Lecture by Professor Noel Pearse, PhD at the Management Class
On Wednesday, 13th November 2013, Faculty of Economics University of Ljubljana was hosting at Management Course of Full Professor Vlado Dimovski, PhD, Assistant Professor Sandra Penger, PhD and assistant Judita Peterlin esteemed Professor Noel Pearse, PhD, from Rhodes University, South Africa.
Professor Pearse structured his lecture titled “Servant Leadership” into two main parts.
In his first part he provided the students with the practical framework of servant leadership by presenting students with the main elements that South Africa is dealing with in economical, social and environmental sphere. He also provided the comparison between Slovenia and South Africa. Due to high inequality in their society value-based leadership is of great importance in educational environment. The White Paper on the Transformation of Higher Education in South Africa sets out the vision for universities and incorporates community service as an integral and core part of higher education in South Africa. South African role model leaders are F. W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Albert Lutuli – four Nobel prize winners who received this precious reward for their peace efforts.
In his second part of the lecture professor Pearse focused on his latest research interest – development of servant leadership in educational setting. He presented the main findings of his research “Development of a philosophy and practice of servant leadership through service opportunity” (in collaboration with Simon Taylor and Lynette Louw). The main finding of grounded theory research is that service engagement in local community service projects is the main catalyst in servant leadership development. What we found specially interesting is the incorporation of voluntary service in the grading system of the students (eg. Grade 10 – each student was required to do twenty-five hours of community service projects per term; Grade 12 – each student was assigned a leadership portfolio). Incorporating service develops the “right kind” of leader as
service provides an excellent context for youth leadership development in higher educational institutions.
Students sincerely thanked our respected guest, Professor Noel Pearse, PhD, for emphasizing that servant leader is servant first. The leadership development process begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve – to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead, later.
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