Abstract
A caring disposition is a highly crucial aspect in service leadership. It is a fundamental attribute in today’s workplace settings that provide a unique system to which a good service leader can be assessed. In essence, a caring disposition encompasses powerful knowledge that is particularly efficient in formulating and implementing team approaches in ensuring the delivery of a successful leadership practice.
This term paper seeks to discuss important concepts in caring disposition and how it promotes service leadership. The introductory part of the paper creates a clear understanding service leadership. In the first section of the term paper, we analyze the relationship between caring disposition and service leadership by critically identifying how caring disposition promotes crucial service leadership behavior. Next, the paper discusses some of the core components of caring disposition, primarily empathy and listening attribute as well as their importance in promoting service leadership. Furthermore, the paper discusses the Theoretical Model of a servant leadership. On the second section, the term paper analyzes some of the limitations and weaknesses of empathy and listening attribute, especially in the workplace.
Introduction
Leaders required to manage today’s organizations have a great responsibility to fulfill the demands of the current workplace system and sustain the requirements of their clients from whom they serve. According to Greenleaf (2003), the formulator of the current context of servant leadership, managing the organizations that care for the needs of its employees and customers have changed tremendously from personal involvement management to a management mediated by the organizations and its stakeholders. Organizations require an efficient leadership that takes into account the needs of various stakeholders, customers, and the community. Such leadership can only be achieved through service leadership.
Service leadership is a service that aims to ethically fulfill personal, groups, system, community and the environmental needs and concerns by providing high-quality service consistently to these entities. A critical analysis of service leadership envisions a model of leadership that is rooted in the principles of the human self-drive to care for others and promote the betterment of the community. This model contributes to the professional growth of a servant leadership and simultaneously ensures improved provision of services through a combination of interdisciplinary teamwork, unconditional respect to people, and interpersonally shared decision making. Such aspects of servant leadership can only be achieved through a caring disposition.
PART 1
Caring Disposition
A caring disposition is a highly crucial aspect in service leadership. As a multidimensional approach with cognitive and effective behavioral components, a caring disposition can be defined as the behavioral attributes that motivate the leaders and their stakeholders to accord unconditional respect to all people, create friendly interpersonal relationships, and develop sound possibilities that ensure growth and development of the society (Shek & Li, 2015).
A caring disposition is both generative and unconditional, a highly formulated skill that takes into account the physiological, spiritual, and psychosocial understanding of oneself and others (Shek & Li, 2015). It expresses the expectation of a true leader as one who should serve the best interest of their people in an unselfish manner guided by the principles of motivation, love and care rather than the desire to achieve personal glory. Also, it allows a leader to demonstrate the principle of a servant leadership with an intrinsic attitude that is deeply rooted in their natural desire to serve others at work (Ferch & Spears, 2011). The emphasis on a caring disposition is driven by a set of attributes of servant leaders, including listening, love, and empathy.
Attributes of a Caring Disposition
Listening
Leaders are always recognized for their proactive skills in communication and decision-making. While these skills are critical for a servant leader, they have to be captivated by high levels of commitment and initiative to listening attentively to others. A servant leader needs to listen to suggestions from their juniors and stakeholders so that they can help clarify them receptively. Notably, listening encompasses expressing one’s inner voice as well trying to appreciate how the body and mind communicate. Listening together with an interval of contemplation enhances the development of a servant leader. Leaders have to practice an active listening approach that entails listening keenly and patiently to their employees and stakeholders, understanding their diverse opinions, and probing their views and perspectives in a constructive way.
Active listening can be regarded as an extra emphasis created by a servant leader on the priorities, needs, work problems of their employees and stakeholders. Through active listening, a leader’s willingness and ability to hear and understand is enhanced. At its core, active listening helps to avoid premature judgment, allow for clarification of information, and give sufficient time to reflect understanding. Active listening captivates an aspect of awareness as it allows a servant leader to concentrate keenly on what is happening around them. Thus, it enables them to make clear plans in developing meaningful solutions to critical concerns in future.
