| Course | LDR 535 Leading Change (LDR/535) |
|---|---|
| Week | 3 |
| Paper type | Servant leadership analysis |
| Length | about 1,157 words, 4 double-spaced pages plus title page and references |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | University of Phoenix |
| Program | MBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for LDR 535 Week 3
Serving the Stations That Serve the Towns: Servant Leadership for a Public Radio Network in Financial Crisis
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
LDR/535: Leading Change
Week 3 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
High Desert Public Media, its leaders and its staff are composites written for a model paper.
The first two weeks studied the invented High Desert network after its federal grant disappeared. Week 2's diagnosis found a mission-driven, collegial culture with slow decisions and siloed planning, and appreciative sessions generated ideas for community newsrooms and a shared digital desk. The network's leaders now face hard choices: budget cuts of about $900,000 beyond new revenue, possible restructuring and an anxious staff. President Rebecca Tso, a former reporter who grew up in a rural community the network serves, has asked whether servant leadership, which she admires, can guide a crisis. This paper reviews research on servant leadership, assesses current leadership and applies the approach to the change.
A Measure of Servant Leadership
Liden et al. (2008) developed a multidimensional measure of servant leadership through studies of employees and their supervisors. Their measure covers seven kinds of behavior, from attending to people's personal struggles and contributing to the wider community to understanding the work, sharing authority, developing others, putting their needs ahead of one's own and acting with integrity. Servant leadership predicted community citizenship behaviors, in-role performance and organizational commitment beyond transformational leadership and leader-member exchange.
What Servant Leadership Is
Eva et al. (2019) systematically reviewed servant leadership research and defined it as an other-oriented approach to leadership manifested through one-on-one prioritizing of follower needs and interests and outward reorientation of concern for self toward concern for others within the organization and the larger community. They found consistent associations with follower outcomes such as commitment, engagement and helping behavior, and called for more rigorous research on boundary conditions and on how servant leaders handle difficult situations.
Beyond Transformational Leadership
Hoch et al. (2018) conducted a meta-analysis testing whether ethical, authentic and servant leadership explain outcomes beyond transformational leadership. Ethical and authentic leadership overlapped heavily with transformational leadership and added little, while servant leadership explained meaningful additional variance in outcomes such as job performance, organizational citizenship behavior and employee engagement. The authors suggested servant leadership is distinct and useful.
Assessing High Desert's Leaders
A short servant leadership survey based on the seven dimensions was completed by 48 staff about the senior leadership team, supplemented by interviews.
Strengths
Leaders scored highest on creating value for the community and behaving ethically. Staff described Rebecca as deeply committed to rural listeners and honest about the network's mission. Emotional healing scores were moderate; staff said leaders cared about them personally.
Weaknesses
Leaders scored lowest on empowering and helping subordinates grow. Decisions were concentrated at the top, and staff development had been cut in earlier budgets. Interviews revealed another gap: in the first months of the crisis, leaders delayed sharing the full financial picture to avoid causing anxiety. Staff learned about the funding loss's scale from news reports, and rumors filled the silence.
Leaders protected staff from the bad news, and in doing so left them alone with their fears.
What Staff Said
Staff comments made the gap concrete. A reporter at a rural station wrote that she learned her station might close from a listener who had read a news story. A development officer said she had to answer donors' questions without knowing the facts. Several staff said they would rather hear bad news early and directly than piece it together from rumors. One wrote that the leadership team clearly loved the mission but did not seem to trust staff with the truth.
Why Good Leaders Withhold
Leaders who withhold bad news usually mean well. They hope to spare people worry until a solution is ready, and they fear that sharing incomplete information will cause panic. Research on servant leadership suggests that this protective instinct can become paternalism, treating followers as people to be shielded rather than as partners. In a crisis, the cost of silence is high, because people fill gaps with rumors and may leave before solutions arrive.
Serving Through Hard Truths
Withholding information was well meant but conflicts with servant leadership properly understood. Serving followers' long-term interests means treating them as capable adults who need accurate information to plan their lives and help solve problems. Emotional healing, in Liden et al.'s sense, requires presence and honesty, not avoidance.
Applying Servant Leadership: Transparency
Rebecca will share the full budget picture with all staff, including the size of the gap, the options under consideration and the timeline for decisions. She will hold small-group conversations at each station, including the rural stations, to answer questions in person.
Applying Servant Leadership: Empowering Staff
Cross-station teams of staff will develop proposals for the shared digital desk, community newsrooms and new revenue ideas from Week 2, with authority to test small pilots. Empowering staff in the change applies a dimension where leaders scored lowest and draws on staff knowledge.
Applying Servant Leadership: Putting People First in Cuts
If positions must be eliminated, leaders will first seek voluntary options, such as reduced hours or early retirement, offer severance and job search help, and explain decisions individually and respectfully. Leaders will take visible pay cuts before asking staff for sacrifices.
Applying Servant Leadership: Supporting Rural Staff
Rural station staff feel most at risk and most distant from headquarters. Rebecca and the news director will spend a full day at each rural station in the first month, working alongside staff, hearing concerns and discussing the community newsroom idea from Week 2. Rural staff will be guaranteed a seat on each cross-station team, so their knowledge of local needs shapes the change rather than being consulted afterward.
Applying Servant Leadership: Listening Continuously
A monthly anonymous pulse survey will ask staff whether they feel informed, heard and supported, and results will be shared openly with responses from leaders. This keeps the emotional healing dimension active throughout the change, not only at its start.
