Recognizing that some followers find a CEO unapproachable or feeling like they’re ‘just a number’ creates a volatile emotionally-laden situation, which greatly hinders the transition to a servant leadership model.
Ranked highest in the ‘skills and abilities’ graph, the CEO is valued for his/her managerial expertise. According to Greenleaf (1970), a servant leader should envision a positive future state of an organization the s/he helps followers work towards by using creativity and imagination. Being able to leverage the strength of his/her managerial expertise will bode well for the CEO to identify ways to bring followers together to work toward this vision. In fact, servant leadership is vision-oriented, and accomplishing that vision requires that the leader firmly adhere to following …show more content…
As these are hallmarks to the servant leader-follower relationship, mentoring should be a servant leader’s core responsibilities. By using active listening and encouragement as discussed earlier, a leader promotes education and skill development to help his/her followers work toward and achieve their goals. As a CEO ranked high in the “Great Eight” leadership competencies of enterprising and performing, he is adept at building up skills, resources and a sense of self-efficacy in order to help his followers work toward their positive change (PSY 815, n.d.). Commitment to the growth of people is one of the critical characteristics of servant leadership, and one of the keys to empowering people is by making them feel significant (Russell & Stone,