The strength of any organization is centered on its corporate culture. Corporate culture in this regard encompasses the strength of the leadership of the organization, the mission and goals of the organization, the ability of the members of the organization to adapt to the culture of the organization and the commitment of the members to the success of the organization. This paper will therefore discuss the important of servant leadership to the success of any organization and also to ensure that the organization realizes its full potential.
Every organization has got its own culture. The culture of the organization determines the organization strengths and weaknesses. An organization whose strengths are strong and committed leadership, dedicated members and streamlined operations will definitely have a culture of success. As a community of persons, the organization as a way of making use of its strengths will utilize the experiences, beliefs and expressions of individual members of the organization and then gear towards ensuring that the vision of the organization is attained.
The biggest question that each member of the organization must ask themselves concerns the role of each member in achieving the organization goals. Herein lays the essence of servant leadership: having a leader who is inspiring and a workforce that is inspired. The most important strength of an organization in this regard is therefore its members, starting with its leadership. All the members of the organization want to feel secure, cared for and inspired. The leader, on the other hand, wants to see a people who are inspired by his/her leadership style.
The leader of the organization, herein after referred to as the servant leader, has got a very big role to play in this regard. Being a servant that they are, the servant leader must ensure that they prepare their workers to be servants too. As the great philosopher Dr. Peter Dracker points out, that there is no success without a successor, the servant leader has a role of ensuring that they prepare their successor early enough. As they do this, the business of the organization will be up and running. The servant leader must ensure that they train their personnel to the organization culture of commitment, as Ann McGee-Cooper puts it that the key for developing servant leadership culture is training. The servant leader is the trainer and the workers are the trainees.
Another question that the organization needs to interrogate when evaluating its strengths is whether all the workers are satisfied with the work they do. If they are not, that will be a weakness to the organization, as opposed to strength. Satisfied employees are an asset to an organization. How the employees get job satisfaction is another question that this paper must answer. The process of achieving job satisfaction is four-fold (Tom W. Smith): the servant leader must be an architect who is able to cultivate the organization culture into the people’s minds and work ethics. Additionally, the commitment level of the employees must be excellent. The working climate of the organization must be conducive and well-controlled by the organization culture and the servant leadership and finally, the organization must ensure that they maintain their distinct culture. This process ensures that the organization utilizes its strengths which are its people.
Finally, for the organization to make maximum use of its strengths, the servant leader must model and inculcate the principles of servant leadership to their people in the organization. They should also inspire and influence them to become his disciples in leadership and finally incarnate them to model others to become servant leaders too. The servant leader will have completed the Atheist- agnostic- disciple - apostle process.
