach at the workplace can prevent burnout and foster work-life balance among employees. Social responsibility is one of the critical components of servant leadership that focuses on the needs of followers and fosters the leader-follower relationship  (van Dierendonck, 2011). Cultivating servant leadership in the organization can support employees' creativity and effectiveness, especially in times of uncertainty and a changing global economy (Jaiswal & Dhar, 2017). There are several benefits of applying the servant leadership approach at the organizational level:

Support Workplace Creativity

Servant leadership fosters workplace creativity. Servant leaders promote followers' identities, meet their social-psychological needs, create a trusted environment, and provide space for creativity and innovation (Yoshida et al.,2014). Additionally, servant leaders encourage employees to reach their full potential by supporting creative behaviors among employees and teams (Yang et al., 2017). Previous studies show that by promoting employees' stewardship actions and job motivation, servant leaders nurture the team's well-being and cultivate their sense of community, which leads to team creativity (Ruiz-Palomino & Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara, 2020; Yang et al., 2017).

Provide Emotional Support  

Servant leaders create an environment of open and noninvasive dialogue that supports followers' emotional, spiritual, and interpersonal needs (Lu et al., 2019).  As a result, the followers experience interpersonal acceptance and emotional well-being that decrease turnover intention and increases performance and creativity (Lu et al., 2019).

Encourage Work-life Balance

Tang et al. (2016) surveyed 309 employees to examine the relationship between servant leadership and employees' work-family balance. They found that servant leaders help to reduce employees' emotional exhaustion and increase personal and professional development, and avoid conflicts with family members (Tang et al., 2016). Moreover, servant leaders help followers to avoid burnout and recover from emotional frustrations in the workplace (Tang et al., 2016).

Tips for How to Improve Servant Leadership Practices

Servant leaders foster organizational learning environments, increase employees' performance, and enhance customer service (Tang et al., 2016). With the effects on followers, teams, and organizations in mind, here are some areas that leaders can focus on to improve their servant leadership practices:

• Select leaders who embody the critical competencies of a servant leader. (See Penn State Extension Article for more).
• Request or seek out training and mentoring opportunities to help develop servant leaders' competencies.
• Decrease power distances by decentralizing decision-making where possible.
• Support the needs of others by rewarding those who are altruistic, generous, and supportive of their team.
• Create an innovation climate and represent the team's norms and attitudes to promote employee creativity.
• Nurture an environment of affection and individual development.

References

Jaiswal, N. K., & Dhar, R. L. (2017). The influence of servant leadership, trust in leader and thriving on employee creativity. Leadership and Organization Development Journal, 38(1), 2–21.

Lu, J., Zhang, Z., & Jia, M. (2019). Does Servant Leadership Affect Employees’ Emotional Labor? A Social Information-Processing Perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 159(2), 507–518.

Ruiz-Palomino, P., & Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara, P. (2020). How and when servant leaders fuel creativity: The role of servant attitude and intrinsic motivation. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 89, 102537.

Tang, G., Kwan, H. K., Zhang, D., & Zhu, Z. (2016). Work–Family Effects of Servant Leadership: The Roles of Emotional Exhaustion and Personal Learning. Journal of Business Ethics, 137(2), 285–297.

van Dierendonck, D. (2011). Servant Leadership: A Review and Synthesis. Journal of Management, 37(4), 1228–1261.

Yang, J., Liu, H., & Gu, J. (2017). A multi-level study of servant leadership on creativity: The roles of self-efficacy and power distance. Leadership and Organization Development Journal, 38(5), 610–629.