Leadership Integration

Effective leadership is key to the success of any organization.  Integrated leadership incorporates three types of leadership, all of which will be discussed in this paper. To name them, servant, ethical and Christian leadership. Firstly, servant leadership aims at developing employees rather than the motives of the company. One of servant leadership’s fundamental principles is better listening (Terosky & Reitano, 2016). One has to listen attentively to everyone. For instance, in case of a conflict, the leader should listen to both sides and rule without biasness.  The second principle is compassion. A leader shows compassion to the team. One should be in the same shoe as the team to share their feelings. Lastly is a conducive environment. Working closely with your members gives them the confidence to face you as a leader and eliminate the company’s fears.

Ethical leadership

Ethics are a set of values and morals that govern an organization. Ethical leadership is practiced when these morals are incorporated into a company. The most concerning values are respect, service, and fairness. Respect is a core value in conducting business. In this leadership, the leader respects every member regarding what they say and notes everyone’s differences. Service is another principle that ensures service to the members by protecting their rights and interests. Fairness is another principle that every company should practice. It ensures justice; for instance, an equal workload should be given to all, and in case of a disagreement, justice should be applied regardless of gender and race.

Christian leadership

Christians are given the responsibility of taking care of people. This act is called stewardship. There are three principles that Christian leaders must employ. Love is the first principle and the first fruit of the holy spirit, which every leader must exercise. The succeeding principle is self-development. Leaders should spend time with God to develop themselves spiritually and be strengthened in times of need (Low & Ayoko, 2018). Lastly is motivation; servant leaders motivate and encourage others during difficult times. Nehemiah, the servant of God, motivated people to rebuild the broken wall of Jerusalem. He also encouraged them that God would never leave them.

Components of servant leadership

Servant leadership constitutes three critical components; the first is the existing condition. These are the conditions that affect the entire process of leadership. The environment and the people’s lifestyles are the second major conditions. The environment might be conducive or harsh for effective leadership; on the other hand, people’s lifestyles. Poor lifestyles lead to absenteeism of team members as well as a high risk of heart diseases. Next is the code of conduct which is the way of acting of the servant leader in the entire process of supervision. Concern for others is the first attribute, followed by building community, empowering others, and employing all sets of values and morals (Sousa & van Dierendonck, 2015).

Components of Christian leadership

Calling is the first component. It is something that comes from God and cannot be received through learning. Next is competence which is doing what is wrong and doing it well. It is the act of doing good always. Confidence is the last one that any leader must have to handle organizational matters.

Components of ethical leadership

This leadership incorporates three theories; utilities, libertarianism, and ethical theory. Utilitarianism focuses on increasing the well-being of the juniors in an organization, while libertarianism secures the rights of the individuals. Ultimately, the ethical theory applies moral principles and values for it to be effective in an organization (Thanh & Quang, 2019). ethical leaders must therefore understand ethical values in order to implement them and make wise decisions.

Organization

Walmart is one of the largest retail companies that can appy service leadership to benefit its employees and the company. An integration plan would be vital for this company to initiate in order to ensure proper planning of the organization

Integrated plan

Servant leadership can be implemented at Walmart in various ways;

Effective listening

Effective listening is key for better performance of Walmart company. When leaders listen to their staff and show concern for their interests and rights, the employees tend to be happy and productive. Every member of any company feels appreciated when their views are heard and acted upon by their leaders. By considering their body language while speaking, leaders are able to note the feelings of the employees about the issue being addressed. Walmart as a company listens both online and offline (Weinstein et al., 2021). customers are commenting about the products offered. They should consider the customer reviews about the customer service being offered and rectify any negative reviews or complaints that might damage their reputation as a company.

Empathy

Better leaders must show concern for the welfare of their employees as well as customers. These are key people that continually contribute to the success of the organization. At Walmart, service leadership must be applied by emphasizing with the team members (Jaramillo et al., 2015). The company’s CEO must show empathy to the employees and customers by showing personal interest in their issues. Therefore, the leader must care for them by either reducing the high-priced items by offering some discounts to the customers or offering some incentives to the employees as a sign of love.

Self-awareness

For effective leadership, as a leader, one must first consider your own strengths and weaknesses. It is a fact that one’s emotions can affect the other. As a leader in Walmart, one has to think about their feelings and emotions and act on them to avoid affecting the entire team. The CEO will be able to grow and advance their strengths and develop employees’ abilities and pinpoint weaknesses.

Benefits of servant leadership to the organization and individuals

Creativity

Creativity is very crucial for the success of both employees and individuals. Walmart employees would be creative and innovative to develop new ways of expanding their company. Their employees would get an opportunity to think and employ their skills and improve the company’s productivity, which would enable Walmart to increase its sales and maximize its profits.

Motivation

Employees need always be motivated and encouraged to get the morale in their roles. One of the best ways Walmart can motivate its employees is by providing incentives, free tours and exhibitions, and free training on how to become better leaders (Conrad et al., 2015). Through motivation, the staff market the company through word of mouth to outside customers on how their company is the best. As an online shop, the company will get more clients and eventually make good sales.

Commitment

Commitment is built when employees work as a team. Wallmart company would benefit from servant leadership as strong and loyal teams would be built. There is a high chance of employee retention when loyal employees create a good image for friends and customers.

Challenges

As much as servant leadership would benefit Walmart, two major challenges could prohibit its effective implementation. The first challenge is the failure of leaders to accept the style as their leading strategy. Every leader has leadership styles, and studies show that it mainly depends on one’s personality and skills (Labin & Taborda, 2017). However, not all leaders possess servant leadership skills. Even though some studies indicate that leaders can lead with whatever style they wish, provided they learn, some might not because their personality would not align with the style (Anderson et al., 2017). If Walmart has some leaders that cannot change their leadership style or are not flexible, implementing the initiative could be challenging. For this challenge, I would overcome it by training leaders on the importance of servant leadership and how they can be flexible in their leadership styles. By this, those who are not servant leaders would know what it takes to be a servant and implement the strategies they learn.

The second challenge is that implementing servant leadership would attract employees’ negative meanings or connotations. The word ‘servant’ is often taken as being under someone else. In simpler terms, it means an individual who performs duties under someone else. Given that employees do not have enough knowledge of what the word would mean in the context of leadership, most of them would see their leaders as people who are supposed to work for them (Hale Öner, 2012). For example, a leader who calls himself an employee might not respect a servant due to the connotation meaning of the word servant. This means that it could be a challenge to successfully implement the style if some employees have such a mind at Walmart. However, this can be overcome by training employees on the reasons the style is referred to as servant leadership and insisting on respect for leaders. By understanding its meaning, they would start seeing the positive instead of the negative side of the word servant.

References

Anderson, H., Baur, J., Griffith, J., & Buckley, M. (2017). What works for you may not work for (Gen)Me: Limitations of present leadership theories for the new generation. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(1), 245-260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2016.08.00

Conrad, D., Ghosh, A., & Isaacson, M. (2015). Employee motivation factors. International Journal Of Public Leadership, 11(2), 92-106. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijpl-01-2015-0005

Hale Öner, Z. (2012). Servant leadership and paternalistic leadership styles in the Turkish business context. Leadership &Amp; Organization Development Journal, 33(3), 300-316. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437731211216489