How to respond to the following with citations

One of the biggest pillars to servant leadership is to put others needs above your own. This is probably the biggest aspect that encompasses most religious beliefs or ideal structures. As Craig St. John points out " A principal teaching of Buddhism that relates to servant leadership is the notion of anatta, or "no self," (John,2019) No self is the idea that your needs and wants do not come before those of others or the greater good. By sacrificing your own needs and wants and putting others above you, you are in fact being a servant to their needs. Additionally you can look at this key principal of no self, or selfless actions and see that if your goal is to serve others and achieve the greater good, then religion is not required, just the desire to follow those aspects of what a servant leader is. An atheist can be a servant leader, if they values and principals they follow are those of a servant leader. Because of this, there are no boundaries for being a servant leader other than those someone puts on themselves.

How to respond to the following with citations

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 (Greenleaf, 2021). The idea of leaders being servants to many seems as a foreign and quite frankly, backwards concept. If someone is a leader, why are they serving anyone? Shouldn't the employees be the servants? Absolutely not. As stated in the readings and the video, one should seek to serve first, and lead second to truly be considered a servant leader.

In the Army, we are groomed for leadership positions from the beginning of our time. While many soldiers see being a leader as a bigger paycheck or more power, there were some of us who had a desire to help others along our way. I had never had a leader who was willing to serve their soldiers. They would train us to ensure that we could do our jobs, but it stopped there. I on the other hand, had the desire to give my soldiers more than what I had received. I wanted them to have the opportunities I did not have coming up through the ranks. I wanted to educate them to ensure that when the time came, they would be ready to adapt to civilian life. Many newer soldiers didn't even have basic life skills such as how to write a check or balance their finances. I made it a point to show all of those who worked for me how to thrive and succeed in the world around them.