Sociology

Traditional models of leadership placed leaders at the apex of the leadership structure while the led occupied the lower rungs. The leaders were expected to be more learned, experienced, and informed than the people they were put in charge of. Companies gave leaders the power to advise and instruct their juniors to do what the leaders deemed best for their organizations. Although such models of leadership persist to this day, some organizations are shifting to a relatively newer and more effective servant-leadership model. The servant leadership model aims at bringing down the walls between leaders and their juniors, to create a relationship in which the leader is more interested in building and improving the welfare of the juniors before his or her welfare. This paper compares and contrasts the view of a leader, and the servant leader to establish that while leaders are paying more attention on improving the welfare of their juniors, more focus still remains of the leaders.

Assessment of the views of a leader
A top level manager in a for-profit organization revealed that his organization was pursuing a strategy aimed at developing the skills of all its employees including those of the lower cadres. His view of a good manager is one who listens to the juniors and is sensitive to their needs, but who still maintains a distance between himself and his juniors. To ensure that managers accord more respect to their workers and treat them better than they have been doing in the past, the organization has organized a series of workshops for the senior and mid-level managers to learn how best to treat and work with their juniors.

While this is a step in the right direction in that it is likely to improve the relationship between the junior workers and the leaders, it is evident that the leaders remain at the apex of the leadership structure of this organization. The workers too are very much in need of the same skills which the leaders gain from these workshops. It is natural for junior workers to keep some distance between them and their leaders, thus one of the ways of destroying these barriers is by bringing them together in an environment which allows interaction. The workshops would provide an excellent environment within which the managers and the juniors learn together, gain and put skills into action together outside the formal work environment. The workshops would therefore be more meaningful for the junior workers if they, or their representatives, were allowed to attend. Training managers only shows that the focus is yet to shift from the hierarchical model, to the servant leader model which assigns more premium to the welfare of juniors than to own welfare.

Managers are hired or appointed to management positions because they are more skilled, educated and experienced than most of the other employees. The managers are charged with the responsibility of making critical decisions on behalf of the organization. Ideally, managers are expected to possess skills and qualities which most of the employees do not have. According to the manager, this is the most significant reason why some people are assigned management roles while others get lower-skill jobs. Owing to the fact that the manager is mostly expected to make high-level decisions, there is little incentive for him to focus much effort on bettering his relationship with the junior employees. He actually argued that maintaining distance between top-management and the employees gives the managers room to be independent when making decisions on behalf of the organization. Managers should deal with other managers while junior employees can consult with their counterparts and their immediate seniors.

It is true that this is the normal attitude among many managers. The fact that they hold management positions is testimony to their competitiveness. However, this does not mean that junior employees are incompetent. Neither does it render junior employees a bother to the management. Good managers appreciate their juniors and actually acknowledge that they are capable of proposing crucial ideas and solutions which they managers may not have explored. Managers are not necessarily the most innovative people. By appreciating juniors and helping them realize their potential, leaders expand the pool of brains working to develop solutions for facing the organization. Disregarding the led summarily eliminates chances of benefitting from their unique qualities.

The manager argued that the most important reason why a small contingent of policemen or soldiers is able to disperse hundreds or thousands of rioters is because the soldiers are organized in such a way that one has control over all the rest and they have to follow the leaders direction without question. The structure leaves the soldiers with little alternative but to focus of the duty ahead without looking back. Experience shows that this form of leadership can be highly successful and leaders in for-profit organizations should learn from soldiers. The raison detre of a for-profit organization is to make profits for the shareholders. The manager is therefore not answerable to his juniors, but to the shareholders. To the manager, getting closer with the employees does not earn the organization money. According to the manager, leaders should command respect and loyalty from their juniors at all times.

There is no doubt to the capability of a handful of soldiers or anti-riot police officers to disperse riotous crowds numbering in the hundreds or thousands. However, the servant leader need not domineer over the juniors. While the traditional leadership models would put the officer in charge of a military operation at the top of the leadership structure, the servant leader is only the first among equals and therefore regards the juniors as partners or team-mates (Horsman, 2009). The leader therefore consults with the juniors before arriving at a decision, unlike a commander who sits back and orders his juniors to disperse a crowd in fifteen minutes and report back. As a team-mate, the leader takes interest in what the juniors are going through and is sensitive to their needs. In the long-run, the servant leader earns as much loyalty and respect as the domineering soldier. A commander who sits in an office or police vehicle, or gives orders to soldiers while he stands way behind the front-line may not understand fully what the fighting soldiers are going through and can make decisions and issue orders which can hurt the same people he leads. The same is true of a manager who sits in his office and issues instructions from there with little regard of the implementing juniors concerns. Adopting a servant leadership model does not necessarily mean that the team-members takes their eyes off the ball. In fact, a servant leader motivates juniors to work harder and improve their skills, thereby achieving their full potential. The knowledge that their leaders have confidence in them and not only appreciate their work but also place premium on their welfare strengthens employees loyalty to their organization and leaders. The servant leader treats his juniors as if they are the end themselves, not just a means for the organization to achieve its ends.

Another argument brought forward by the manager was that the organization had employed hierarchical models of leadership in all the years that it had been in operation, and it had managed to expand significantly over the years as a result of the massive profits it had earned over the years. The company employed ten people when it opened first twenty-five years ago, and had grown to its current status where it employs about eight hundred employees. Following its full recovery from the shock occasioned by the global economic crisis of 200809, the company plans to expand to another state. Having employed a hierarchical leadership structure for the entire length of its existence, the manager argued that the company knew the advantages of the hierarchical structure. Abandoning the time-tested leadership model for a new one might destabilize operations at the organization, which would be highly undesirable.

Resistance to change is a problem which affects not only this particular manager, but most people. The idea of change always comes with fears of failure, and more often than not, evokes memories of people who tried to change something, and failed horribly. The philosophy of servant leadership is largely revolutionary in that it dislodges the leaders from their traditional posts at the summit of the structure and brings them to the level of their juniors where they can interact with their juniors as partners (Horsman, 2009). It is therefore natural for leaders who are products of the traditional model to resist the pressure or fear to abandon a model which has been used for centuries for a newer model. The traditional model gives much power to the leaders over their juniors while the servant leader model seemingly takes away this power from the leader while at the same time empowering the employees. The managers resistance to the adoption of this new model has more to do with fear of erosion of the power he wields as a manager than the disruption of operations at the company as a result of the change of leadership model.

Conclusion
While leadership is rewarding, it is also challenging. It is not easy to bring tens, hundreds or even thousands of minds to work together for a common goal. It becomes even more challenging when the leaders alienate the people they lead, leading to disatisfaction among the led. Servant leaders work with and for the people they lead. They manage to not only motivate and inspire their juniors, but to also learn from them. In the long-run, the leaders, juniors and their organization benefit greatly. The servant leadership model is the leadership model of the future as organizations are realizing that their performance can only be as healthy as the relationship between its leaders and juniors.