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 p;rinciples
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.
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The leader as servant
Critique
of this idea - what's wrong with the idea of servant leadership?
Reply
to objections - reply to an objection to my criticism of the
idea of servant leadership
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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.
Here are some free articles on other leadership topics:
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| For
a radical shake-up of leadership theory, buy my new book on
leadership! Click here to learn more. |
Your
most important leadership trait 04/07
The
fundamental purpose of leadership 04/07
For
other free critiques of popular conceptions of leadership, click
here.
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