Fundamentally, active listening alleviates the psychological barriers between the leaders and their followers which allow them to articulate their suggestions and opinions more as well as share their personal experiences and ideas (Hoppe, 2007). In particular, active listening requires leaders to understand the suggestions of others critically and give timely responses. Successful servant leaders are skilled listeners who are actively involved in expressing sincere interest in what their followers have to say, caring for their emotions and sentiments and making suitable feedbacks. As leaders learn and commit themselves to the skills and behaviors of active listening, they become more effective in decision making and improve their ability to lead in the long run.
Empathy
Empathy encompasses a wider array of behaviors and caring dispositions known as emotional intelligence (EQ). EQ entails characteristics such as sociability, self-regulation, composure, and self-awareness. These distinct attributes are crucial predictors of a service leadership (Bharwaney et al., 2011). An empathetic leader assumes the good intentions of their followers and always understands even when their followers may fail to behave in a certain manner or performance. Thus, in addition to allowing servant leaders shows intense concern to followers, empathy ensures leaders can forgive the shortcomings of their subordinates. To become a successful servant leader, one needs to become a skilled empathetic listener. They should demonstrate an ability and desire to understand other feelings motives, emotions, and values.
Empathy is manifested as love in action which is applied to understand actively and intensively and connect with others. In other words, it is about a person’s ability to understand and experience another’s feelings, emotions, motives, and values (Keefe, 1976). An empathetic servant leader can be understood by expressing three essential traits: Good listener, non-judgmental, and emotional intelligence. Empathetic leaders do not ignore any concern from their subordinates; rather, they listen keenly and avoid any form of distractions. Such leaders follow the two ears and mouth rule: spending more time listening to what their followers have to say and less time talking. They always focus attentively on what their followers say.
A non-judgmental leader does not judge the feelings of their followers even when they completely disagree with their own feelings. Instead, they appreciate what their subordinates feel and strive to understand how the feelings affect their perceptions, without making judgments on whether or not those feeling are right (Colleen, n. d). Since they are emotionally intelligent, they can analyze the feeling of others in a subjective manner. Thus, they do not allow the feelings experienced in various work situations control the intended outcome.
Theoretical Model of a servant leadership
The theory of servant leadership focuses on Kuhn’s model on scientific revolutionary approach. It is composed of the virtues of, service, humility, love, trust, vision, altruism, and empowerment (Patterson, 2003).
Humility – Humility can be expressed as the non-overestimation of one’s achievement or merits. Humility is not a form of weakness; rather, it is a virtue that allows a servant leader not to over-value and over-glorify oneself but to respect the worth of their subordinates.
Love - Love is a crucial component of a caring disposition that clearly describes a servant leader. Usually, love is expressed a sincere care for other people that get revealed by showing sensitive concerns. Leaders who show sincere love in the workplace manifest as a sense of kindness through caring, showing concern and appreciating their subordinates.
Altruism- Altruism means expressing good intentions and always meaning well for others; it allows a leader be more concerned about other people’s welfare. A leader manifests the virtue of altruism by seeking to fulfill the desire of their subordinates.
Vision – A servant leader has a vision for their subordinates. They focus on identifying the capabilities, worth, and, the viability of their followers and seek to encourage and assist them in achieving that vision.
Trust – Equally important, leadership is about trust. It is captivated when leaders value the services of their subordinates by empowering them on various important roles. Trustworthy leaders show integrity, high regard, and respect for others.
Empowerment – Empowerment is a great virtue of servant leadership. Leaders have to share their powers by expressing the best interest of those they serve in mind. Servant leaders empower their subordinates by making their services feel valued, emphasizing on team work, and advocating for equality of all irrespective of their position.
Service – service is an integral virtue of a servant leadership theory. Every other virtue is displayed in the form of service and desire to perform in the right manner. It is a choice of desiring to fulfill the interest of others over self-interest.
PART 2
Limitations or Weaknesses of the Selected Attribute: Theoretical and Research Support for Your Viewpoints/Arguments
Listening
While listening skills are critical for a servant leader that need be captivated by high initiative to listening attentively to others, most suggestions and concern are not acted upon. Thus, active listening does not necessary mean that a leader understands other people’s ideas and concerns. It is only effective when leaders respond to their needs or concerns. Successful servant leaders can only become active and skilled listeners if they do not only get involved in expressing sincere interest in what their followers have to say but also should make suitable feedbacks.
