Question

5. Discuss issues associated with servant leadership in a computer-mediated environment.

Answer 1

In servant leadership, the main objective of a leader is to serve. It focuses on the wants of others particularly the team members. The servant leaders focus on the well being of people and communities on which they belong to. There is a risk in taking the time to ensure others' needs are met before your own personal need.

Another issue in using servant style leadership is employees may take one's kindness for weakness in a computer-mediated environment, because most of the leaders lead aggressively, making little concern for the feelings and needs of followers and some employees don’t know how to appreciate the gestures of servant leaders. Some employees need leadership that guides and regulate and may not know how to handle leaders who are nurturing and cares about building them.

Ethics, trust, support are common characteristics of servant leadership. It is quite difficult to convey those attributes to employees over a computer-based environment. Body language, eye contact, and personal communications are the ways in which empathy and openness can be shown, but the computer-mediated environment is a very less intimate version of communication.