Introduction
There is a growing interest among researchers and practitioners about the drivers of workplace innovation (e.g. De Jong and Hartog, 2010). Employee innovation drives organization innovation. Employee innovation is defined as self-directed behaviour to generate and implement new ideas to benefit the individual or organization (Bos-Nehles et al. 2017). The extant literature suggests that leadership is a key predictor of employee innovative behaviour (Van Dierendonck, 2011; Zeng and Xu, 2020). The current dynamic and uncertain global environment is driving the need to explore contemporary leadership styles such as servant and authentic leadership. Researchers (e.g. Zeng and Xu, 2020) have suggested that servant leadership is positively related to individual creativity which in turn drives workplace innovation.
This article is the first in series in exploring the role of servant leadership in innovative project environment. Previous literature on servant leadership are focused mainly on Asia and Africa. This study focuses on identifying servant leadership practices of Finnish companies in the Vaasa region in Finland. The goal of the article is to explore the servant leadership behaviours in Finnish business environment. The second section describes the key characteristics of servant leadership, and the research method is presented in section three. Findings and conclusions of the study are presented in sections four and five.
Definition of Servant Leadership
Greenleaf (2002) defines servant leadership “as the servant leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from the one who is leader first” (p. 27). Laub (2004) defines servant leadership as “an understanding and practice of leadership that places the good of those led over the self-interest of the leader” (p. 81). According Laub, the focus on “the good of those led” is what separates servant leadership from other leadership models, and serves as the theoretical foundation for linking servant leadership to variables such as leader trust, organizational trust, psychological safety, creativity, and job satisfaction.
An innovative project environment is characterised by both diagnostic and interactive use of project management and processes and tools (PMPT). The diagnostic use represents the traditional feedback role of PMPT used in monitoring and rewarding the achievement of pre-established project objectives (Henri, 2006). An interactive use of PMPT is used for motivating and coordinating the activities of an organization, focusing attention, and encouraging continuous learning and innovation (e.g. Simons, 1994). Innovative behaviours refer to the production and implementation of useful ideas which may entail considerable risk taking (Zheng and Xu, 2020). The key characteristics of servant leadership are empowering and developing people, humility, authenticity, interpersonal acceptance, providing direction, and stewardship (Van Dierendonck, 2011). Consequently, servant leaders provide an emotionally safe environment for the employees, and thus increases their willingness to generate new ideas and initiate change. Bilal et al., 2020 indicates that members respond to the benefits they receive from the servant leader by putting in increased effort and greater commitment to completing task and innovative requirements. In addition, the goal of empowering people creates a proactive attitude among followers and develops a sense of personal power, which makes employees feel autonomous and take new challenges (Van Dierendonck 2011; Zheng and Xu, 2020)
Research Method
Through personal interviews with two Finnish managers, the data was collected to identify servant leadership practice in Finnish project environment. A semi-structured interview was conducted around Laub’s (1999) six servant leadership behaviours. Table 1 presents a summary of the interviewees, and Table 2 presents the interview questions.
| Title | Name | Work Experience | Project Management Experience | Date of Interview |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General Manager | Manager A(Energy Company) | 10 | 10 | 22.11.2023 |
| Project Manager & HR Supervisor | Manager B (IT Company) | 8 | 5 | 28.11.2023 |
| Question | Theoretical concept |
|---|---|
| In what ways do you demonstrate that your company value employees? | Valuing people |
| How do you develop people within this organization? | Developing people |
| How have you built a sense of community within your organization? | Building community |
| How do your company display authenticity (open and accountable, willingness to learn, demonstrating honesty and integrity)? | Displaying authenticity |
| How do you provide leadership for your team and the organization? | Providing leadership |
| In what ways do your company share leadership? | Sharing leadership |
| What additional thoughts would you like to share about your experience your company? | Open-ended question |
Results and Analysis
The exploratory research used Laub’s six servant leadership behaviours to provide a framework for identifying servant leadership behaviours in the interview transcript. Results of the interview and transcription of the interviews are presented in Table 3.