On the other hand, continuous active listening may encourage laziness, especially for those subordinates who always expect their leaders to listen and understand their excuses even when not performing. Over-emphasizing on listening attribute may create room for leaders to accommodate the behavior of their subordinates even when they are undesirable. In other words, leaders should not only listen actively and understand the experience, feelings, and emotions of others. Rather, they should analyze their subordinates’ concerns and feelings in a subjective manner, especially when handling issues from non-hardworking employees. Thus, active listening should be accompanied with a regular interval of contemplation to ensure its effectiveness.
Traditionally, leaders have always been recognized for their proactive skills in setting targets, communicating actively on the targets and making sure that the targets are fulfilled. Over-emphasizing on listening may interfere with these leadership skills. Leadership is not only about listening; servant leaders should issue directions, set limits, and confront with their employees when things do not go as expected. It is good to note that active listening is captivated through commitment, open mind, and persistence. Maintaining these values is not always possible as scenarios of feeling bored, distractions, impatient, and emotional takeover, judgments, and interruptions.
Empathy
Research has shown that leaders who show high empathy are among the most engaged and successful leaders (Lewis, 2013). However, previous empirical research failed to reveal how empathy can, in turn, become a liability for a servant, especially when is does not incorporate other components of EQ. Showing concerns and recognizing emotions for the shortcomings and frustrations of the subordinates does not always mean that a leader can regulate emotions or they are socially skilled. In one of the research at Korn Ferry Institute, a model profile to assess the empathy attribute of leaders showed that empathetic leaders scored significantly low on components of EQ (Lewis, 2013). Also, the study confirmed that highly empathetic leaders are among the least engaged and are at considerably high risk of derailing. Thus, despite been a crucial component of caring disposition by a servant leader, such leaders may perform relatively low in expressing self-regulation, composure, and would typically score below average on sociability.
In this regards, an empathetic leader must have other social-behavioral skills for it to become an asset. This aspect can explain the idea that understanding and showing intense concern to others is a valuable behavior but accommodating them is not. Thus, empathy is only effective when applied strategically and achieving requires other EQ components like the presence of mind, composure, high level of sociability, and motivational skills. Besides, leadership requires one to exercise courage, setting limits, confrontation and even sacking irresponsible subordinates. This may not be particularly the case for an over-empathetic leader. In short, empathy should not be a one-dimensional leadership style. Rather it should be a multifaceted approach that accommodates all concepts of EQ. When not applied in harmony, it can lead to leadership ineffectiveness.
Conclusion
Caring disposition is considered to be the most effective aspect through which organizations can create a service leadership. Basing from our research, leaders who show a caring disposition in the workplace create conducive environments for the employees and stakeholders to interact warmly among themselves and eliminates cases of control and manipulation. In promoting service leadership, successful leaders have recognized that they need to reach out their followers’ concerns and interact with them. Caring disposition allows leaders to connect amicably with their followers and also allow them to feel understood and regarded since until people know they are understood, it is unlikely that they will open to the influence of their leaders. The servant theoretical model focuses on identifying the needs, views, and concerns of their subordinates and addressing them before their individual considerations. By cultivating an atmosphere of active listening and empathy, leaders are able to realize and maximize the potential of their followers’ while tailoring their aspirations in line with the objectives and needs of the organization. Nevertheless, leaders should exercise their leadership position in a subjective manner. They should set targets, communicate actively on the targets and make sure that the targets are fulfilled. Also, they should set limits and confront their followers at times to ensure that they adhere to their tasks. Overall, service leadership should accommodate other leadership concepts for it to be effective.
References
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Colleen, K. (n.d) Empathy: A critical skill for effective leadership - Colleen Kettenhofen Motivational speaker. Retrieved June 15, 2016, from http://bouncebackhigher.com/articles/empathy-a-critical-skill-for-effective-leadership/
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Patterson, K.A. (2003). Servant leadership: A theoretical model. PhD Dissertation: Regent University.
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