Servant Leadership Case Study

Our group was given the privilege to interview Anton Goff, the current Director of Athletics for the University of Hartford. Goff was able to provide us with valuable insights on how he advanced through the ranks of athletic administration. He was able to explain how he uses servant and situational leadership styles to positively direct and influence his employees and student-athletes. He states, “I’m all about servant leadership so I want to help young people that want to get into the business and go from there, because I didn’t get to where I am today without help from other people” (Goff, Oct. 23, 2015). In doing so, he has advanced his athletic administration career from working as an academic advisor to ultimately becoming a Division

Part of being a successful athletic director is the ability to not only compete with your competitors, but also build upon positive relationships with them. Goff states, “We’re all competitors, but we consider each other colleagues first. It’s been good to go to meetings with these guys, and pick their brains on why we’ve been doing the things a certain way in the conference, and finding out what they’re doing” (Goff). This is clearly an important attribute of being a successful leader. It is essential in leadership positions to not only be able to compete with your competitors, but also to gain their trust and knowledge through mutual respect. At Hartford, Goff has shown his ability in his short time to build upon the relationships of his fellow athletic directors, while successfully applying essential management skills to compete at a high

Goff states, “I’m not going to be able to sell popcorn at a game, as well as make sure the locker rooms are clean, as well as sell tickets, as well as market everything. You need good people around you to be able to do that, and you got to be able to identify what good people are.” Although Goff attributes a lot of his culture to servant leadership, it is not the only style that he abides by.
Goff also preaches situational leadership, because different situations warrant different actions. Goff states, “As much as I love to be a servant leader and love to get buy-in from people when we’re doing projects or getting ideas, there’s also times where you need to be directive and you need to make decisions on the fly.” Furthermore, Goff likes to be able to remain fluid as a leader when dealing with any aspect of change and always finding the best course of action to deal with it. He states, “Just because we were doing something today didn’t mean we were going to do it tomorrow, and if we changed something tomorrow, if there’s a better way to do it the day after that we’re going to do that too”