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In the previous chapters, I set out a conceptual model of trauma-informed servant leadership and discussed servant leadership supervision for working with burnout, compassion fatigue and secondary trauma in employees within trauma related health and social care settings. In this chapter, I further extend servant leadership to the peer support principle in trauma-informed approaches (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2014). The first part of this chapter will examine peer support work (PSW) and report on the outcomes associated with it. Then, servant leadership will be discussed and used to operationalise the principle of peer support as set out in trauma-informed approaches. A servant leadership peer support approach is put forward with a theoretical basis. This theoretical model has been slightly changed from the previous servant leadership approaches discussed, in order to represent the PSW role more accurately. However, as discussed previously, it is not the characteristics of the Servant leadership (SL) model that define the approach, rather the philosophy and desire to serve first. In the last section of this chapter, Martha Griffin brings the characteristics of this model to life using her vast experience and discusses some of the potential challenges faced by peers in training and practice.

Peer support has gained increasing attention within the mental health literature, including the trauma informed approaches research where peer support is a key principle. The purpose of this paper is to outline a servant leadership model of trauma peer support.

A targeted literature search that incorporated systematic reviews, meta-analyses and randomised control trials in the areas of servant leadership, peer support and trauma informed approaches were sourced.

Servant leadership can be used to provide a theoretical model of trauma peer support. All three constructs share the idea of empowerment as a core principle. An ideographic model of servant leadership trauma peer support is put forward based on eight characteristics from the extant literature.

As with all conceptual papers, a lack of empirical data means the findings need to be investigated using primary data. Future research may wish to use this theoretical model to test effectiveness in equivalence studies.

A theoretical model of trauma informed peer support based on servant leadership theory, with a clear guide to its utilisation.

This is a novel approach, a new addition to the literature.

In this chapter, an overview of the trauma-informed approach is described. The background and context to trauma, its impact on the person, and organisational responses are considered. More specifically, I distinguish between trauma specific and non-specific organisations by defining the characteristic of each. This chapter sets the tone for the remainder of the book by introducing a conceptual model for both specific and non-specific trauma organisations. In order to do this, I outline the differential components that are deemed necessary for organisations to be trauma-responsive; in doing so, I introduce the Trauma Ecology Model to the literature, outlining its various components.

This paper aims to test whether servant leaders lead followers to socially interact more frequently, closely and personally with peers, and if this social interaction links servant leaders with employees’ personal social capital, both in terms of bonding (networks linking employees of a similar kind) and bridging (networks linking agents of different kinds).

Data were collected from 403 employees from 59 large Spanish hotels. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

The results reveal that servant leadership has a positive effect on bonding and bridging, which is mediated by employees’ social interactions with peers inside and outside their groups, respectively.

The findings suggest that hotel managers should adopt servant leadership to facilitate social interactions at work, thus allowing employees to individually gain personal assets that improve the hotel’s social capital resources.

This is the first study to analyze whether servant leadership shapes personal social capital in business settings. Moreover, it is the first to show the mechanisms (social interactions with peers inside and outside their groups) through which managerial servant leadership encourages this valuable personal asset in hotels.

The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, it systematically reviews and synthesizes research on servant leadership in management and hospitality management literature. Second, by reviewing and comparing the characteristics of the hospitality industry and servant leadership attributes, this study provides insights concerning the conceptualizations and theorization of servant leadership in hospitality management and discusses future research directions.

The current study reviewed 106 articles published during the period of 1970 to 2018 in hospitality management and broader management literature.

The characteristics of the hospitality industry and servant leadership attributes were found to be mutually inclusive, both consisting qualities such as trust, integrity, honesty, care, servant behavior, listening and community focus.

Scholars should concentrate on exploring what makes servant leaders unique in the hospitality industry.

The study reviews the hospitality characteristics, and servant leadership attributes offer new research avenues.

The purpose of this study is to provide insights into the effect of servant leadership on turnover intentions. The authors investigate the mediating effects of perceived organizational support (POS), job embeddedness and job satisfaction on the relationship between servant leadership and turnover intentions. In doing so, the authors seek to make the following contributions. First, the authors seek to provide additional empirical evidence for servant leadership as an effective organizational theory. Additionally, the authors seek to establish POS, embeddedness and job satisfaction as underlying mechanisms that transmit the positive effects of servant leadership.

The data were collected from a paper and pencil survey questionnaire provided to employees of different organizations in a metropolitan area in the southeastern United States. The sample consisted of 150 participants; complete (listwise) data were available for 115 participants.