| Theoretical dimension | Manager A | Manager B | Summary of Findings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valuing people | “Walk the talk is the most important! Being consistent with what said and being a role model. Giving and asking for continuous feedback on the work done and of what to improve. Giving them the responsibility to lead their decision” | “By dedicating time for them and meeting with them often, in groups and in one to one meetings. Indicating that they are always available, even if they need to say, “I’ll get back to you asap”. | Walk the talk, consistency, role model, feedback, responsibility, decision, time, meeting, groups, one-to-one, availability. |
| Developing people | “Establishing a trustful environment where people feel safe to make mistakes. Clarifying that the important is not the mistake itself but to find the solution to it and to avoid to do it again. Supporting and allowing them to take free time to develop new competences and making them curious to learn from other.” | “By making sure that people are aware of all the resources available and that they have the time to utilise them. Sometimes projects can take 100% of people’s attention, and it’s a good manager’s responsibility to make sure people have time to utilise educational resources for example”. | Trustful environment, safe, mistakes, solution, competences, curiosity, learn, resources, educational, attention, projects |
| Building community | “It is important to make clear that every voice count. it is also important to make sure that everyone speak out and bring his own her view. Share and learn between team member also make the sense of community growing. Always say “we”. | “Meeting together as a team, both work/project related and also more leisure time. Common lunches and after work hangouts are good tools as well, but can’t be the only way of hanging out because people are working remote and they can have responsibilities like small kids to take care of after work”. | Every voice counts, speak out, views, share, learn, team, meetings, work, leisure, lunches, hangouts, remote, responsibilities. |
| Displaying authenticity | “Being honest and fair mean share everything in an open dialogue. showing own emotions and sharing them is also a sign of showing authenticity”. | “By dedicating uninterrupted time where all manager’s attention is at the employee, like frequent one-to-one meetings. It’s also important to be frank and open yourself: to be clear and friendly but promptly speak up if there is something bothering you. Managers need to know their employees well in order to pick up the first signals of dissatisfaction”. | Honest, fair, open dialogue, emotions, sharing, authenticity, uninterrupted time, one-to-one meetings, frank, open, clear, friendly. |
| Providing leadership | “A clear leadership model in place with clear deployment of it”. | “By providing a direct channel of communication, frequent check-ups, making sure that career development plans are laid down and providing resources for achieving these steps” | Clear leadership model, deployment, direct communication, frequent check-ups, career development plans, resources |
| Sharing leadership | “taking ownership and showing the way” | “Company HR has written a “rulebook” of supervisory work in the company, which gives both direct guidelines for some matters, and suggestions or general rules-of-thumb for some matters. Leaders are expected to find their own way for supervisory work, as long as they play along the common rules and guidelines. Company also greatly encourages to have frequent meetings with your team members, such as by providing a budget for team meetings. The company is also really often monitoring the workplace wellbeing to see the happiness or dissatisfaction in teams” | Ownership, showing the way, rulebook, guidelines, autonomy, support, frequent meetings, team, wellbeing, monitoring. |
| Open-ended question | “Someone said if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go in team…… a good servant leader understand that we need many different skills to go far and is able to put them all together and support them to co create and work together” | “Servant leadership is another tool in the vast toolbox of HR methods. Like many other tools, it has lots of useful and good practices, but is probably best used when loosely fitted to existing good practices of the teams”. | Go fast go alone, go far team, skills, co-create, work together, toolbox, HR practices, good practices, adaptability. |
Laub’s first servant leadership behaviour is “valuing people.” Manager A describes the role model and consistency in decision making is a key in valuing people. Manager B emphasizes availability of managers to discuss personal and project related issues being a key component of servant leader. When discussing developing people, Manager A describes the importance of trust and creating a psychological safe environment allows employees to develop new competence and new ideas, and Manager B emphasizes on availability of resource and encouraging responsibility leadership among employees.
In servant leadership behaviour of building a community, Manager A emphasizes encouraging the employee voice behaviour. Voice is that the employees are allowed to provide suggestions and opinions on the problems of organization, and methods to solve the problem. As related to displaying authenticity, Manager B describes that the first step would be being open and honest to oneself. Manager A describes the role of honesty, emotional intelligence and encouraging open dialogue in the project environment. Manager A mentions the vital aspect of communication and feedback and Manager B notes that a clear leadership model with role clarity as keys steps in providing leadership.
Conclusion
The goal of the article was to find out the servant leadership behaviours in Finnish settings. The result of the exploratory research suggests that servant leadership involves providing employees with information, regular feedback and resources to promote employees’ participation in organization development (Huang et al., 2010). Servant leaders should encourage employees to express their views (both positive and negative) and participate in the decision-making process that can lead to empowerment and work innovation. Finally, servants leaders create a favourable organizational climate supported psychological safety environment for employees to get higher autonomy and control sense, and at the same time, enhance their trust in leaders, thus promoting employee’s voice behavior and work innovation (Zhang 2018; Lv et al. 2022).
The limitation of the exploratory study is that the results is based on the interview of managers in the two case companies, thus making difficult to generalize the results. Nevertheless, the results provide an insight to the servant leadership behaviour characteristics in a Finnish project environment.
