Emotional Intelligence and Trust in Servant Leadership
Literature review
Servant leadership describes leaders' deep-rooted desire to make a positive difference in others' lives, their commitment to and skill in fostering spiritual recovery from hardship or trauma. Servant leaders employ a combination of awareness of surroundings and anticipation of consequences; they use sound reasoning and mental frameworks and they prepare an organisation to make a positive contribution to society through community development programmes. Spears states that servant leadership involves feeling responsible to the world and actively contributing to the well-being of people and communities. This unpretentiously implies for the (servant) leader to put people first and this action eminently forms one of the seven servant leadership pillars conceptualised by Sipe and Frick. These seven pillars constitute that servant leaders are individuals of character; they put people first, are skilled communicators, compassionate collaborators, use foresight, are systems thinkers and exert moral authority.
Thus, the typical servant leader does not see people as a means to serve themselves, but conversely, the servant leader views their role to empower others to become better at what they do, to achieve greater levels of skill and ability and become better, more productive people in the process, irrespective of the organisation or environment they are functioning in. For this reason servant leadership is viewed as a positive approach to leadership within the POB framework.
Barbuto and Wheeler's research on the concept of servant leadership and the 11 potential characteristics of servant leadership resulted in the refinement of the servant leadership construct as a five-dimensional construct. The five dimensions of their servant leadership model are:
- Altruistic calling: a leader's innate desire to make a positive difference in others' lives.
- Emotional healing: a leader's commitment to and skill in fostering spiritual recovery from hardship or trauma.
- Wisdom: a combination of awareness of surroundings and anticipation of consequences. When these two characteristics are combined, leaders are adept at picking up cues from the environment and understanding their implications.
- Persuasive mapping: the extent to which leaders use sound reasoning and mental frameworks.
- Organisational stewardship: the extent to which leaders prepare an organisation to make a positive contribution to society through community development, development programmes, outreach and corporate social responsibility.
Servant leadership can be utilised as an appropriate leadership model in South Africa as it is characterised by moral authority, humility, service and sacrifice in order to create trust and teamwork. Various studies have established that servant leadership has the potential to enhance interpersonal trust between workers and their managers.
It is argued that a service-oriented philosophy of, and approach to, leadership are more likely to manifest once certain antecedents are in place. Beck's findings of characteristics, behaviours or life experiences that would predict servant leadership include: the job tenure of leaders influences the frequency of servant leader behaviour, servant leaders influence others through building trusting relationships, servant leaders demonstrate an altruistic mindset, servant leaders are typified by interpersonal competence (emotional intelligence) and leading from behind. Barbuto and Wheeler state that other sources could include variables such as emotional intelligence, sources of motivation, organisational culture and exposure to and mentorship of other servant leaders.
Goleman defines emotional intelligence as 'the capacity for organising one's own feelings and those of others, for motivating oneself, and for managing emotions well in oneself and in relationships'. In the process and scientific debate to determine an operational model of emotional intelligence, two markedly different, yet related, models of emotional intelligence have been suggested. The first model is an 'ability model', which combines emotion with intelligence; the second is what is termed a 'mixed model', which combines traits with social behaviours and competencies. In the current study, the mixed-model approach is utilised as a result of its value in organisational and leadership development, as suggested by Goleman. The definition of emotional intelligence in this regard consists of three categories of abilities: evaluation and expression of emotion, regulation of emotion and using emotions in decision-making. Goleman suggests that emotional intelligence in the work situation is a multidimensional construct consisting of five components. These components are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.
Despite the increasing interest in emotions and their impact on leadership style and performance, research investigating the role of emotion on employees and its influence on inter-worker relationships and different leadership styles has yet to be fully explored. Some research on the role of emotional intelligence in transformational leadership exists, namely studies conducted by Leban and Zulauf, Barling, Slater and Kelloway and Gardner and Stough. In a literature review conducted by Winston and Hartsfield strong similarities between the constructs of emotional intelligence and five servant leadership models were found. These similarities include the leader's ability to appraise and express emotion and use emotion to enhance cognitive processes and the reflective regulation of emotions.
Likewise, research found that leaders who are able to identify and understand the emotions of others can influence the feelings of subordinates in such a way that enthusiasm, productivity, cooperation and trust in other employees are maintained. Baker established that servant leadership behaviour of the supervisor leads to increased utilisation by employees of coping mechanisms deemed specifically conducive to customer service. Furthermore, leaders who are able to understand and manage their emotions and display self-control act as role models for followers and in so doing enhance the followers' trust and respect for the leader.
It is therefore argued that subsequent to the relationship between servant leadership and emotional intelligence, a relationship exists between emotional intelligence of the leader and subordinates' trust in the leader. Therefore, it is conceptually argued that trust in the leader can also be seen as an important correlate for the interdependence that exists between leaders and followers in servant leadership. Followers place their trust in the leader as a result of the leader's concern to place their followers' self-interest first.
In servant leadership (like other leadership models) trust plays a pivotal role in the interdependence that exists between leaders and followers. Relationships built on trust and service are the basis for the influence of servant leadership. Greenleaf states that trust is central to servant leadership since leadership legitimacy forms with trust. The calling to serve leads one into an active role as servant, building trust not only between the leader and follower but also between followers.
Good postulates that 'nothing builds trust faster than a servant attitude' because people know their leader genuinely cares about them and has their best interest at heart, even when they have to deal with problems. This corroborates studies conducted by Joseph and Winston which found a positive correlation between employee perceptions of servant leadership at an organisational level and leader trust. It was also found that employee perceptions of organisational servant leadership resulted in higher levels of trust in the leader than perceptions of non-servant leadership. The value of this finding is that it provides support for models proposing that servant leadership is one of the specific leadership behaviours that elicits trust from others.
From the preceding discussion on the respective constructs, it is hypothesised that servant leadership is a relational leadership style and it can be expected that individuals' perception of their manager's servant leadership behaviour would be higher if the manager had higher levels of emotional intelligence. However, this would not be the case if the individuals do not trust their manager. Therefore, it is proposed that emotional intelligence of the leader and followers' trust in said leader would influence their perception of the leader's servant leadership behaviour.
This leads to the research question and proposed theoretical framework (Figure 1) for this study: can a valid model be built of the sequential relationships amongst the combinations of variables and their dimensions, namely emotional intelligence, trust in the immediate supervisor and servant leadership, within the realm of positive organisational psychology?
