Critique of Servant Leadership
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This crtique is an expansion of another article on Servant Leadership Without doubt managers could better motivate employees by serving the needs of subordinates. Leaders determine direction, managers execute it. Determining new directions often requires boat-rocking single mindedness that may run contrary to the needs of followers. The management task of executing direction does require the nurturing of subordinates, but this is not leadership. The manager-as-servant is not a problematic concept, but leaders cannot really be servants - they are too focused on achieving goals that they deem worthwhile regardless of the needs of followers. Yes, leaders might nurture people to influence them but this is only a means to an end - to achieve an external purpose. A critical difference here is that serving people, for a servant, is an end in itself, not a way to achieve other goals. It should be noted that this critique of servant leadership is based on a total separation of leadership and management. The latter might be somewhat servant-like but the leader must challenge the status quo to promote new directions. On this view, leaders are boat-rockers not servants. In short, leaders are people who:
The idea of servant leadership is therefore little more than a clever gimmick. It is not so obviously a contradiction in terms in public sector organizations where direction is more or less fixed and effectiveness is only a matter of providing excellent service at high quality and low cost. In fast moving markets where constant innovation and new directions are regularly sought, executives cannot help but make people feel uncomfortable at times. Their focus must be primarily external, not so much internal on the needs of followers. But if an organization's direction is more or less fixed, little or no leadership is necessary. It is mainly good management that is required. The reality is that a lot of what managers do is simply not leadership. It may be management, coaching, motivating, developing, but these activities do not constitute leadership. It might be acceptable to see managers as servants, but even here, if leaders must be rebels to some extent, what kind of role model for developing leaders is provided by a manager who is primarily a nourisher of others, a servant type? The danger of the Servant Leadership concept is that it can prevent us from seeing that anyone at any level can be a leader and that to do so they have to be competitive high achievers who are determined to excel and differentiate themselves from others. Certainly you have to have some of the characteristics of servant leaders in order to get along with people, but these characteristics are by no means what leadership is all about. You might object "Cannot a leader do both: set challenging new directions and be servant-like?" Consider carefully what it means to be a servant. A servant must be unquestioningly dedicated to serving his master's every whim. If his master wants to be a drug addict, it is the servant's duty to supply any drugs his master requests. A true servant should do precisely what his master requests regardless of whether it is good for his master. Is this a useful metaphor for a leader? Compare this model to that of a coach. A coach is like a sculptor. He has an image of what he wants to create and he will push, challenge and stretch any athlete he is coaching to shape him into the image he wants to see realized. If a leader must challenge the status quo to be a leader, it would not be inconsistent to imagine him challenging individuals also as any good coach would do. But can a servant challenge his master? A servant is essentially a slave and a slave who challenges his master is either a dead slave or a free man - hence no longer a slave. Basically, the point here is that the whole idea of leader-as-servant is conceptually bankrupt. Again, the principles of servant leadership - to nurture and develop employees - is most laudable. It is just the servant metaphor that is all wrong. To advocate nurturing leadership (or management) is much less extreme than to expect leaders to be servants to their employees. There is a world of difference between showing consideration for employee needs and being a servant to them. The former is good common sense. The latter is a form of extremism that is just as harmful as the idea that the leader should be a tyrant or autocrat. Reply to objections in defense of Servant LeadershipSome people have objected strongly via email to what they see as my overly narrow conception of what a servant does. They say: ''Does not the servant leader serve the organization's needs as well?'' Yes, but this is not the original concept of servant leader who focuses on the needs of followers. More importantly, saying that a leader is a servant in the sense of serving the organization or some broader objectives adds nothing to what it means to be a leader. The problem is that it doesn't help us distinguish what it means to be a leader from what it means to be a manager. Actually, this is also true of the notion of servant leader as serving the needs of followers. Managers also do this, so we are no further ahead in trying to differentiate them. In fact, you could say that all dedicated professionals are servants - doctors, teachers, public servants. Anyone who is dedicated to serving some higher cause beyond immediate gratification or selfish motives is, in this broader definition, a servant. Is this not true of leaders also? Yes, but then we have watered down the concept of servant so much that it tells us nothing that is distinctive of leadership as leadership. Certainly, a good leader shares a dedication to serve along with all and sundry other dedicated professionals. In trying to understand the nature of leadership, however, we want to understand what differentiates leadership from other professional roles. This watered down notion of being a servant is simply unhelpful in this quest while the narrower definition of servantship is simply false as a portrayal of leadership. An analogy would be: suppose someone asks you what is an elephant and you reply: a mammal. This is true but, by itself, this does not say what differentiates elephants from other mammals, which is the more interesting question.
See also my two latest articles on servant leadership: (1) Sevant Leadership: A Bad Idea and (2) Against Servant Leadership. When you think of leadership do you have a particular ideal in mind? What is your image of the ideal leader? Do you think its possible for management to shed its negative image and be reinvented for the 21st century and, even better, finally differentiated from leadership? See article that tries to show how this is possible: Leadership and Management Reinvented. Do you think women might be better leaders than men or vice versa? See Are Women Better Leaders than Men? and Is Leadership Feminine? |
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