The Servant as a Leader
I agree with the theory that the best leaders are those that emerge from servant positions. It is best to follow someone who knows what it is like to be in your shoes. Greenleaf describes servant leadership as something that “begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first”. Then Greenleaf proceeds to add that then a “conscious choice” is what brings a servant to desire to lead.
It is sadly common that many leaders today lack humility. They do not truly desire to serve. Some leaders truly believe that everyone else is at the pleasure of the leaders. Non-servant leaders have agendas but their goals do not necessarily always have the common people in mind. Servant-leaders are created from people that intrinsically like to serve. This means that when they become leaders they are simply now using stature and prestige as a resource to further serve the people.
Greenleaf ends the article after empowering individuals and ideologies. It is discussed that for any great change at least one brave individual is needed. Not only this but an individual with a servant mentality must come second to a dream. For the “United” States of America, a dream is very much present but we need someone with a servant mentality to come and make this dream accessible to everyone.
I totally agree that it is much easier to support a leader who knows what it is like to be in your shoes. It is very interesting that you compared this to our lesson on humility, because in my opinion, it is much easier for a leader to be humble if they emerge from being a servant.
I also agree with the theory that the best leaders emerge from servant positions. I think this is what causes some of the best leaders to “come out of nowhere” because they continue to want to serve because of the good nature of their hearts and many people are very drawn to that.
I agree with your point that the greatest leaders are servant leaders, and I want to add that this belief probably comes from the fact that humans naturally tend to flock towards people who are similar to us; by being a servant first, followers gravitate towards these people due to commonality and empathy. We have a tendency to respond better to leaders we can relate to because differences can be threatening, especially if the differences occur between leaders and followers.
I liked the idea of bravery that you brought up in your blog because we tend to overlook the difficulty of being a leader. That’s why having servant leaders is so important because these people are the ones who are not afraid to fight what they believe in, and represent the public. Bravery and leadership should in theory go hand in hand, rather than those who claim positions of power as a means to extend their own will onto others.
I completely agree with your statment: “It is best to follow someone who knows what it is like to be in your shoes”. It makes it easy to lead when you know what it is like to be led and it makes it easy for followers to follow someone who understands their position! Nice.