what is servant leadership essay

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What Is Servant Leadership?

The concept of servant leadership goes back millennia, but the term itself was first used by Robert Greenleaf in his 1970 essay, “The Servant as Leader.” This leadership philosophy has skyrocketed in popularity since then, with numerous books published on the topic and increased attention being bestowed on it in the media and popular culture.

We sat down with Rebecca Herman , Graduate Professor of Leadership at Purdue Global and an organizational culture expert, to learn more about servant leadership and its benefits.

What Is a Servant Leader?

“There are many ways to define it,” Herman says, “but my personal favorite goes back to Robert Greenleaf's definition: ‘The servant leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve first.’”

The Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership further defines servant leadership as “a philosophy and set of practices that enriches the lives of individuals, builds better organizations and ultimately creates a more just and caring world.”

What does this mean? It means that a servant leader focuses on the growth and well-being of employees and other stakeholders in their organization. Servant leaders seek to help the people they serve grow as individuals.

“If they are growing, then they desire to perform and achieve,” Herman says. “They have more capability to accomplish things, and therefore they're really serving in return, and it becomes a cycle of positive service and performance, which I believe makes servant leadership exceptional.”

How Does Servant Leadership Differ From Traditional Leadership?

Traditional leadership, Herman notes, focuses on such things as strategy, goals, financial performance, and customer satisfaction. “Those things aren’t bad, of course,” she says. “Those are things we expect leaders to do. We want our CEO to focus on things that are going to bring us profit.

“But servant leaders go further. They focus on providing their employees with development opportunities. Employees today want to feel they have a job where they can succeed. They want an opportunity to be coached and mentored by someone. And since servant leaders put people first, they get to know them on a different level. They help them to develop, they give them opportunities because they empower them versus micromanage them.”

What’s Driving the Growth of Servant Leadership?

“We live in a very fast-paced technological world,” Herman says. “We are inundated with information at such increasingly large levels that it's almost impossible to keep up with. We're people first, and our basic human needs are needing to be met.

“Servant leaders understand how to build a workplace culture where teams and community are valued. And people want that real feeling of community in the workplace because they don't have it in their lives.”

Herman says our present culture can be disconnecting.

“We are incredibly virtual today,” she says. “We have virtual jobs, serve on virtual teams, and get to know people virtually on social media. We text more than we speak on the phone or face-to-face. Even dating is done on an app—you have the option of swiping left or right to determine if you may want to meet someone. People are craving real relationships and real connections. Plus, this goes back to that whole idea that we all really want to feel we've contributed to the world, that we want work that has true meaning.”

The Benefits of Servant Leadership

Increased employee loyalty and a beloved company culture are benefits of this style of leadership. Productivity and problem-solving are also bolstered with servant leadership.

“Servant-led employees don't fear that if they take a risk and try to do the right thing, they could get punished,” Herman says. “I think that makes them perform at more of a risk-taking level, as long as they're doing it based on the goals, the mission, and the core values of the organization.

“And that ultimately leads to how that business performs,” she says. “If every person is performing at their best, imagine what the organization is going to be like. People who receive coaching and personal development are equipped to be empowered to make decisions to serve their customers. Empowered employees are more engaged, and this increases job satisfaction, which increases retention. You want great people to stay a part of your organization.”

Well-Known Servant-Led Companies

Some of the best-performing companies are well-versed in this style of leadership. Herman named the following companies with servant leaders at the helm:

• Southwest Airlines
• Whole Foods
• TDIndustries
• Men's Wearhouse

“When we think of these organizations, we often think about how outstanding their customer service is,” she says. “It really isn't accidental, because they're servant-led companies, so their servant-led employees want to make sure the customer is always cared for.

“These are not just the best companies to work for, they're also very high-performing companies—some of the most profitable and successful in the business world.”

And there’s a reason these are familiar companies with familiar stories being told. Servant leaders are very values-based and mission-driven, so they share stories frequently. That is an additional benefit for a servant-led company looking to build or sustain a brand.

Do You Aspire to Be a Servant Leader?

Making a decision to become a servant leader is making a decision to succeed and to lead your company to success.

“You need to know that it's going to become who you are more than what you do,” Herman says. “This is great because it bleeds into your personal relationships and who you are in your community.

“Being a servant leader is amazing, but it's a huge commitment because you're really going to have to take very intentional actions to be a servant leader. It's really about truly walking that talk every day, and modeling that behavior.”

Herman says that the greatest leaders have a desire to serve the greater good—and that they may encounter pushback.

“There will be people who will say that you're a little crazy,” she says. “They're going to say that it doesn't work if you want to call yourself a servant leader. But you have to be willing to defend that and stand up for it. Be prepared because you will face a lot of resistance.”

Herman compares servant leadership in the workplace to the ultimate servant leadership in the home.

“I don't want to say that leadership is like parenting, but parents are really servant leaders in many ways,” she says. “And I don't know many parents that would be considered soft or weak. They want to have the best for their kids. That's why they discipline. That's why they try to help them be the best they can be.

“Being a servant leader will change you, and it will change those around you. It can be a little frightening, but the results are worth it.”

Learn More About Being a Servant Leader

Herman recommends these books to read more about servant leadership:

• On Becoming a Servant Leader by Robert Greenleaf and Peter Drucker
• The Servant Leader: How to Build a Creative Team, Develop Great Morale, and Improve Bottom-Line Performance by James A. Autry
• The Serving Leader: Five Powerful Actions to Transform Your Team, Business, and Community by Ken Jennings and John Stahl-Wert
• Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading by Serving by James W. Sipe and Don M. Frick
• The Servant: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership by James C. Hunter

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• What is Servant Leadership?

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.” -Robert K. Greenleaf

Servant Leadership is a non-traditional leadership philosophy, embedded in a set of behaviors and practices that place the primary emphasis on the well-being of those being served.

The Servant as Leader

While servant leadership is a timeless concept, the phrase “servant leadership” was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, an essay that he first published in 1970. In that essay, Greenleaf said:

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

“The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?“

A servant-leader focuses primarily on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid,” servant leadership is different. The servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.

The Institution as Servant

Robert Greenleaf recognized that organizations as well as individuals could be servant-leaders. Indeed, he had great faith that servant-leader organizations could change the world. In his second major essay, The Institution as Servant, Greenleaf articulated what is often called the “credo.” There he said:

“This is my thesis: caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built. Whereas, until recently, caring was largely person to person, now most of it is mediated through institutions – often large, complex, powerful, impersonal; not always competent; sometimes corrupt. If a better society is to be built, one that is more just and more loving, one that provides greater creative opportunity for its people, then the most open course is to raise both the capacity to serve and the very performance as servant of existing major institutions by new regenerative forces operating within them.”

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What Is Servant Leadership? A Philosophy for People-First Leadership

This article was from CIO and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive Content Marketplace . Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com .

