Service Leadership

Leading with Competence, Character and Care in the Service Economy

A. Reza Hoshmand, Po Chung

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000414400
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Sector de servicios

Service Leadership offers students, researchers, and leaders a leadership model originating in the service economy – but which is gaining ground in all sectors and industries – explained by experts that were key actors in that origination at DHL International.

Designed for undergraduates and graduates but also useful for professionals in leadership positions, Hoshmand and Chung structure the book around the 3Cs of leadership in the service economy: Competence, Character, and Care. It shows how the integration of the 3Cs when applied in combination with each other creates an environment of trust within and outside the organization. Most importantly, it allows the reader to understand how a move from the manufacturing mindset (hierarchical decision making) to a service mindset (collective, qualitative, culturally sensitive) creates an ethical habitat and ecosystem that contributes to a firm's competitiveness and adds value to its brand image.

Incorporating elements of leadership literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, and political science, including cases, and supported by a teaching manual and a full set of slides, this book is ideal core reading for students of service leadership and leadership in the service economy, and valuable to those learning about leadership more broadly.

Introduction to service leadership

• 1.1 What is service leadership?
  • 1.1.1 Competence
  • 1.1.2 Character
  • 1.1.3 Care
• 1.2 Why service leadership?
• 1.3 Who is a service leader?
• Key points to remember
• Case study
  • Questions related to the case
• End of chapter questions
• References

1.1 What is service leadership?

The concept of service leadership is an outgrowth of the changing economic environment around the world. It is important to note that service leadership is more than leadership offered in services. It refers to a changing mindset that redefines leadership in the context of change from manufacturing to services. There are several definitions of service leadership that others have offered that should be highlighted before any expansion on the definition that is at the core of this text. Gronfeldt and Strother (2006) defined service leadership as the ‘culture that empowers the organization to strategize its promises, design its processes, and engage its people in a proactive quest for competitive advantage’ (p. 5). Others such as Edvinsson (1992) defined service leadership as a ‘collective leadership mindset’ (p. 34) that includes thought leaders, process leaders, and commercial leaders. Individuals who acquire these skills meet the basic requirements for service leadership as envisioned by us. The conceptualization of service leadership goes beyond what is stated earlier. To be a service leader, one must improve one’s competencies, abilities, and willingness to help satisfy the needs of self and others ethically. This implies both an active and proactive attitude to meet the needs of a modern society. Hence, service leadership’s unique characteristic is to provide service with competence, character, and care to everyone that the server encounters.

The model of service leadership has several attributes that must be considered for its effective application. The basic framework as stated by Chung (2012) is that service leadership is based on competence, character, and care (3Cs). In the following section, the elements that contribute to each of the 3Cs will be discussed.

1.1.1 Competence

When discussing competence in leadership, the interest is not only in the ability of a leader to inspire competitive advantage, but also to be aware of one’s and others’ emotions to overcome adversity and transcend materialistic pursuits (Shek & Lin, 2015). What this means is that an effective service leader has internalized cognitive and emotional competence, resilience, and spirituality. Literature points out that effective leaders are differentiated from other leaders through the exercise of a limited range of skills or competence areas (Higgs & Roland, 2001; Hogan & Hogan, 2001; Goffee & Jones, 2000). These competencies include interpersonal and intrapersonal leadership, moral character, caring disposition, self-improvement in leadership, and self-reflection.

Psychologists have extensively elaborated on the role of cognitive competence and how it affects leadership (Mumford, Todd, Higgs, & McIntosh, 2017; Marcy, 2015; Marcy & Mumford, 2010). There are many factors that influence decision making; however, it would be important to highlight those elements of cognition that researchers have found to contribute more effectively to the concept of service leadership. A look at the competency model, shown in Figure 1.1, suggests that there are stages in developing competency in whatever task one does, including leadership. Specific competencies of service leadership will be discussed later, but for the moment, let’s discuss the stages of development of the competency model.

Aptitude is the natural ability an individual has in accomplishing a task. As individuals, all of us have certain personal characteristics that have been acquired as we go through life. These characteristics play a critical role in the ability of a leader. Some of the innate qualities such as humility, the ability to put the needs of others ahead of one’s own; empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another; and vision, an essential means for focusing attention on what matters most, what an individual wants to accomplish in life, and what kind of leader that individual wants to be are the cornerstones of a service leader.

In addition to those innate qualities, there are certain skills that can be learned through exposure to knowledge in a field of study including leadership. Knowledge can be gained through facts, information, experience, or education, be it theoretical or practical. A contemporary philosopher advocates that academic institutions ought to alter their focus from the acquisition of knowledge to seeking and promoting wisdom (Maxwell, 2007). In the context of service leadership, such wisdom is an outgrowth of innate qualities and skills gained through information. Wisdom is the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others. Theories about wisdom have also been elaborated by psychologists who suggest that ‘there is an overlap of the implicit theory of wisdom with intelligence, perceptiveness, spirituality and shrewdness. It is evident that wisdom is an expertise in dealing with difficult questions of life and adaptation to the complex requirements’ (Brown & Greene, 2006; Sternberg, 1985).

