In the area of leadership the model that seems to be the Servant Leader model, this article by Allen H. Quist, speaks about how be even better in Servant Leadership by being a Cosmopolitan Servant Leader. Quist indicated ten characteristics of a Servant Leader: “(a) they listen with all of their minds, (b) they empathize with the people in difficulty, (c) they make the people around the feel stronger, (d) are aware of the their surroundings, (e) they use persuasion, (f) they have big ideas, (g) they are intuitive, they see the outcomes of the present action, (h) they consider themselves in a stewardship role, (i) they value people, hoping to see them grow and (j) they serve the community around them.”
The aspect of a Cosmopolitan Servant Leader combined with the above are: “the ability to prepare followers, focus followers, and activate followers.”
This article combines the global approach of the Cosmopolitan Leader with the ability to help others understand their own competencies and their weakness and use both to enhance the organization. Because most leadership is based on statistical data that is not actually represented in the real-life people who are a part of any organization he wanted to let the reader know the importance of combining the two aspects of leadership. In my opinion this model helps a leader not only get the most from the follower, but also helps the follower the by understanding the follower and using their competencies to help the follower become better as well as to enhance to the organizations effectiveness.
You can read the article in the Journal of Strategic Leadership.
dibbs!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for bringing up this concept of the Cosmopolitan Servant Leader. From my understanding of what you said, this takes the principles of the servant leader but takes them a step further. That is, the Cosmopolitan Servant Leader also enables his or her followers to participate in servant leadership as well. This is a crucial aspect of leadership, especially in a ministry context. Ministers should not look simply to lead, no matter how noble or effective their leadership is. A leaders should also look to develop their followers, enable them to be effective followers and eventually enable them to lead others as well. This could then turn into a chain reaction, allowing more and more people to grow into leadership roles, who in turn could create more effective followers and leaders. As you rightly noted, one of the characteristics of a servant leader is to “make the people around them feel stronger.” I think another way to put this is to “allow the people around them to be empowered by the Holy Spirit.” This creates an atmosphere of growth and development, which is not centered around and built around a single leader, but a community of leaders and potential leaders growing and working together.
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