Addiction Recovery Service where there is an ethos of servant leadership. Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy: Social and Vocational Integration Case Study, UCC, Ireland

Addiction Recovery Service where there is an ethos of servant leadership. Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy in which the goal of the leader is to serve. This is different from traditional leadership where the leader’s main focus is the thriving of their organization. A servant leader shares power puts the needs of the employees first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible. Instead of the people working to serve the leader, the leader exists to serve the people

An Addiction Recovery Day Service runs a day service for people who are in recovery. It also runs support groups for parents of recovering drug addicts one evening per week. These groups are co-facilitated by social care professionals and externally based addiction counselors.

In this support group, parents share stories and struggles, wins, and losses in the ongoing battle of coping with the effects of drug misuse by a family member. These shared stories often go far beyond everyday life experiences to include discussions of past family turmoil, significant family events, and relationships. Sometimes facilitators can feel angry, sad, or overwhelmed by what is said. They often feel humbled by the courage and resilience of the group participants. The task of the facilitator is to encourage and guide the group safely through the meetings.

One of the facilitators, Karen (a social care professional), relates particularly well to one of the parents, John, who reminds her of her brother who lives in America. She would like to invite John and his wife to her home sometime to meet her husband Roger, especially because John is an avid rugby fan like her husband Roger. While Karen gets on with her other colleagues, she has not forged any strong friendships with her colleagues there.

A question asked at the end of a meeting recently struck Karen: “Ye know an awful lot about us, but how come we know nothing about ye?”  Karen is particularly cautious about revealing too much about herself, as she views herself first and foremost as a professional and a facilitator.

She recognizes that the reason she is unwilling to develop close friendships with colleagues is that she regularly meets with her colleagues who have trained as various professionals at team meetings. Staff is from multiple disciplines including Nurses, GP, Psychologists, Occupational Therapists, Social Workers, Addiction Counsellors, and Social Care Professionals.  She finds the team meetings very stressful as the team members often have such different perspectives on cases. Frequently she feels that she is simply not heard because she is not the GP (General Practitioner) or the psychologist even though she has spent more time with the focus persons than others at the meeting. Often Karen feels that members of the teams fall into regular alliances, siding with the same people on different issues and not giving due regard to the perspectives of others on cases discussed. She also finds it hard to hold different views from colleagues she works closely with. Karen feels that they will think she is letting them down if she disagrees with them in front of others.

It can also be unclear at times where one person’s responsibility with a case starts and finishes. Sometimes entire meetings revolved around whose responsibility certain actions are and who knows a case best, which can make meetings tense. A colleague once said that teamwork is much harder than a top-down ‘chain of command,’ because at least with the latter you can go to your manager, and they decide and tell you what to do.