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Wesley College seeks to create a culture of servant leadership. In order to do so, Wesley College Principal Eric Soard invited me to Mwanza, Tanzania for ten weeks this summer to conduct best practices research on servant leadership and based off of that comprehensive research, the task was to create a servant leadership training manual.
The purpose of the servant leadership training manual is to inform people about the meaning of servant leadership through discussion and practical exercises over 10 sessions so they can begin living out the principles of servant leadership in everyday life. Robert K. Greenleaf coined the term “servant leadership” back in 1970 in his essay "The Servant as Leader".
Greenleaf wrote, “The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The best test is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”
The hope is for the training manual to become a core component of the curriculum for every student at Wesley College. This training manual will be dedicated to spreading foundations of servant leadership in an African context as advocated by the father of Tanzania and the country’s first president – Mwalimu Julius Nyerere.
When teachers and students at Wesley College were asked in a survey about leaders they admire, one of the most common responses was Nyerere. One person wrote, "I admire Julius Nyerere because he was the first president of the United Republic of Tanzania." The person's response continued, "He chose to be a servant leader. He valued the life of poor people. [He] wanted the poor to be able to access social services such as education, health, sanitation, water, balanced diet, and a general well-being of humankind. He was transparent. He did not have a selfish spirit. He did not take the country’s wealth for himself. He was loyal to country. He worked very hard to liberate the country from colonialism. Then he started a war against poverty, ignorance, and disease. His style of servant leadership has influenced me and I admire him."
Former President of Tanzania Julius Nyerere exemplified the qualities of a servant leader in his lifetime, especially when he served as the leader of the country. Common characteristics of a servant leader include:
· personal awareness
· active listening
· collaborative decision-making
· conflict management
· using power ethically
· developing trust
· learning through reflection
The benefits of servant leadership are plentiful, some of which include enhanced creativity and productivity, intellectual and emotional investment in people; and increased efficiency in the completion of tasks. You do not have to be the a supervisor or the CEO of a company to be a servant leader. Anyone from anywhere can be a servant leader and implement the skills of a servant leader in everyday life if he/she chooses to do so.