Resilient Leadership: The Impact of a Servant Leader on the Resilience of their Followers

Abstract

The Problem Businesses and their leaders regularly face disruptive change, uncertain economic futures and the pressure of improving employee well-being. To not only withstand these crises but to rebound and even grow stronger, organizations must develop resilient leaders and a resilient workforce. Human resource development (HRD) professionals are responsible for resilience development within an organization and need to understand whether the development of servant leaders also increases leader and workforce resilience. The Solution Leaders with a high level of resilience are able to respond in positive ways to crises their organizations may encounter and, by exhibiting that resilience and those positive responses, are able to increase the level of resilience of those around them. Servant leaders focus their efforts on meeting the psychological needs and health of their followers and are therefore well placed to positively impact subordinate resilience. This article explores the ability of servant leadership to positively impact and grow the resilient capacity of those impacted by the servant leader. It proposes that HRD professionals can increase the resilience capabilities of an organization through the development of servant leaders who also exhibit resilient behaviors. The Stakeholders This article benefits organizations, leaders, employees, and HRD professionals as well as resilience and leadership scholars and practitioners.

Does narcissistic leadership enhance employee resilience? A moderated mediation model of goal-directed energy and psychological availability

“…It is very difficult for employees to obtain resources by themselves during the crisis. If there is no Model of goal-directed energy and psychology feasible way to replenish resources or energy, the loss of personal resources will definitely erode employees' resilience (Kuntz et al, 2017;Eliot, 2020). Therefore, providing necessary resources to promote employees' resilience is very important for both organizations and employees to overcome the adversities raised by crisis events.…”

Intergenerational Differences as a Challenge of Leaders in the Process of Building Commitment of Employees in a Public Organization – An Empirical Research

“…Issues of resilience and engagement at work (including satisfaction and happiness) about servant leadership are addressed by Youssef and Luthans (2007) and Eliot (2020), among others. They emphasize the importance of psychological capital (PsyCap) considered as confidence (self-efficacy) translating into making and putting in the necessary effort to succeed at challenging tasks; optimism about current and future effectiveness; persistence in pursuing goals; and resilience when adversity and problems arise (Luthans, Youssef, and Avolio, 2007;Luthans et al, 2007).…”

“…A leader's understanding of these areas and having psychological capital determine a leader's effectiveness. The focus of servant leadership on meeting the needs of their followers, particularly the psychological needs, along with the studies linking servant leadership and increased PsyCap and humble leadership with increased follower resilience, indicate servant leadership can positively impact follower resilience (Eliot, 2020).…”

On Black Male Leadership: A Study of Leadership Efficacy, Servant Leadership, and Engagement Mediated by Microaggressions

“…The literature search for this study revealed that since 2010 the term leadership yielded thousands of research results from HRD, yet servant leadership resulted in only a handful of titles. HRD research has focused on how servant leadership: can be developed (Coetzer et al, 2017;Phipps, 2010), predicts mentoring (Sims et al, 2021), and result in follower outcomes of resilience (Eliot, 2020) and engagement (De Clercq et al, 2014). In addition, there was an intersectional critique of servant leadership (Liu, 2019) and a proposition that diversity intelligence was an antecedent to servant leadership (Sims, 2018).…”