Is servant leadership transformational?

Servant leadership focuses on supporting and developing individuals in an institution, while transformational leadership focuses on inspiring followers to work towards a common goal. Both transformational and servant leadership focus on inspiring and developing team members. Transformational leaders and servant leaders emphasise emotional intelligence, communication, participation and inclusion. Transformational leadership is not limited to a leader transforming and influencing followers.

Building on the foundation of a focus on others, transformational leadership is about leaders and followers transforming each other and the collective whole. Thus, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Transformational leaders engage others, creating a connection that raises the level of motivation and morale. They change and transform all individuals, treating everyone as equal human beings.

It moves followers to achieve more than what is expected of them. Burns (197) was the first to build on this theory by trying to link leaders and followers in a relationship. Transformational leaders tend to be visionary and charismatic leaders. Bass (198) argued that transformational leadership motivates followers to do more than expected, raising followers' levels of awareness of goals, getting followers to transcend their own self-interest and moving followers to address higher-level needs.

Transformational leadership is not merely directive. It is concerned with the performance and development of followers to their full potential. These leaders often have strong internal ideas and values, and are able to motivate followers to act in ways that support the greater good rather than acting out of self-interest. It may also include individualised consideration, in which the leader understands the unique differences of each individual and responds accordingly (Bass, 1985; Burns, 1978; Northouse, 201. Building on the foundation of focus on the other, servant leadership holds that people produce best when the leader cares for the follower, meeting their personal needs and supporting them on the job.

The leadership style of the organisation became very important in the dialogue, and emphasised the behaviour of the leader of the organisation, i.e. what he or she does and how he or she acts, or his or her leadership capabilities. In the Master of Leadership programme, the term transformational is intended to be a modifier of the more important term servant leadership. The fundamental difference between the two styles is that the servant leader focuses on the needs of the followers, while the transformational leader focuses on the goals of the organisation.

Similarly, transformational leadership works when the leader raises the awareness of individuals and gets them to transcend their own interests for the good of others. Fry and Slocum (200) assert that spiritual leadership begins with creating a vision through which one can experience a sense of calling and establishing a culture that helps to intrinsically motivate both oneself as a leader and the people within one's team or organisation and helps followers find meaning. In its similarity to servant leadership, Brown, Trevino and Harrison (200) have defined ethical leadership as "the demonstration of normatively appropriate behaviour through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of that behaviour to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement and decision making (p. In servant leadership, the leader serves followers while in transformational leadership, the leader engages followers to commit to and support the organisation's goals.

Although both transformational and servant leadership can have negative applications, their benefits far outweigh these negatives. A great strength of servant leadership is the potential it has for personal healing as well as for relationships with others. An employee who feels a sense of purpose, value and job satisfaction because of the conversations they have with their servant leader will naturally be more productive. Among recent leadership styles and theories to date, servant leadership provides the framework for an ethical organisational context at both the organisational and group levels, and acts as the primary promoter of such a context.

When done well, transformational leadership also makes the organisation a better place to work Employees reap the rewards of shared success and constantly think about their essential contributions and growth potential. Foresight is an outcome of the intuitive mind and, consequently, unlike the other characteristics of servant leaders that can be developed, it may be "the only servant leader characteristic you can be born with" (p. Servant leadership is based on the principle that managers exist to serve their employees, rather than the other way around.

Jason Klingler
Jason Klingler

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