Servant leadership is a leadership style that prioritizes the growth, well-being, and empowerment of employees. It aims to foster an inclusive environment that enables everyone in the organization to thrive as their authentic self. Whereas traditional leadership focuses on the success of the company or organization, servant leadership puts employees first to grow the organization through their commitment and engagement. When implemented correctly, servant leadership can help foster trust, accountability, growth, and inclusion in the workplace.

Proponents say that by improving the emotional health of employees servant leadership empowers employees to express themselves more freely in the workplace. Employees then turn around and give the same nurturing to their coworkers, creating a welcoming environment that enables and encourages growth and quality work. A major aspect of servant leadership is acceptance of others; by creating an environment where everyone feels accepted, it helps create a "psychological ethical climate" that allows employees to be authentic and not fear judgment from leadership for being themselves. It encourages a forgiving and understanding attitude that allows employees to make mistakes, learn from their mistakes, and channel that into personal and professional growth in the organization.

Servant leadership theory

The theory of servant leadership was started by Robert K. Greenleaf, who popularized the term in a 1970s essay titled "The Servant as Leader." After reading the book Journey to the East , Greenleaf was inspired by the main character, Leo, a servant who disappears from work. After his disappearance, the productivity and effectiveness of the rest of the workers falls apart, revealing that Leo was in fact a leader all along. This led Greenleaf to believe that servant leadership is effective in its ability to allow workers to relate to leaders and vice versa, creating more trust and autonomy for workers. Greenleaf first put this theory to test while working as an executive at AT&T, and it's gained traction over the years as an effective leadership style.

Greenleaf initially proposed an "I serve" mentality for servant leadership and based it on the two main premises of "I serve because I am the leader," and "I am the leader because I serve." The first premise is focused on altruism, a selfless concern for others, while the second premise hinges on a person's ambition to become a leader.

Servant leadership model

Greenleaf's original premise for servant leadership was relatively vague compared to other leadership approaches and models, which has led to several interpretations of his original idea to either expand on the concept of servant leadership or help offer more specific guidelines to what servant leadership looks like in practice.

Larry Spears, former president of the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, in " Character and Servant Leadership: Ten Characteristics of Effective Caring Leaders " has outlined the qualities that a servant leader needs to have to be impactful. These characteristics include empathy, listening, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people and building community.

Two researchers, Barbuto and Wheeler , evolved Spears's 10 characteristics into a framework called "the natural desire to serve others," which combines Spears's 10 characteristics into five dimensions of servant leadership that includes altruistic calling, emotional healing, wisdom, persuasive mapping, and organizational stewardship. Under each category there are four to five characteristics that pertain to servant leadership.

Joe Iarocci, author of Servant Leadership in the Workplace , defines three key priorities (developing people, building a trusting team, achieving results), three key principles (serve first, persuasion, empowerment), and three key practices (listening, delegating, connecting followers to mission) to outline what servant leadership looks like in the workplace.

Russel and Stone, two researchers, developed nine " functional attributes of servant leadership ," which includes vision, honesty, integrity, trust, service, modeling, pioneering, appreciation of others, and empowerment. They also outlined 11 "accompanying attributes," which includes communication, credibility, competence, stewardship, visibility, influence, persuasion, listening, encouragement, teaching, and delegation.

Servant leadership characteristics

According to Greenleaf, the most important characteristic of being a servant leader is to make it your priority to serve rather than to lead. Servant leaders are more interested in serving the needs of employees and helping them grow in the organization and are less interested in focusing on profits and simply leading people along by telling them what to do. Greenleaf didn't outline exactly what character traits make for a strong servant leader, but researchers James Sipe and Don Frick have studied his work and outlined seven pillars of servant leadership that fall within the boundaries of Greenleaf's original theory: 

• Person of character: A servant leader is someone who maintains integrity, makes decisions based on ethics and principles, displays humility and serves to a higher purpose in the organization.
• Puts people first: A servant leader demonstrates care and concern for others and helps employees meet their goals and grow within the organization.
• Skilled communicator: Communication skills are integral to servant leadership, and you will need to ensure you can effectively listen to and speak with your employees, while also inviting feedback.
• Compassionate collaborator: To be a strong servant leader, you'll need to consistently work with others and work to strengthen relationships, support diversity, equity, and inclusion, and navigate conflict in the workplace.
• Has foresight: As a servant leader, you will need to keep an eye on the future and anticipate anything that might impact the organization. You'll also need to have a strong vision for your organization and be the type of person who can take decisive action when needed.
• Systems thinker: Servant leaders need to be comfortable navigating complex environments and able to adapt to change. This type of leadership requires strategic thinking and the ability to effectively lead change in the organization.
• Leads with moral authority: As a servant leader, it's important to establish trust and confidence in your workforce by establishing quality standards, accepting, and delegating responsibility and fostering a culture that allows for accountability. 

Examples of servant leadership

In the technology industry, servant leadership is most often seen in agile development environments on Scrum teams. On a Scrum team, the Scrum Master isn't necessarily a leader; instead they're a team member who works closely with other agile workers and takes charge on defining requirements, mapping sprint plans, and resolving any roadblocks along the way.

Famous servant leaders in the corporate world include Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Co.; Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube; Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever; Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks; and Tim Cook, CEO of Apple; among many others. These are just a few people who are billed as strong examples of servant leadership in the corporate world. These leaders show qualities that include being risk-adverse, employee-focused, and driven by success over profits.     

Servant leadership training

The Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership offers several courses on servant leadership. The Foundations of Servant Leadership covers the fundamentals of Greenleaf's philosophy and how to apply those principles in the workplace. The Key Practices of Servant Leadership covers strategies for effective servant leadership and how to apply those in real-life settings. The Implementing Servant Leadership course focuses on strategies and practices that will help you effectively implement servant leadership in an organization. Courses are completed online using a collaborative wiki and group discussions; each course costs $450.

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Servant Leadership: a Systematic Literature Review and Network Analysis

Alice canavesi.

1 Business Economics, Carlo Cattaneo University (LIUC), Castellanza, Italy

Eliana Minelli

2 Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

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Servant leadership is a form of moral-based leadership where leaders tend to prioritize the fulfillment of the needs of followers, namely employees, customers and other stakeholders, rather than satisfying their personal needs. Although the concept is not new among both academics and practitioners, it has received growing consideration in the last decade, due to the fact that it can positively affect a series of individual and organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. In particular, the latest trend in literature has focused on the identification of the antecedents, mediating and moderating mechanisms at the basis of this relationship, as well as on the development of a common scale to measure the construct across diverse economic and cultural contexts. The purpose of this paper is to depict the evolution of the scientific literature that has developed on the concept, to identify the main criticalities and provide avenues for future research. A dynamic methodology called “Systematic Literature Network Analysis” has been applied, combining the Systematic Literature Review approach with the analysis of bibliographic networks.

