WANGARI MAATHAI AS A SERVANT LEADER.
“There are two dead end roads in Leadership. The first dead end is to try to be someone else, and the other is simply to be who we are in the vain hope that the world will recognize our innate brilliance and leadership talent….”as explained by Larry C. Spears in his book Insights of Leadership. A servant leader is an individual of character who understands himself and puts people first. He is a skilled communicator, compassionate collaborator, has foresight for the future and a thinker who exercises moral authority. A servant leader does not approach leadership with a top-down hierarchical style but emphasizes on trust and empathy in collaboration with others. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions and later serve others. This doesn’t mean that a servant leader is one who is liked by all, but his/her impact on the world is felt by many, for eternity. The writings of Robert K. Greenleaf identified characteristics of servant leaders as, “listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of others, and building community”.
In Kenya we have had such a leader, a servant leader. A heroin, the late Wangari Maathai. She was born in Kenya and went to study in the USA. She came back with masters in biological sciences. She became the first woman in East Africa to acquire a doctorate .She joined politics during which her servant first type of leadership began to dominate. She sought to end devastation of Kenya forest and lands caused by development to redeem the negative impact that was already beginning to be evident on our country’s environment. So in 1977 she launched the Green Belt Movement to reforest her beloved...