Servant Leaders Dream BIG

It sure feels good to be back here, to write on yet another attribute of my favourite topic, Servant Leadership.

How many of us dream? During day or night? I know that some of us are capable of dreaming with our eyes open, especially during office meetings and training programs, right? Well, I am here to clarify that dreaming is a Leadership quality. This Leadership Quality is called “Conceptualisation”. While this is generally required for all leaders, it is especially required for Servant Leaders. Servant-leaders seek to nurture their abilities to "dream great dreams." But what does this actually mean? The ability to look at a problem (or an organization) from a conceptualizing perspective means that one must think beyond day-to-day realities. While we must focus on day to day realities, we should be able to look beyond them and see beyond what is there today. Servant-leaders must seek a delicate balance between conceptualization and day-to-day focus.

All of us are aware of the Traditional Organisational Pyramid

However, if we are not careful, this pyramid could easily turn out to be like this. This is the danger of sticking to the traditional Organisational Pyramid.

Traditional pyramid has a place in Servant Leadership too. Visioning is an important responsibility of all leaders. This is where Servant Leaders follow the traditional Leadership pyramid.

In Servant Leadership, creating a compelling vision and communicating this impactfully and persuasively to the followers remains the responsibility of the Leader. Actually, this is what neutralizes the “Oxymoron” nature of the term Servant Leadership. You might have been tempted to think, how can being a Servant and Leader go together? Well, Ken Blanchard says that this is the answer. The Leadership part of Servant Leaders is in conceptualizing a great future and creating a compelling vision for the team and the individuals in it. Then the Servant Leader equips, enables and empowers the followers to take on full responsibility for implementation and steps back as a “resource” available for them. He/ She inverts the pyramid. This is the “servant” part of Servant Leadership.

And there is yet another reason why we should be interested in this aspect of Conceptualisation.  All of us at some time or the other go through difficult situations. A major result of conceptualisation is the ability to turn the seemingly negative events into positive outcome. Conceptualisation helps us to look beyond the immediate difficulties and stay focused on the positive outcomes of the future.

So let us dream BIG and join the Servant Leadership Movement