The study shows that POS and embeddedness are mediating mechanisms through which servant leadership is related to employee turnover intentions. The authors found POS and job embeddedness to be significant mediating constructs which help explain the nature of the relationship between servant leadership and turnover intentions.

By investigating these constructs in the present framework, we help to provide answers to the questions of how and why servant leadership affects employee outcomes. These answers are an important step towards more fully understanding the complex ways by which followers respond to servant leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between servant leadership and agency problems. Also, the paper seeks to determine whether gender plays a role in this relationship.

A survey of 276 employees was carried out to investigate the relationship between the characteristics of servant leadership and the constructs of agency problems of 36 male and 22 female managers/supervisors in the banking sector months before the financial crisis in Cyprus. The responses were subjected to a series of correlational and structural equation modelling analyses.

The study revealed three major findings. First, the relationship between servant leadership behaviour and agency problems is near zero and not significant. Second, the servant leadership behaviour of female managers/supervisors brings the desired negative influence on the constructs of agency problems. Finally, the servant leadership behaviour of males has a more positive and significant influence on agency problems than that of females. These findings should be interpreted with caution, because more female than male participants rated the male managers/supervisors, and salient traits might cause followers to feel that female managers display more servant leadership characteristics, regardless of whether they exhibit them or not.

The conclusions cannot be generalised because the research was conducted in a country undergoing a financial crisis. However, this study provides a springboard to further explore whether the findings are valid if the sample is taken from a country not facing financial crisis, and if an equal number of male and female participants involved in rating male managers/supervisors.

These findings provide evidence that servant leadership is not a gender-neutral ethical construct, and practitioners should focus to develop or recruit managers who possess an ethic of care that could bring the desired negative outcome on the constructs of agency problems.

This is the first study empirically investigating the agency problems – ethical leadership relationship in Cyprus. Moreover, the potential role played by gender for the aforementioned relationship was empirically examined.

Mental health services have changed significantly in the past few decades. Currently, our services are transforming from one that was biomedically led to one that encompasses a recovery orientation. Additionally, a new field of study as it related to mental health care is emerging that of trauma-informed care. In this chapter, we explore briefly what we mean by the terms trauma and trauma-informed care. This is followed by a critical examination of how co-production and servant leadership can work together to support individuals through their trauma towards recovery and well-being. From which, we suggest that peer support workers are suitable candidates to co-produce trauma-informed services as they embody the connecting principles of choice and empowerment needed for all three concepts to converge and work together to enhance recovery and well-being. While I focus on using co-production in the mental health space in this chapter, the principles and practices can equally apply to other health and social care services.

Practitioners, organisations and policy makers in health and social care settings are increasingly recognising the need for trauma-informed approaches in organisational settings, with morbidity and financial burdens a growing concern over the past few years. Servant leadership has a unique focus on emotional healing, service to others as the first priority, in addition to the growth, well-being and personal and professional development of key stakeholders. This paper aims to discuss Trauma Informed Servant Leadership (TISL).

A targeted review of the servant leadership and trauma-informed care literature was conducted. Relevant studies, including systematic review and meta-analysis, were sourced, with the resulting interpretation informing the conceptual model.

Although there are general guidelines regarding how to go about instituting trauma-informed approaches, with calls for organisational leadership to adapt the often cited six trauma-informed principles, to date there has not been a leadership approach elucidated which takes as its starting point and core feature to be trauma informed. At the same time, there is a paucity of research elucidating trauma outcomes for service users or employees in the literature when a trauma-informed approach is used. However, there is a large body of evidence indicating that servant leadership has many of the outcomes at the employee level that trauma-informed approaches are attempting to attain. Thus, the author builds on a previous conceptual paper in which a model of servant leadership and servant leadership supervision are proposed to mitigate against compassion fatigue and secondary trauma in the health and social care sector. The author extends that research to this paper by recasting servant leadership as a trauma-informed model of leadership that naturally operationalises trauma-informed principles.

A lack of primary data limits the extent to which conclusions can be drawn on the effectiveness of this conceptual model. However, the model is based on robust research across the differential components used; therefore, it can act as a framework for future empirical research designs to be studies at the organisational level. Both the servant leadership and trauma-informed literatures have been extended with the addition of this model.

TISL can complement the trauma-informed approach and may also be viable as an alternative to trauma-informed approaches. This paper offers guidelines to practitioners and organisations in health and social care on how to operationalise important trauma-informed principles through leadership.

This conceptual model may help reduce the burden of trauma and re-traumatisation encountered by practitioners and service users in health and social care settings, impacting on morbidity.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is a novel approach, the first of its kind.