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Hurt, Long Explore Positional Authority and Influence in Servant Leadership

A new study by Kevin Hurt, an associate professor of management in the Turner College, and Elliott Long, a graduate of the Turner College’s MSOL program, explores the concepts of positional authority and influence in servant leadership.  The study, which appears in a 2023 issue of the Journal of Values-Based Leadership, explains that a large portion of servant leadership literature is dedicated to understanding specific characteristics that embody and demonstrate the true essence of servant leadership, such as empathy, conceptualization, and a commitment to the growth of other people.  To date, this literature accounts for the positional authority held by the servant leader, which is a contextual factor that has the potential to serve as either a highly impactful tailwind or headwind to unleashing servant leadership’s positive effect on organizational performance.  The new study by Hurt and Long addresses two related research questions.  First, how does positional authority moderate the servant leadership-organizational performance relationship?  Second, how can practitioners implement servant leadership in the absence of positional authority?  They address the first question by considering the implications of upper echelon theory as well as research on the performance of organizations whose executive team practices servant leadership.  To answer the second research question, Hurt and Long apply the servant leadership of Jesus Christ to situations faced by modern-day servant leaders when positional authority is lacking.  
 
Analysis by Hurt and Long suggests that four steps taken by Jesus Christ in his servant leadership journey can be replicated by modern-day servant leaders who lack positional authority yet desire to positively impact the performance of their organization or less-formalized team.  These steps include (1) cleaning the mirror image, (2) leading others with compassion, (3) leading others to be their best selves, and (4) planting golden mustard seeds, and they can be applied in for-profit, government, and non-profit settings.  Hurt and Long conclude that one pragmatic way for contemporary leaders to put their framework into practice to cultivate and leverage influence and commit to self-improvement is to solicit 360-degree feedback anonymously from peers to understand others’ perceptions on one’s strengths and weaknesses.  This can provide honest and, at times, painful-to-hear feedback that can propel one’s ability to lead oneself well.  Another is to spend one-on-one time with others in order to get to know each follower individually.  As the leader learns about the unique characteristics, strengths, and areas of potential for each follower through active listening, the leader can provide foresight to the follower by studying and learning from past mistakes so that mistakes can lead to future improvements instead of barriers that hold the follower back. 
 
Hurt earned a PhD in management from the University of Texas – Pan American, and his primary research interests include servant leadership, conflict, and human resource management.  His work has been published in the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, Human Resources Development International, the International Journal of Servant-Leadership, Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, and the Journal of Applied Management & Entrepreneurship.  A past recipient of CSU’s Chappell Graduate Faculty Award, Hurt previously worked for 15 years with two Fortune 500 companies in the fields of banking and manufacturing.  Finally, he served six years in the United States Marine Corps, 4th Marine Division, where he was nationally recognized for his leadership.  Long earned a BBA in finance from the University of Georgia, and is a graduate of the Chief Risk Officer Executive Development program at George Mason University.  He is currently a Senior Principal at Gartner, Inc., in its Enterprise Risk Management Advisory practice, where he serves as the Risk Management in Financial Services Advisory Lead.  Prior to joining Gartner, Long was a consultant at Deloitte and later an enterprise risk manager at Aflac.  He has received numerous international industry awards, including the Risk Management Society’s Rising Star Award.

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