Introduction

With the beginning of the twenty-first century, the moral nature of leaders has started to be considered not only necessary for the good of society but also essential for sustainable organizational success (Freeman et al., 2004 ; Gulati et al., 2010 ; Padilla et al., 2007 ), thus marking a considerable shift in research. As a consequence, moral leadership theories, such as transformational, ethical, authentic and servant leadership, have recently received considerable attention from the scientific community.

Servant leadership seems to be the most promising and most investigated over the last few years, especially due to the holistic approach and broad focus adopted compared to the other philosophies, as well as to its important role in affecting individual and team-level outcomes, such as organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behaviour, job performance and job satisfaction. Like most other leadership constructs, the definition and measurement of servant leadership were primarily developed in the United States. In particular, the term servant leadership was coined by Greenleaf in 1970 in his essay “The Servant as Leader" to describe an emerging style of leadership where leaders focused on followers’ personal growth and development, by treating them in an ethical way. The author asserted that the servant leader is “primus inter pares” or “first among equals”, meaning that his/her highest priority is service to others in order to fulfill their needs, rather than fulfilling his or her personal needs. Greenleaf’s conception was then refined by many other scholars, such as Ehrhart ( 2004 ), who claimed that servant leadership is one in which the leader goes beyond the financial success of the organization recognizing his or her moral responsibility towards subordinates, customers and the entire company’s community. The emphasis of the servant leadership philosophy has been placed over time on serving and creating value for multiple stakeholders, both internal and external to the organization. Liden et al. ( 2008 ) further stressed the fundamental leadership behaviours of servant leadership, such as behaving ethically, helping followers grow and succeed, empowering, emotional healing, conceptual skills and creating value for the community.

Research on servant leadership can be categorized into three main phases: a first phase focusing on its conceptual development, a second phase investigating the measures and testing the relationships with some fundamental outcomes via cross-sectional research, and a third phase aimed at understanding the antecedents, mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions of servant leadership. The last “model development phase” is the most recent and has seen a proliferation of studies in the last twenty years. A significant contribution to provide an integrative theoretical framework has been recently made by Eva et al. ( 2019 ), who offered a clear conceptual distinction of servant leadership compared to other approaches, evaluated and assessed the most rigorous scales of the construct developed so far, and highlighted the most important antecedents, outcomes, moderating and mediating mechanisms identified in the literature.

The purpose of this research is to provide a further and complementary review of the literature on servant leadership through bibliometric methods, in order to assess the evolution of the field over time as well as the current state-of-art on the key trends and provide avenues for future research. In particular, the authors aim to identify:

• The structure of the field, the most consolidated research and its temporal and geographical evolution
• The most recurring theoretical underpinning and constructs
• The most cited articles representing milestones of the literature
• The most impactful authors and journals
• The disciplines and subject areas involved by the topic
• Research implications
• Future research directions

The structure of the paper is as follows. In the first section, the methodology adopted for the literature review and the steps taken in developing the research are presented. In the second section, the results of three different analyses are explained: namely, the paper citation network consisting in the connected components and the main path, the keywords analysis, and finally the global analysis with the basic statistics. In the third and final section, the main conclusions are drawn and questions to be addressed by future research are provided.

The paper is based on a two-step method, referred to as “Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA)” (Colicchia & Strozzi, 2012 ): a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and a further analysis of the subset of relevant articles obtained through a bibliographic Network Analysis (NA): namely, the citation network analysis, the co-occurrence networks analysis and the basic statistics. The first qualitative assessment is mainly based on the researchers’ judgements as to the selection of keywords and leverages on an explanatory approach; while the bibliometric assessment provides more objective insights through quantitative and statistical evidence (Aliyev et al., 2018). In particular, bibliographic data analysed through bibliometric methods include the most impactful author names, journal titles, article titles, article keywords and article publication years (Block & Fisch, 2020). The aim is to “complement the traditional content-based literature reviews by extracting quantitative information from bibliographic networks and detect emerging topics, thus revealing the dynamic evolution of the scientific production of a discipline” (Strozzi et al., 2017 ). This dynamic analysis has proven to be effective in different research fields, as it highlights the literature development, identifies authors network and topic clusters, examines gaps and criticalities as well as presents further research directions. In contrast to narrative literature reviews, which aim to summarize the content of the studies of a particular research field, SLNA focuses on assessing the conceptual structure of the field and its development over time (e.g. how has the number of studies evolved, how have the topics evolved, how have the outlets evolved, etc.). It goes beyond a mere descriptive summary of prior literature, by leading a discussion of what we know and where we can go, and allows the measurement of the knowledge diffusion within and between disciplines, by identifying interdisciplinary links. Moreover, compared to traditional methods which lack a clear methodological approach, quantitative bibliographic studies make it possible to avoid the researchers’ selection bias by selecting clear keywords and exclusion / inclusion criteria and by adopting clear boundaries at every stage to ensure a systematic search of papers (Fetscherin & Heinrich, 2015; Block & Fisch, 2020), to the point that the process can be replicated at any time. Lastly, SLNA is characterized by a more up-to-date and broader scope (with regards, for instance, to the journals and publication years considered), thus minimizing the risk of producing an over-reflective and biased argument by the authors but rather leading to evidence-based conclusions.

Figure  1 clarifies all the steps of the methodology.

Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA)

The reference database chosen for the development of the research was Scopus, due to its coverage, convenience, and in alignment with the current literature. According to Falagas et al. ( 2017 ) as well as to Block and Fisch (2020), Scopus includes a more expanded spectrum of journals and a faster and broader citation analysis compared to other research databases, such as Web of Science (WoS). This result has been confirmed by Chadegani et al. ( 2013 ), who assessed that Scopus covers a superior number of journals compared to WoS, even though it is limited to more recent articles, and by Bergman ( 2012 ), who demonstrated that Scopus also provides higher citation counts than Google Scholar and WoS. Moreover, compared to these two other databases, Adriaanse and Rensleigh ( 2013 ) proved that Scopus delivers the least inconsistencies regarding content verification and quality, such as author spelling and sequence, volume and issue number.

