Servant Leadership for the Post-Pandemic Era: A Call for Wisdom

• In Event: Presentation | Virtue, Literacy, and Evolution of Wisdom Through the Centuries

Short Description

The coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on public health, financial markets, supply chains, and social institutions over the last two years. Global concepts of public safety, appropriate vaccination policy, and protocols on social interaction have changed drastically. How has our notion of leadership evolved? The researchers conducted an empirical research study in 2022 to explore the global citizen perspective on servant leadership post-pandemic. Research findings and analysis suggest a view of the future as one in which servant leadership traits and behaviors, and particularly those in the dimension of wisdom, are in greater demand.

Detailed Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the global landscape across a number of dimensions, including political and economic stability, public health policy, including norms around social interaction, how businesses run, and where employees work. Concepts of leadership have also shifted amidst the backdrop of the coronavirus crisis. Servant leadership theory espouses that the role of the leader is to be in service of the follower. The purpose of this study is to explore servant leadership in the (theorized) post-pandemic world and to understand which servant leadership traits are needed more than, less than, or the same as pre-pandemic times. The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced myriad global challenges and presents a timely, relevant, and critical opportunity to investigate leadership approaches necessary for the future.

In 2019, COVID-19 was first identified. In 2020, the virus spread rapidly throughout the world, evolving to a global pandemic. Continued consequences from the pandemic plagued communities across the globe in 2021, including a public health crisis, economic devastation, and widespread disruption to education, business, and travel. At the start of 2022, global citizens continue to be severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In mid-January of 2022, the World Health Organization reported that well over 300 million people had been infected with COVID-19, and over 5.5 million people have died as a result (World Health Organization, 2021).

As leadership norms and protocols of the post-COVID-19 world come into focus, it becomes important to explore pandemic implications for various kinds and forms of leadership. In modern times, it has been acknowledged that there is a greater need for an approach to leadership that is team-oriented, is both ethical and caring, and utilizes an approach of co-creation for decision-making (Spears, 2002). Servant leadership theory offers a promising and emerging approach to leadership.

Servant leadership theory suggests that the role of the leader is to be in service of the follower. The purpose of this quantitative study is to investigate the role of servant leadership in the post-pandemic world. The central question for the research study is as follows: In the post-pandemic world, is servant leadership needed more than, less than, or the same as in pre-pandemic times? Through harnessing the citizen perspective on the critical topic of post-pandemic leadership, we can begin to both conceptualize and understand, and therefore plan for, the post-pandemic era.

In general, the 2709 participants in the study felt that servant leadership would be more needed post-pandemic. Over half of respondents (54%) felt that the collective list of servant leadership traits, on average, are more important post-pandemic. For each and every one of the 23 servant leadership traits, a greater number of respondents felt the traits would be "more important" post-pandemic than "less important" or "of the same importance. For 18 of the 23 servant leadership traits, more than 50% of all respondents felt the trait would be "more important" post-pandemic.

Robert Greenleaf (1977) noted that servant leaders carry a natural inclination to be of service to others and then make an intentional choice to do so. There is a strong connection between servant leadership and followership, the counterpart to leadership. Followership theory proposes that only with the action of following can leadership occur; followers are an essential component of leadership (Uhl-Bien, 2014). Moreover, there is a co-creational aspect of followership in which meaning is created through the interactions and connections between leaders and followers. Critical to the notion of followership is consent and legitimacy, which can only be garnered from the consent of the follower, not imposed from the leader (Price, 2008). However, the behaviors of the leader are critical to the leader-follower contract. Leaders earn a mandate to lead from followers who evaluate leader behaviors. For example, trust is a critical factor that followers consider in their evaluation of leaders (Chaleff, 2009). An essential component of followership is a follower's willingness to challenge behaviors and policies of the leader that are not in support of the organization. Followership is not about blindly following orders, but rather the model affords an opportunity for followers to reflect on whether or not the orders make sense (Chaleff, 2015). Both followership and servant leadership emphasize the human side of leadership, acknowledging that leaders rely on the perspective and views of followers to best serve them.

Especially relevant for this study is scholarship showing that servant leaders cultivate servant followers, complete with inspiring a stewardship mindset and other-focused behaviors and setting in motion a cycle of service (Hunter, 2013). Moreover, in addition to creating benefits for leaders themselves, there is evidence to show that servant leadership produces manifold benefits for followers. These benefits include improved engagement, functional effectiveness, and providing support to other followers. In addition, benefits are realized at the organizational level; servant leadership behaviors improve the overall effectiveness of the organization. Such behaviors also produce benefits for the servant leader themselves. In the transition to the following section on pandemic-era leadership, it should be noted that followers have an important role to play in crisis (Young et al., 2020). The skillset of the follower, such as being a team player taking direction, becomes both valuable and essential to supporting an organization that faces change, challenge, or crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the world and its citizens with a crisis of public health, of the economy, of the supply chain, and of the general geopolitical order. The crisis has also opened the opportunity for revisiting notions of leadership. The pandemic has evolved citizen notions of leadership, and a vision of a new servant leader has emerged. This new servant leader is altruistic and focused on the needs of others. They are aware of information and surroundings and able to navigate ambiguity by discerning clarity of consequences. The new servant leader is also dedicated to creating a positive impact on society. An original research study of the citizen's voice on post-pandemic leadership reveals that servant leadership will be more important post-pandemic. The call of respondents is clear for greater servant leadership in the future.

Participants

• Natasha Anne Brown, Microsoft
  Presenter

• H. Eric Schockman, Woodbury University
  Presenter