Servant Leadership

Professional Employer Organization

What is servant leadership?

Servant leadership is one of the most popular leadership models around today.
The concept was developed by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970.
The servant leader serves the people he/she leads which implies that they are an end in themselves rather than a means to an organizational purpose or bottom line.

What do servant leaders do?

devote themselves to serving the needs of organization members.
focus on meeting the needs of those they lead.
develop employees to bring out the best in them.
coach others and encourage their self expression.
facilitate personal growth in all who work with them.
listen and build a sense of community.

Servant leaders are felt to be effective because the needs of followers are so looked after that they reach their full potential, hence perform at their best. A strength of this way of looking at leadership is that it forces us away from self-serving, domineering leadership and makes those in charge think harder about how to respect, value and motivate people reporting to them.

Looked at critically, however, we have to ask whether the idea of leader and employee as partners might not be better than the idea of leaders as servants. It's just as paternalistic to switch from controlling boss to nurturing boss. Treating employees as partners is even more respectful and valuing. Serving people's needs creates the image of being slavish or subservient, not a very positive image. In addition, leaders need to serve the needs of shareholders ahead of those of employees. Surely, it makes more sense to say simply that leaders should CONSIDER the needs of employees not be a servant to them. Shifting metaphors from leaders-as-autocrats to leaders-as-servants is going from one extreme to the other. Neither end of the spectrum is very revealing about how organizations function. The principles of servant leadership are admirable. It is the image of SERVANT with its slave-like connotation that is problematic and misleading. See my Critique of this idea for more on my objections to servant leadership.

Selflessness

Advocates of servant leadership emphasize two factors, serving employees and being selfless. The latter is a valuable trait, but we don't need to call it servant leadership to advocate selflessness. A good example of being selfless is a political leader who champions an unpopular policy, like eliminating carbon waste by a tight deadline because he or she feels it is in the best interest of the country. The leader who campains mainly on the basis of popular policies like cutting taxes is really just buying votes. This person is more interested in getting elected than doing what is best for the country. We naturally take a cynical attitude toward such people and question whether they ought to be regarded as leaders at all. The selfless leader is willing to risk his or her own fate in order to do what is right. This is real leadership, like that of Martin Luther King who risked going to jail and being killed in order to stand up for what he believed in. Of course, many professionals are also selfless without being leaders - many doctors and nurses, for example. So, it is not only leaders who are selfless. In any case, selflessness is possible without being a servant.