The key search criteria and final query were defined on the basis of the keywords used by scholars to address the concept of servant leadership, according to one reference paper among the main pillars of the literature: “Servant leadership: a systematic review and call for future research” (Eva et al., 2019 ) from which this paper mainly differs due to its quantitative citation-based methodology. The most common keywords in literature, also employed in this study, consist of: servant leadership, servant leader, service leadership, servant behaviour and servant organization . In order to develop a more comprehensive definition and consequently to obtain a more comprehensive sample on the topic, the search criteria were loosened to “servant leader*” OR “service leader*” to include both “servant leadership” and “servant leader(s)” OR “service leadership” and “service leader(s)”. Also, considering the different spelling between British English and American English, both terms “behaviour” and “behaviour” were included. As the literature on leadership is very broad, the terms above were limited to three streams of search in the section “Article title” to include only articles that were strictly related and focused on the topic, and not dealing with it in a marginal way, but also to obtain a moderate number of papers to conduct the analysis. This systematic literature review is most suitable when the number of papers is not too limited nor too big. The authors tried to conduct a broader search stream also including keywords and abstracts, but it resulted not applicable: it provided several thousand results and the content of papers obtained was in most cases out of scope. Since the focus of the research was servant leadership from a human resource and organizational perspective, areas were investigated individually to assess whether they were pertinent or not with the topic. On the basis of this analysis, it was possible to include: Business, Social sciences, Economics, Econometrics and Finance, Psychology, Arts and Humanities, Decision sciences, Environmental science and Multidisciplinary. Papers written in languages other than English were excluded. With regards to the time span, the year in which the study was conducted (2020) was eliminated in order to consider only papers of concluded years. Finally, the search was limited to articles and conference papers, as they contain very clear citations and make it possible to achieve ideal results. See Table ​ Table1 1 for the final specification of the query.

Query final specification

This procedure allowed us to obtain a subset of 357 papers published between 1984 and 2019, which were then analysed using VOSViewer (Van Eck et al., 2010 ; Waltman et al., 2010 ) and Pajek software (de Nooy et al., 2011) to identify the main citation path emerging from the citation network and also key concepts and trends emerging from the co-occurrence network. Afterwards, the basic statistics of the whole subset of papers were examined in order to provide some general insights: the temporal and geographical evolution of the literature, the subject areas involved, the ranking of the 10 most cited papers and the most influential authors and journals. The findings of these analyses are reported in the following sections.

Citation Network Analysis

The initial procedure of the network analysis was aimed at identifying the main article clusters emerging from the citation network by using the VOS Clustering analysis (Van Eck et al., 2010 ; Waltman et al., 2010 ). “A citation network is a network where the nodes are papers and the links are citations. The arrows go from cited to citing papers representing the flow of knowledge.” (Strozzi et al., 2017 ). For the identification of the connected component, the minimum threshold of 0 was maintained in order not to exclude recent papers and less relevant authors. The largest connected component (a set of nodes connected by links) consisted of 291 items connected to each other, with 85 different clusters. No other significant connected components emerged from the literature. Figure  2 presents the network obtained with VOSviewer, where nodes are weighted by the citations and coloured with both a cluster and year overlay.

Citation network analysis (size = citation, color = cluster)

The following procedure of the network analysis consisted in implementing the key route algorithm (main path) of the network, using Pajek: a program providing powerful visualization tools. The objective was to identify the nodes that cite or have been cited the most, thus representing the most consolidated research in the field. This was possible by conducting the betweenness centrality analysis of a vertex, which is “the proportion of all geodesics between pairs of other vertices that include this vertex” (de Nooy et al., 2011, p. 131). The betweenness centrality analysis allows to focus on the importance of a node in the communication between any node pair in the network, to identify those playing a central role in information flows and being responsible for the system vulnerability (i.e. vertexes lying on many of the shortest paths between other vertexes). Figure  3 shows the flow of knowledge over time, with the network of the 25 essential articles, intensively cited and referring to other papers, labelled by Pajek with the name of the first author and the year of publication. It is clear how the research structure has changed over time: from 1996 to 2012 it developed linearly, while from 2012 on it has started to articulate towards different directions often interconnected to each other. One possible interpretation of this pattern is the following: originally, the novelty of the subject led to a straight evolution of the field over time, afterwards, once the topic gained ground and different research trends emerged, referencing papers and literature reviews started to come out.

Main path of articles from citation network

Based on the previous analysis, the most relevant papers were studied not only to identify the key concepts expressed by the single paper but most importantly to understand the evolution of the field over time. The analysis of the main path allowed for pinpointing trends and variations that would not be very visible in the general set of papers. The main findings, which are the result of a quantitative analysis and have not been selected by the authors according to a discretionary criterion, are reported in the following section with the aim of depicting a landscape of the scientific literature on the concept of servant leadership.