Figure 1.1 Competency pyramid model

Source: Adapted from Lucia, A. and Lepsinger, R. (1999). The Art and Science of Competency Model: Pinpointing Critical Success Factors in Organizations. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco.

Ultimately, the interplay of innate qualities, skills, knowledge, and wisdom defines how a leader behaves in his or her role as a service leader. When the basic competencies of service leadership are contrasted with Maslow’s stages of need, there is a parallel between the two. For a better understanding of the connection between Maslow’s motivation theory and service leadership, Maslow’s revised model will be briefly highlighted here. In his original conceptualization, Maslow suggested only five stages of need and posited that an individual would have to go through them in sequence to achieve the ultimate goal of self-actualization. Later, he revised his framework to eight stages and offered that one does not have to follow the successive stages of needs in order to achieve the ultimate goal of transcendence. For service leadership in which there is an interplay of the 3Cs (competence, character, and care), competence falls in the area of ‘deficiency needs’ and character and care fall in the ‘growth needs’ of an individual.

Figure 1.2 shows the essential elements of the hierarchy of needs as conceptualized by Maslow.

For further elaboration of the essential elements of the frameworks, a comparison of Maslow’s ‘stages of needs’ with those of ‘service leadership’ are presented in Table 1.1.

The conceptual framework of service leadership includes character and care. Hence, by adding character and care to the basic needs, a service leader can move to the higher stage of hierarchy of needs as proposed by Maslow. This way a service leader can achieve the higher-order needs of self-esteem, cognition, and aesthetic by internalizing cognitive and emotional competence, resilience, spirituality, and reflexivity. Maslow (1970b) suggested that self-actualization can be achieved by the following behaviors:

1. 1Experiencing life like a child, with full absorption and concentration.
2. 2Trying new things instead of sticking to safe paths.
3. 3Listening to your own feelings in evaluating experiences instead of the voice of tradition, authority, or the majority.
4. 4Avoiding pretense (‘game playing’) and being honest.
5. 5Being prepared to be unpopular if your views do not coincide with those of the majority.
6. 6Taking responsibility and working hard.
7. 7Trying to identify your defenses and having the courage to give them up.

Other research also has shown that outstanding leaders (particularly service leaders), managers, advanced professionals, and people in key jobs, from sales to bank tellers, generally require the basic competencies for a job that are referred to as threshold competencies. They include basic knowledge, whether it is declarative, procedural, functional, or competencies in memory, and deductive reasoning. In the context of service leadership, there are differentiating competencies that defines outstanding performance from average (Kotter, 1982; Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002). These are (1) cognitive competencies, such as systems thinking and pattern recognition; (2) emotional intelligence (or emotional quotient) competencies, including self-awareness and self-management competencies, such as emotional self-awareness and emotional self-control; and (3) social intelligence competencies, including social awareness and relationship management competencies, such as empathy and teamwork (Boyatzis, 2007).

Figure 1.2 Maslow’s motivation theory model

Source: A Theory of Human Motivation by Maslow (1943), Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. *Maslow (1970a). **Maslow (1970b).

1.1.2 Character

Academic research has shown that there is no consensus on the definition of character (Conger & Hollenbeck, 2010). However, one may look at character as the collection of core values possessed by an individual. Character is the driving force behind how one engages the world in conversations and in expressing values, and how to act on certain decisions. A study of world leaders over the past 150 years points out that leaders who possess strong character will create a better world for everyone (Cooper, Sarros, & Santora, 2007).

Table 1.1 A comparison between Maslow’s needs theory and service leadership’s competence, character, and care

Maslow’s needs stages	Service leadership (competence, care, character
1 Biological and physiological needs – air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc.	Care
2 Safety needs – protection from elements, security, order, law, stability, etc.	Care
3 Love and belongingness needs – friendship, intimacy, trust, and acceptance, receiving and giving affection and love. Affiliating, being part of a group (family, friends, work).	Care
4 Esteem needs – which Maslow classified into two categories: (1) Esteem for oneself (dignity, achievement, mastery, independence) and (2) the desire for reputation or respect from others (e.g., status, prestige).	Competence and character
5 Cognitive needs – knowledge and understanding, curiosity, exploration, need for meaning, and predictability.	Competence
6 Aesthetic needs – appreciation and search for beauty, balance, form, etc.	Care
7 Self-actualization needs – realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.	Character
8 Transcendence needs – a person is motivated by values that transcend beyond the personal self (e.g., mystical experiences and certain experiences with nature, aesthetic experiences, sexual experiences, service to others, the pursuit of science, religious faith, etc.).	Character

Source: www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html, retrieved July 9, 2019.

It is generally agreed that good leaders also possess strong character, that is, they have a moral imperative that underwrites their actions. Hence, a person’s observable behavior is a good indicator of that individual’s character. Such behavior can be strong or weak, good or bad. Strong character implies that the leaders show consistency in their values, ethical reasoning, actions, and i...