Applying Servant Leadership: Creating Value for the Community
Rural communities will be invited into decisions about their stations through advisory groups, building on the appreciative sessions.
Developing Servant Leadership in the Team
The senior team will work with an outside coach for six months on transparency and empowerment, using quarterly feedback from staff on the seven dimensions. Each leader will mentor two staff members, rebuilding the development opportunities that earlier budget cuts removed. Middle managers will receive training in holding honest conversations about change.
Limits and Risks
Servant leadership takes time, and the crisis demands speed. There is also a risk that a desire to protect everyone delays necessary decisions. Leaders will set firm deadlines for decisions while keeping communication open.
Conclusion
Research defines servant leadership as an other-oriented approach focused on followers and community, shows it adds explanatory power beyond transformational leadership and links it to commitment and performance. High Desert's leaders serve their communities well but have not yet empowered staff or shared hard truths. Applied fully, servant leadership calls for transparency, empowerment, fairness in cuts and community involvement, a demanding form of care suited to a crisis.
References
Eva, N., Robin, M., Sendjaya, S., van Dierendonck, D., & Liden, R. C. (2019). Servant leadership: A systematic review and call for future research. The Leadership Quarterly, 30(1), 111-132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2018.07.004
Hoch, J. E., Bommer, W. H., Dulebohn, J. H., & Wu, D. (2018). Do ethical, authentic, and servant leadership explain variance above and beyond transformational leadership? A meta-analysis. Journal of Management, 44(2), 501-529. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206316665461
Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Zhao, H., & Henderson, D. (2008). Servant leadership: Development of a multidimensional measure and multi-level assessment. The Leadership Quarterly, 19(2), 161-177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2008.01.006
What the LDR 535 Week 3 instructions ask
The third LDR 535 assignment typically asks students to apply servant leadership to organizational change. Expect to define servant leadership and its dimensions, review evidence about its effects, compare it with other approaches, such as transformational leadership, and analyze how it could guide a specific change, including difficult decisions. A personal servant leadership profile is sometimes added. A strong graduate paper uses current research, applies dimensions to observed leader behaviors, addresses criticisms and limits and shows how servant leadership would shape concrete actions such as communication, involvement and support for those affected. Cite peer-reviewed sources in APA format.
How this LDR 535 Week 3 example is built
High Desert's leaders care deeply about their staff and communities, yet in the first months of the crisis they withheld bad news to avoid upsetting people, which left staff anxious and rumors spreading. The paper asks whether servant leadership, often seen as gentle, can guide a crisis. Research developing a multidimensional measure identifies behaviors such as emotional healing, creating value for the community, empowering, helping subordinates grow and behaving ethically. A systematic review defines servant leadership by its other orientation, toward followers and community, and finds positive outcomes. A meta-analysis shows that servant leadership explains outcomes beyond transformational leadership. An assessment of leaders against these dimensions finds strong community orientation but weak transparency and empowerment, and the paper applies servant leadership to the change.
LDR 535 Week 3 grading rubric: where the points go
Reviewers of graduate servant leadership papers look for faithful use of the research, willingness to question the approach and a convincing application. Evidence from followers, not only leaders' self-descriptions, strengthens the assessment. High marks require clear definitions of servant leadership and its dimensions, evidence about its effects and its relationship to other theories and an honest assessment of how leaders do or do not show these behaviors. Graders reward papers that confront the challenge of serving people while making difficult decisions, rather than treating servant leadership as kindness alone. Concrete applications to the change, such as how layoffs or restructuring would be handled, show depth and give the approach a practical test.
LDR 535 Week 3 help: mistakes to avoid
Students often describe servant leadership as being nice or putting employees' wishes first. Research defines it as orientation toward followers' growth and well-being and the community's good, which sometimes requires hard truths. Explain that balance. Another common gap is listing dimensions without linking them to observed behaviors. Use evidence about how leaders act. Some papers ignore whether servant leadership adds anything beyond transformational leadership; research addresses this directly. Others avoid the difficult parts of change, such as job cuts. Show how servant leadership would guide them. Ask followers how leaders behave rather than relying on leaders' intentions. Finally, consider limits, such as time and the risk of avoiding conflict, so the analysis is balanced.
Related LDR 535 sample papers
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- LDR 535 Week 4: Transformational Leadership in Change
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- LDR 535 Week 6: Change Leadership Plan
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LDR 535 Week 3 questions, answered
What does LDR 535 Week 3 usually cover?
It usually covers servant leadership and how it can guide organizational change, including its dimensions, evidence about its effects and how it compares with transformational leadership.
Where can I find a free LDR 535 Week 3 sample paper?
This page holds a complete Week 3 paper testing servant leadership against a funding crisis at an invented public radio network, with its sources.
What are the dimensions of servant leadership?
A common measure looks at seven behaviors: tending to people's personal troubles, adding value for the wider community, understanding the work, sharing authority, developing others, placing their needs first and acting with integrity.
Is servant leadership different from transformational leadership?
Research finds overlap but also shows that servant leadership explains variance in outcomes beyond transformational leadership, largely because of its focus on followers' needs and the wider community.
Can servant leaders make hard decisions?
Yes; servant leadership aims at followers' and the community's long-term good, which can require honest communication and difficult choices made with care and fairness.
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