Main Path Analysis

The most recent paper dealing with servant leadership is the one by Yang et al. ( 2019 ), which builds on self-determination theory to investigate, through an empirical study conducted in the Chinese banking sector, how servant leadership affects employee creativity. The authors used a survey based on five-point Likert scales to assess that there is a positive relationship between servant leadership and employee creativity, mediated by follower psychological empowerment and moderated by work-family conflict. This paper can be considered as a pillar of the literature as it gathers the contributions of several articles, including a paper by the same author written two years before. Yang et al. ( 2017 ) previously provided evidence on other mechanisms influencing the relationship between servant leadership and creativity both at the individual and team level: employees’ efficacy beliefs, as a mediator, and team power distance, as a moderator. With regards to work-family balance, a similar study conducted by Tang et al. ( 2016 ) demonstrated that servant leadership is negatively related to employees’ work-to-family conflict (WFC) and positively related to work-to-family positive spillovers (WFPS), with the moderator role of reduced emotional exhaustion in both relationships and the mediator role of enhanced personal learning in the relationship between servant leadership and WFPS. Hoch et al. ( 2018 ) compared servant leadership and other moral-based forms of leadership (authentic leadership and ethical leadership) with transformational leadership, to assess whether they were able to explain incremental variance with respect to a series of relevant organizational outcomes. Servant leadership emerged as the only positive leadership style adding incremental variance to that explained by transformational leadership, thus being of significant utility. Previously, Van Dierendonck et al. ( 2014 ) leveraged on two experimental studies and one field study to differentiate servant leadership from transformational leadership in the way they affect organizational commitment and work engagement, as the former is mediated by follower need satisfaction while the latter by perceived leadership effectiveness. Hsiao et al. ( 2015 ) systematically integrated the three levels of organization, employee and customer to demonstrate that leaders displaying servant behaviours stimulate customer value co-creation (CVC) with the key mediating roles of positive psychological capital (PPC) and service-oriented organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs). Newman et al. ( 2017 ) found that at the basis of the link between servant leadership and followers’ OCBs, there are also the mediating mechanism of leader-member exchange (LMX) and the moderating mechanism of leader proactive personality. Chiniara and Bentein ( 2016 ) previously provided other mediating mechanisms between servant leadership and individual performance outcomes such as OCBs and task performance: namely the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs of employees (autonomy, competence and relatedness). Ozyilmaz and Cicek ( 2015 ) tested the positive effects of servant leadership on OCBs and on job satisfaction, assessing that this second relationship is partially mediated by psychological climate. Hunter et al. ( 2013 ) further investigated both the direct effects generated by servant leaders at the individual level, such as decreased turnover intentions and disengagement, and the indirect effects generated at the team level, such as decreased turnover intentions, helping and sales behaviour through the mediation of service climate. Moreover, they investigated the basis for individuals enacting this mode of leadership and found that leader agreeableness represents a positive antecedent of servant leadership, while extraversion a negative one. Executive characteristics of servant leaders were also tested by Peterson et al. ( 2012 ) , who assessed that narcissism is negatively related to servant leadership while founder status (i.e. founder or non-founder) is positively related to servant leadership; both effects are partially mediated by the chief executive officer identification in the organization. Sun ( 2013 ) further concentrated on the identity of servant leaders, by explaining the psychological factors, both cognitive and behavioural, that constitute it. Neubert et al. ( 2016 ) tested servant leadership effects in hospitals, accumulating evidence that there is a positive relationship with both nurse and patient satisfaction, moderated by organizational structure. Similarly, Chen et al. ( 2015 ) explored how managers’ servant leadership affect the performance of frontline service employees’, such as hairdressers, through the partial mediation of self-efficacy and group identification. In relation to these performance behaviours, they also found that servant leadership explains additional variance above and beyond transformational leadership. Liden et al. ( 2014 ) developed a model to test servant leadership in restaurants and stores. Specifically, they demonstrated that servant leaders propagate servant leadership behaviours among employees, such as increased job performance, creativity and customer service behaviours as well as decreased turnover intentions, by establishing a serving culture at the unit level (e.g. store) and fostering employee identification with the unit. Liden et al. ( 2015 ) contributed to the literature by providing the shortest-to-date 7-item scale (SL-7) measure of global servant leadership, starting from a previous 28-item scale (SL-28) developed in 2008, and tested it across three empirical independent studies. Besides the topic of employee creativity already investigated in literature, Yoshida et al. ( 2014 ) ascertained the effects of servant leadership on individual relational identification and collective prototypicality, which, in turn, fosters team innovation. Antecedents of servant leadership discussed above have been examined by other scholars, such as Hu and Liden ( 2011 ), who identified team-level goal, process clarity and team servant leadership as three mechanisms affecting team potency, performance and organizational citizenship behaviour. The authors also emphasized the role of servant leaders in moderating the link between team-level goal and process clarity with team potency. Similar outcomes were found a year before by Walumbwa et al. ( 2010 ), whose analyses revealed that the relationship between servant leadership and OCBs is partially mediated by commitment to the supervisor, self-efficacy, procedural justice climate and service climate. Hale and Fields ( 2007 ) leveraged on three servant leadership dimensions introduced by Greenleaf (1977), namely service, humility and vision, to point out cultural differences affecting the way servant leadership is perceived in different countries. Specifically, they found that countries with a higher level of power distance and collectivism experience servant leadership behaviours less frequently. They also assessed that, when great value is placed on uncertainty avoidance, vision has a significant stronger relationship with leadership effectiveness. Previously, Dennis and Bocarnea ( 2005 ) developed and tested a scale aimed at measuring five out of the seven servant leadership constructs based on Patterson’s theory: agapao love (which means to love in a social or moral way), humanity, vision, trust and empowerment. This theoretical development was drawn on a literature review by Russell ( 2001 ), who provided an overview of the current individual and organizational values associated with servant leadership, deepening their role in three main attributes: trust, appreciation of others and empowerment. A sequential, upward-spiralling model based on the variables of vision, influence, credibility, trust and service was formerly developed by Farling et al. ( 1999 ) to explain how these variables relate one to another in defining the concept at the basis of servant leadership. This paper represented an evolution of two former analyses. The first one consists in a servant leadership model developed by Buchen ( 1998 ) within the context of higher education and based on five main dimensions: identity (the direction of ego and image), empowering (the sharing of power with collaborators), reciprocity (a relationship of mutual dependency between leaders and followers), commitment (the absolute devotion to academic discipline) and finally future (the alignment between faculty and institution). The second is a reflection paper on Greenleaf’s definition of servant leadership by Spears ( 1996 ), which, on the one hand, emphasizes the primary goal of serving the greater needs of others and, on the other hand, draws the evolution of the topic from its genesis (1970) to the current time (2019).

At first, from the mid 1990’s to the late 2000’s, research was mainly qualitative and moved towards the development of a theoretical framework of servant leadership, as well as of various scales aimed at measuring the main dimensions of the construct. The last stream of research from 2010 to 2020, instead, suggests the authors’ orientation for a quantitative approach based on surveys, experimental and field studies to investigate the antecedents, mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions of servant leadership. Recently, some qualitative studies have emerged again on the topic; however, very few scholars are taking advantage of mixed methods combining the quantitative and qualitative approach.

From a theoretical perspective, the attempt of the present paper was also that of identifying meaningful constructs, underpinnings and framework used in the most consolidated literature on servant leadership, even if not explicitly mentioned by single studies. All papers, except one, were built on the basis of the servant leadership theory, often in combination with theories on other leadership styles, such as transformational, or on antecedents, outcomes, mediators and moderators of servant leadership, such as LMX theory. Moreover, the majority of paper explicitly employed more than one theoretical basis. The most recurring theory (6 out of 25 papers) was the social exchange theory, which was defined by Blau (1964) as “voluntary actions of individuals that are motivated by the returns they are expected to bring and typically do in fact bring from others” (p. 91) and is based on the central premise that the exchange of social and material resources is a fundamental form of human interaction. Motivational theories were also found several times (6 papers), with different sub-theories, such as goal-setting theory, motivational language theory and intrinsic motivation theory, emphasizing various factors that can foster personal or followers’ motivation. The most important among these motivational theories came out to be the self-determination theory’s (SDT) basic psychological needs, which consists in an empirically-based theory of human behavior and personality development aimed at identifying the social-contextual aspects that promote or prevent motivation based on the satisfaction of basic psychological needs such as competence, relatedness and autonomy (Ryan & Deci, 2017, pag. 3). The social learning theory (SLT), then evolved in the social cognitive theory (SCT), also emerged to be fundamental (5 papers), positing that learning occurs within a social context through the combination of individual experience, social interaction and environmental factors. Finally, the least recurring theory was the social identity theory (2 papers), which is a social psychological theory examining the role of self and identity in group and intergroup dynamics (Hogg, 2016).

Co-word Network Analysis (Keywords Analysis: VOS Clustering)

A second type of analysis, focused on the authors’ keywords, was carried out in VOSviewer on the basis of the co-occurrence network. Co-occurrence analysis assumes that the article keywords chosen by various authors represent an adequate description of the content or of the relationship that the paper establishes between investigated problems (Strozzi et al., 2017 ). The aim of the analysis was to frame the development of the research trends over time: if many co-occurrences can be identified around a term, this is likely to represent a specific research pattern of the discipline. An occurrence threshold of 8 was used, with the goal of ensuring clusters’ consistency in terms of content and dimension. A set of the 17 most relevant keywords divided into 3 different clusters was obtained, as shown in Fig.  4 .

