Servant Leadership
If you haven’t yet heard of servant leadership, then you might be surprised to find that you are missing out. This is a term that means essentially what it sounds like: the role of the leader is to serve and support the rest of the team. At JDI Search, we believe wholly and completely in the importance of servant leadership at every level of our work, from recruiting for hotel management jobs to all other tiers of executive positions, as well as in our personal lives and communities.
The History of Servant Leadership
The origins of this leadership style lie with Lao Tzu in the fifth century B.C. According to this founder of Taoism, leaders should be present in a way that the rest of the team is unaware of their presence. The servant leader is one who accomplishes a task such that the rest of the team is able to recognize the input of each and every member of the task force. Robert Greenleaf updated the concept much, much later on down the line – in 1970. According to Greenleaf, this leadership style entails that one serves first before leading.
Servant Leadership Now
In more recent years, psychologists such as Adam Grant have begun to actively and concretely measure the effects of servant leadership. For hotel management jobs and other positions in the industry, measuring the effects of this leadership style could have an enormous impact on the way the industry functions as a whole.
Grant asserts that servant leaders not only are better regarded by their teammates but that they also tend to feel better about themselves. Beyond simple satisfaction, however, is the fact that these types of leaders tend also to be more productive overall. This is because servant leaders are on the receiving end of the important information that ultimately makes them more insightful and effective as leaders.