Development and Empowerment

Every leadership style does fit every person, but in order to be an effective leader, you must have a combination of the skills. When we example servant leadership styles, it is a style that views employees as partners. Servant leaders are accountable for the employees in their care (Manning & Curtis, 2012). They have a responsibility to their followers and they do their best to help others. As the name suggests, this leader serves others as opposed to the people he or she is accountable for serving them (Manning & Curtis, 2012). This is a type of leadership that tends to be a very moral position. The main focus is the well-being of the followers, and that is put before other goals (Graham, 1991). This leadership style is at the essence of developmental leadership.

One example of this style of leadership is the leadership of Ernest Shackelton whose ship became frozen in the Antarctic. Shackelton was a 20^(th) century explorer who led three expeditions there. In one of these expeditions, after his ship became frozen, he made sure that all 27 of his crew made it home alive. It was an 800-mile journey, which is no small feat. It took two years in order to do it, but he had an undying responsibility towards his men that never faltered (Bass, 1990).

Democratic leadership is also known as power-sharing and empowerment. Democratic leadership is participative leadership. The focus of this style of leadership is to work together (Manning & Curtis, 2012). This style of leadership is key in helping to create a sense of responsibility among employees (Woods, 2004). It also motivates them. This style of leadership also reduces employee turnover. By including the employees in the decision making, the leaders is able to make better decisions (Woods, 2004). We often see this style of leadership in certain IT fields where there is a common goal to be accomplished. Oftentimes, the lead developer on a project may have more experience than the manager and the manger gets feedback from everyone and becomes part of the team. This way, everyone is working towards the same thing and each person is vested into the end product.

There are benefits and cons to each style, but I prefer a combination of both. Servant leadership is good for morale. It helps out the team. However, so is developmental leadership as well. In certain environments, one may seem to be better than the other. In the type of environment I work in, I don’t feel that servant leadership would work very well. I would choose developmental leadership over servant leadership in my environment because it is very team heavy and requires the skills of everyone on the team. There is not a lot of benefit to having one person in charge, though the organization structure is setup that way. Everyone’s skill set is different. It’s also a position where people can easily get discourage if their views are not heard. Therefore, for the sake of morale, this would be a better pick so that everyone feels like they are part of the solution and not just a worker bee.

References

• Bass, B. M. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics, 18(3), 19–31. doi:10.1016/0090-2616(9090061-S ↩
• Graham, J. W. (1991). Servant-leadership in organizations: Inspirational and moral. The Leadership Quarterly, 2(2), 105–119. doi:10.1016/1048-9843(9190025-W ↩
• Manning, G., & Curtis, K. (2012). The art of leadership (Fourth Edition.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. ↩1 ↩2 ↩3
• Woods, P. A. (2004). Democratic leadership: Drawing distinctions with distributed leadership. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 7(1), 3–26. doi:10.1080/1360312032000154522 ↩1 ↩2