Co-occurrence author keywords network (size = total link strength, color = cluster)

The network’s nodes correspond to the keywords of the 357 papers’ authors and their link weights to how many times the words appear in the papers. Three colors (red, blue and green) differentiate the keywords belonging to one cluster from other clusters’ keywords, while the dimension of the node stands for the total link strength.

In the following section, the keywords clusters are examined in order to address the most relevant research patterns in the literature. Hence, the topics below have been discussed on the basis of the output of a quantitative analysis, aimed at addressing the most used keywords in the literature and identifying research trajectories within each cluster.

Cluster 1: Servant Leadership, Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Leadership Development, Scale Development, Trust

Servant leadership is one of the most recently investigated and adopted approaches belonging to the branch of moral leadership theories. As such, it has been studied in parallel with other similar leadership styles, such as transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is a positive form of leadership developed by Burns in 1978 as an ongoing process where “leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation beyond self-interest to serve collective interests”. This concept was then expanded by Bass ( 1985 ) and applied to organizations as a guideline for leaders to make followers perform beyond expectations. From a theoretical standpoint, a significant overlap between servant leadership and transformational leadership has been assessed by scholars, especially in terms of vision, influence, credibility, trust and service shown by leaders, to the point that servant leadership has often been considered as a form of transformational leadership (Farling et al., 1999 ). Trust, in particular, has been addressed in both leadership styles as central to relationship: an important factor in the interdependence existing between leaders and followers, consisting in four distinct dimensions: competence, openness, concern and reliability. Nevertheless, an attempt has been made to define the major variables involved in the servant-leader follower transformational model. On the other hand, research has tried to identify and address the main differences, or better nuances, between the two leadership approaches: while servant leadership focuses more on supporting and developing individuals within an institution, transformational leadership emphasizes the role of leaders in inspiring followers to work towards a common goal (Allen et al., 2016 ).

In 2010s, another stream of literature has focused on the development of a reliable and multidimensional scale to measure various aspects of servant leadership. Examples include the 6-item Servant Leadership Behavior scale (Sendjaya et al., 2019 ) to measure servant leadership behaviors in a leader, or the Executive Servant Leadership Scale (Reed et al., 2011 ) to measure executive servant leadership across different organizational contexts.

Cluster 2: Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, Public Sector, China

Several empirical studies have analyzed the relationship between servant leadership and different organizational outcomes, both at the individual and collective level, such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Moreover, different mediating and moderating mechanisms as well as various antecedents of this type of relationship have been investigated. For instance, Kauppila et al. ( 2018 ) demonstrated that HR manager servant leadership positively influences organizational employees’ overall justice perception, which in turn enhances organizational commitment and job satisfaction. Moreover, they found that high leadership self-efficacy fosters a line manager’s effectiveness to emulate servant leadership behaviors from HR managers and use these behaviors to advance positive justice perceptions among their followers.

Since the general concept of leadership and the specific concept of servant leadership were developed in the US and in western societies, a consistent research stream has examined the generalizability of servant leadership constructs in completely different cultural contexts, such as China. US society is indeed highly individualistic, short-term oriented and characterized by low-power distance, meaning that relationships are expected to be participatory, democratic and consultative, while Chinese society is permeated by a collectivist culture, long-term goals and high-power distance, therefore based on the expectation that power is distributed unequally. Also, most of these studies were conducted in the public sector, where servant leadership has proven to be very effective in fostering many positive organizational outcomes. Liu et al. ( 2015 ) partially confirmed the generalizability of servant leadership constructs from Western society to China and also found a positive relationship between supervisors’ servant leadership and the public service motivation.

Cluster 3: Organizational Culture, Humans, Human, Adult, Male, Female, Article

Organizations across different fields and geographical contexts need to understand the role of a leadership that is responsive to a “service mission” in driving the company’s evolution and success. Effective servant leadership practices are “humane oriented”; they are implemented when managers or leaders invest in human resources to create a social exchange relationship with employees that makes them feel valued and repay the organization through positive outcomes (Karatepe et al., 2019 ). As a consequence, employees’ commitment and creativity are stimulated and organizational citizenship and prosocial behaviors are fostered, leading to an increase in organizational performance. For instance, Zhou and Miao ( 2014 ) found that servant leadership positively influences employees’ commitment through perceived organizational support as a mediator.

In this framework, culture, and particularly organizational culture, is strictly connected to the leadership style adopted within a company. On the one hand, servant leadership is more likely to apply in contexts characterized by specific cultural values such as paternalism, collectivism and low-power distance. On the other hand, servant leadership can be adopted to create a new organizational culture based on trust, fairness and high-quality leader–follower relationships (Lee et al., 2019 ).

Leadership attitudes also vary according to gender, as some studies reported that, relative to their counterparts, leading females are more likely to display behaviors of altruistic calling, emotional healing and organizational stewardship (Beck, 2014) and to hold service and altruistic value (De Rubio & Kiser, 2015); therefore, they more often behave as servant leaders.

Keywords Temporal Analysis

From a temporal standpoint, VOSviewer offers a graphic representation that allows us to identify the most recent keywords and therefore the core topics currently discussed in literature.

Figure  5 , overlay visualization, displays the ultimate research trends by coloring them in yellow, in contrast with the oldest, colored in blue. It is possible to infer that the concept of servant leadership has been recently discussed in relation to some important outcomes, such as organizational commitment and job satisfaction, to which it is linked by evidence. The effectiveness of this leadership style represented in several organizational contexts has encouraged the development of specific leadership practices, such as training or interventions, aimed at fostering the servant leadership behaviors. At present, most empirical studies have focused on the public sector, as it is often characterized by front-line employees who imitate servant leaders’ behaviors displayed by their managers, thus promoting the quality of relationships with end-customers and providing significant benefits to the whole organization. In this framework, the influence of organizational culture is still relevant, as it determines the way servant leadership is built by leaders and perceived by followers, along with its effectiveness in achieving the desired outcomes. In fact, according to the cultural climate, servant leadership may relate to both individual and organizational outcomes through different mediating and moderating mechanisms.

Overlay visualization

Global Analysis: Basic Statistics

In the “analyze search results” section of Scopus, it is possible to gain some general insights into the whole subset of 357 papers used for the purpose of this literature review.

Figure  6 shows how the topic of servant leadership dates back to the mid 1980s but started receiving significant attention only with the beginning of the new millennium. Particularly, it experienced exponential growth from 2007 to 2019. This corresponds to the period when the first scales for the measurement of servant leadership were developed allowing the conduction of several empirical studies across various organizational contexts.

