MGT 530 Module 4 Transformational, Servant and Authentic Leadership Example

Fiber to Every Farm: Transformational, Servant or Authentic Leadership for a Rural Broadband Build

Student Name

Master of Business Administration, Aspen University

MGT 530: Leadership Theory and Practice

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Fiber to Every Farm: Transformational, Servant or Authentic Leadership for a Rural Broadband Build

Pennyrile Rural Telephone Cooperative, a composite member-owned company in western Kentucky, has provided telephone service to farms and small towns since 1951. Its 85 employees include line technicians, customer service staff and engineers. With federal and state grants, the cooperative will spend three years building fiber connections to about 9,000 homes, farms and businesses that now have slow internet or none. The build brings long days for crews, pressure from members who want service first and anxiety among technicians who have spent decades maintaining copper lines that fiber will replace. The chief executive, who has led the cooperative for five years, wants to choose a leadership approach for the build.

Three Approaches

Transformational leadership, the most studied of the value-based approaches, inspires followers to pursue a shared vision beyond self-interest by serving as a model worth following, offering an inspiring picture of the future, stretching how people approach problems and caring about each person's development. Walumbwa et al. (2008) developed and validated a measure of authentic leadership with four dimensions: knowing oneself, including one's limits and how one comes across; being open and genuine with others; weighing evidence fairly, including unwelcome evidence, before deciding; and letting one's own moral standards, rather than outside pressure, steer conduct. Authentic leadership predicted followers' organizational citizenship, commitment and satisfaction with the supervisor. A review of servant leadership synthesized six key characteristics: empowering and developing people, humility, authenticity, interpersonal acceptance, providing direction and stewardship (van Dierendonck, 2011).

Do They Really Differ?

Hoch et al. (2018) tested whether ethical, authentic and servant leadership explain anything beyond transformational leadership. Ethical and authentic leadership correlated so highly with transformational leadership that they added little explanation of outcomes such as performance, commitment and satisfaction. Servant leadership, by contrast, explained meaningful additional variance, suggesting it captures something transformational leadership does not, particularly its focus on serving followers' growth.

Mapping Approaches to Decisions

What Staff Fear

Interviews with fifteen employees showed that the build looks different depending on where one stands. Engineers and younger technicians are excited about modern technology. Copper technicians, several with more than twenty years at the cooperative, fear that their knowledge of old lines will become worthless and that younger fiber specialists will be hired over them. Customer service staff dread calls from members angry that a neighbor got fiber first. A leadership approach that inspires the excited while ignoring the anxious would split the workforce just when the build needs everyone.

What Transformational Leadership Offers

Transformational leadership's strength is meaning. Rural families without reliable internet have struggled with remote schooling, telehealth and farm marketing. A chief executive who connects each splice and pole to a family that can finally attend a medical appointment by video gives crews a reason for long days that pay alone does not. This vision belongs in the approach, whatever else is chosen.

Where Authentic Behaviors Fit

Hoch and colleagues' findings do not mean authenticity is unimportant, only that as a measured style it overlaps with transformational leadership. Specific behaviors drawn from Walumbwa and colleagues' dimensions, such as admitting when a schedule promise was too optimistic or explaining the criteria for which areas get service first, will matter greatly to member trust during a build that cannot reach everyone at once.

Recommendation

The evidence and the situation both favor a servant-led approach with transformational vision. Hoch and colleagues' findings suggest servant leadership adds something distinct, and the build's central human challenge, technicians fearing obsolescence and crews working long days, calls for a leader focused on followers' growth and well-being. Vision still matters: a clear picture of what fiber means for rural families gives the work meaning. Authentic behaviors, such as transparency about uncertainty, belong in the approach but, per Hoch and colleagues, add little as a separate model.

Choosing Who Gets Service First

One decision tests the approach most directly: the order in which areas are connected. A transformational instinct might favor a showcase town for early publicity. Servant leadership's stewardship and attention to those with the greatest need points instead to farms and homes with no service at all. The chief executive will publish the criteria, need first and construction efficiency second, and explain them at member meetings.

How It Will Show

The chief executive will guarantee that no copper technician loses a job because of the build and fund fiber certification for all. Overtime will be capped at ten hours a week per technician. She will hold quarterly field visits with each crew, asking what is slowing them, and share build maps showing which families gain service each month.

Measures

The cooperative will track technician retention, the share of copper technicians certified in fiber, injuries and overtime, homes connected against plan and a twice-yearly staff survey on whether employees feel supported.

Risks of a Servant-Led Approach

Servant leadership can be misread as softness, and member pressure to connect faster will be intense. The overtime cap may slow the build in some quarters. The chief executive will explain to the board and members that a crew burned out in year one will not finish year three, and will show the schedule built around sustainable hours.

Expectations for the Board

Directors should look for a leader who spends time in the field, protects crews' hours and explains hard choices openly. It should judge her not only by miles of fiber laid but by whether the cooperative finishes the build with its workforce intact and members' trust strengthened.

Conclusion

Transformational, servant and authentic leadership share much, and Hoch and colleagues' meta-analysis shows where they overlap. For a fiber build that depends on technicians' growth and endurance, servant leadership, joined with a vision of connected rural communities, fits both the evidence and the people.

References

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

van Dierendonck, D. (2011). Servant leadership: A review and synthesis. Journal of Management, 37(4), 1228-1261. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206310380462

Walumbwa, F. O., Avolio, B. J., Gardner, W. L., Wernsing, T. S., & Peterson, S. J. (2008). Authentic leadership: Development and validation of a theory-based measure. Journal of Management, 34(1), 89-126. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206307308913