Documents by year

From a geographical standpoint, it is possible to observe in Fig.  7 how the trend has interested primarily the United States (40.8%), where theories of servant leadership first originated, and China in the second place (13.8%), where the western construct of servant leadership was tested to assess its reliability and validity across cultures. Several cultural differences have indeed been assessed between the United States and the Chinese culture; for instance, China is a long-term and collectivist country committed to work loyalty and respect, while the United States are more individualistic and oriented to short-term business relationships. The topic has then spread in most Anglo-Saxon countries, such as Australia (7.7%), United Kingdom (7.4%), South Africa (5.8%) and Canada (4.5%), probably fostered by their use of a common language and their cultural and historical ties. The countries of Netherlands, Hong Kong, Spain and Turkey represent altogether the remaining 19.9%.

Documents by country or territory

Servant leadership is a versatile and multidisciplinary topic, as it can be applied to a variety of contexts that also fall outside that of the typical corporation. Figure  8 shows how, besides Business, Management and Accounting (38.7%), the subject areas of Social Sciences (25.3%) Psychology (11.1%) and Arts and Humanities (7.9%) are also significantly involved in the literature. This can be explained by the fact that, rather than organizations, at the core of servant leadership are humans: specifically, leaders and their followers.

Documents by subject area

Figure  9 shows the contribution of the most impactful journals over time. The Leadership and Organization Development Journal with 22 articles out of 63, is the leading in the field and has grown exponentially from 2015. The journal of Business Ethics, with its 15 articles, has also been very influential for contributions to servant leadership research in the last decade. Other articles focusing on servant leadership have been published in Leadership Quarterly (10), International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management (8), and Leadership Organization Development Journal (8), which are also the longest-running in time.

Documents per year by source

With regards to the scholars who significantly contributed to the academic research on servant leadership (Fig.  10 ), some are based in the United States, where leadership theories have originated and are still widely investigated; the remaining part are based in Europe and Australia but have worked for important American journals and communities, such as Greenleaf center for servant leadership. The most important contribution comes from van Dierendonck (2014, 2019), who has an expertise in leadership and leadership development at Erasmus University (Rotterdam, Holland) and is the associate editor of the International Journal of Servant Leadership, published by Gonzaga University (Washington, United States) in collaboration with the Spears Center for Servant-Leadership. Two other influential authors are Liden et al. ( 2008 , 2014 , 2015 ) and Sendjaya et al. ( 2008 , 2019 ), who have been writing for some of the most important journals in the field, such as Leadership quarterly, Journal of business ethics and Leadership and organizational development journal, which were also highlighted by the previous analysis (Fig.  9 ). The remaining scholars, Winston and Fields ( 2015 ), Eva (2019), Ruiz-Palomino (2018), Bande (2015), Barbuto and Wheeler ( 2006 ), Cooper (2014) and Jaramillo (2009, 2015), have to be mentioned as they also provided considerable contribution to research, as proved by the number of citations of their works.

Documents by author

Figure  11 shows the output of an analysis performed in order to identify recent breakthrough papers that have provided a significant contribution to the topic and have received considerable attention from the scientific community. The ten most cited papers have been identified by extracting all 357 papers from the Scopus database and ranking them according to the overall number of citations of the last 5 years, divided by 5 (average value of citation per year). This reduced time span has been chosen instead of the time-length of the whole dataset in order to avoid the biased result of obtaining the oldest papers as the most cited, due to the fact that they would have received a greater number of citations over time. The article with the highest number of citations is the one by Liden et al. ( 2008 ) who developed and validated a multidimensional measure of 28 items measuring 9 essential dimensions of servant leadership. This scale has been widely applied to test the construct validity in various organizational contexts in recent time, together with its shortened version of 7 item developed by Wayne et al. in 2015. The remaining most cited articles can be divided in three groups, according to the research streams. One stream has focused on the clarification of the construct and the servant leadership theories in organizations, including scale development and validation. A second stream has been investigating the mediating and moderating mechanisms through which servant leadership leads to a series of behavioral, attitudinal and performance outcomes, both at the individual and collective level. Finally, a third stream has compared servant leadership to other moral-based leadership styles, such as transformational, ethical and authentic leaderships in terms of focus and their associations with a wide range of organizationally relevant measures. All the most cited papers are part of the biggest component shown in Fig.  2 ; moreover, four out of the ten papers are included in the main path, while the remaining six are not. Being written by more than one authors, these impactful papers are the result of a significant investigation conducted on the topic by more scholars. Altogether, the articles suggest that the most consistent trend in literature is moving towards the measurement of servant leadership across various cultural and organizational contexts, at both the individual and collective levels (organization, employee, customer, etc.). This has been possible through the clarification of the common constructs composing servant leadership and the development of a scale able to test them across different organizations and organizational levels.

Ranking of the ten most cited papers in the last 5 years (mean value of citation per year)

This paper represents an attempt to rationalize the content of research developed in the context of servant leadership. The limitations of the study are mainly related to the adopted methodology. First of all, it consists in a literature review based on a citation network analysis, which may not be fully representative of a paper’s qualitative contribution to the body of knowledge, especially because VOSviewer shows only a part of the whole subset. Moreover, citations could be biased because scholars often tend to cite the most relevant articles in the literature, driven by their reputation and popularity. However, these limitations can be overcome due to the fact that the purpose of the current study is to depict an evolutionary path of the topic, rather than investigate in-depth the contribution of single papers.

The growing body of empirical studies on servant leadership, analyzed for the purpose of the analysis, has allowed to identify some consolidated streams of research and some areas of the literature deserving further investigation. First of all, there is evidence that servant leadership can foster employees’ positive outcomes, with different antecedents and through various mediating and moderating mechanisms. These outcomes have been found at the individual, team and organizational level and are of various types: behavioral, such as organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and proactive behavior (Chiniara & Bentein, 2016 ; Newman et al., 2017 ; Ozyilmaz & Cicek, 2015 ; Walumbwa et al., 2010 ) attitudinal, such as engagement and job satisfaction (Chiniara & Bentein, 2016 ; Hunter et al., 2013 ; Kauppila et al., 2018 ; Van Dierendonck et al., 2014 ) and performance, such as customer value co-creation and team performance (Hsiao et al., 2015 ; Hu & Liden, 2011 ). Moreover, servant leadership has been found to be of significant utility in explaining incremental variance above and beyond transformational, ethical and authentic leadership, with regards to these organizationally relevant criterion measures (Hoch et al., 2018 ). For this reason, scholars have addressed their attention to this leadership approach and several companies are moving towards the adoption of an organizational climate based on service, ethics and healthy work relationships that could significantly contribute to the organizational success (Eva et al., 2019 ). This aspect makes servant leadership attractive for both future research and usage. Also, in the analyses of the present study (main path, keywords clusters, global statistics), no significant criticism of servant leadership, from both an empirical and theoretical level, has emerged; the development of minor critical examinations has always started from a prior enhancement of the construct and its positive outcomes. It has to be considered, however, that the unquestioned positive praise of servant leadership may be due to the so called “Matthew effect”: the fact that those papers offering a promising perspective of servant leadership, which have previously been successful, are more likely to be cited again and again (Bol et al., 2018 ).

Although a positive interpretation of servant leadership prevails in the literature, the authors of the present study went beyond the outputs of the main analyses to identify in the literature some potential drawbacks associated with the adoption of this practice within organizations (Palumbo, 2015 ). First of all, it has to be considered that the servant leadership approach takes time to build, as it requires strong interpersonal relationships engaging the emotional, relational and ethical dimension of followers, in which both the leader and the followers play a vital role in maintaining them over time. Plus, the servant leadership style may not be suitable for all organizations, especially those characterized by a fast-changing environment where decisions have to be made quickly, due to the fact that they would require a fast top-down approach, rather than bottom-up. Another risk is losing sight of the purpose of the organization and ultimate goals in favour of people development: the servant leader is in fact devoted to the individual employee and their growth rather than to the organization. This could have negative effects on the organizational effectiveness. On the other hand, a successful company performance is not always due to a visionary leader who establishes a climate of service, as this represents a common misperception of the business world: the halo effect (i.e. the tendency to make specific inferences on the basis of a general impression).

Lastly, too much healing and empathy shown by the leader may turn into merely protective behaviour towards followers, which would discourage them from adopting a proactive role and promptly dealing with critical issues within the organization. This would challenge the prevailing arguments of the literature of servant leadership by producing a disabling environment that disempowers employees and leads to a situation of dependency on the leader (Palumbo, 2015 ). To prevent this possible counterintuitive consequence, servant leaders should act as role models and lead by example, ensuring at the same time that followers have the right degree of autonomy and responsibility. In light of these considerations, the conceptualization of servant leadership should be revisited to contemplate its side-effects, in terms of followers’ behaviour, leader–follower relationships and organizational outcomes, to prevent the impoverishment of the overall organizational effectiveness predicted by some studies (Andersen, 2009 ; Palumbo, 2015 ; Liu, 2019 ; Chenwei et al., 2021 , Wu et al., 2021 ).

In particular, the authors of the present study have leveraged on a critical assessment of the outputs of the main analyses of the literature on servant leadership to identify some research areas that have not been examined in detail and deserve further investigation:

• servant leaders’ system of beliefs and values (i.e. ethics) as well as other antecedents, that may significantly affect followers’ and organizational performance;
• other mediating or moderating mechanisms (i.e. contextual discriminants) influencing the relationship between servant leadership and positive outcomes, both at the individual and organizational level;
• servant leadership behaviours displayed by followers, that are useful to promote customers’ satisfaction, especially in the service sector;
• the utility of servant leadership in contexts where it has not yet been evaluated, such as technology, to test its validity across industries;
• longitudinal, multi-level studies confirming the effectiveness and generalizability of the most recent scale of global servant leadership assessment (SL-7) across culturally diverse countries (other than the US and China, as suggested by this literature review), according to well-known frameworks such as Hofstede’s
• critical theoretical and empirical investigation of the potential shortcomings of servant leadership often neglected by scholars, to challenge the current positive interpretation of the topic and advance the scientific knowledge

Additionally, on the basis of the authors’ considerations, the role of servant leadership, compared to other types of leadership, may be investigated within the institutional framework (e.g. public services and administration, where it has shown to be very effective) and companies’ organizational change management.

Conclusions and Managerial Implications

Due to its holistic approach, broad focus and important role in affecting both individual and team-level outcomes, servant leadership has seen a proliferation of studies in the last 20 years. In response to this research trend, the aim of this paper was threefold. First of all, the recent evolution of the field was depicted through the identification of the main articles cluster that has been cited the most, thus representing the consolidated literature. Second, the development of the research trends over time was framed on the basis of the co-occurrence of authors’ keywords. Third, by conducting analyses on the main subset of papers, the authors presented some general insights on the topic, such as its temporal and geographical development, the main contexts where it has been studied and applied, the most cited papers providing a significant contribution to the field and the most influential journals and authors. The results of the analyses conducted in the present study indicate that the interpretation of servant leadership prevailing in literature is positive, due to the promising attitudinal, behavioural and performance outcomes that it can produce on followers.

Nevertheless, scholars should examine the potential drawbacks of servant leadership, assess its validity across industries, as well as identify the best scenario where it can be implemented. From a practical standpoint, managers should consider the importance of promoting servant leadership in employment settings, to develop specific skills and ultimately improve an organizational climate of empowerment. The servant leadership approach may be particularly effective in the post covid-19 scenario and / or in contexts characterized by a high degree of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). In these environments, leaders struggle to make all decisions, thus requiring the proactiveness and motivational orientation of all employees, which have been identified as important mediators to positive followers’ outcomes in the servant leadership research (Eva et al., 2019 ). Specifically, further considerations are needed in relation to the potential role of this leadership practice in empowering and supporting followers, as well as in giving them the right degree of autonomy and responsibility to take on new challenges and act on behalf of the company when pressured by the external environment.

Data Availability

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We have no conflict of interest or competing interest to disclose.

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Contributor Information

Alice Canavesi, Email: ti.cuil@isevanaca .

Eliana Minelli, Email: ti.cuil@illenime .

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• Leadership |
• Servant leadership: How to lead by serv ...

Servant leadership: How to lead by serving your team

Servant leadership is a leadership model developed by Robert K. Greenleaf. Servant leaders display characteristics such as strong listening skills, empathy, self-awareness, and the desire to create a healthy work environment. Read our tips on becoming a servant-first leader and find out what the pros and cons of this leadership style are.

Kurt Lewin (authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire), Daniel Goleman (emotional leadership theory), and Bernard M. Bass (transformational leadership) are all well-known leadership researchers. Perhaps a lesser known but nonetheless interesting approach to leadership was developed by Robert K. Greenleaf in the 1970s: servant leadership.

What is servant leadership?

Servant leadership is a leadership approach that puts serving others above all other priorities. Rather than managing for results, a servant leader focuses on creating an environment in which their team can thrive and get their highest-impact work done.

Robert K. Greenleaf distinguished between two different types of leaders: servant-first and leader-first.

A leader-first leader will be more likely to focus on being direct and achieving personal and professional goals . Their main focus will be to grow their own career through their team’s performance and output.

A servant-first leader surrenders most of their authority and puts their team first. It’s a selfless type of leadership that focuses on the well-being and long-term growth of team members.

Although the words “leader” and “servant” may seem paradoxical, leaders who serve their team by encouraging growth, offering a sense of purpose, and presenting a clear vision create an environment in which team members feel welcomed and supported.

Servant leadership vs. traditional leadership

So how does servant leadership compare to more traditional leadership styles?

The biggest difference between traditional and servant leaders is where their motivation lies. While traditional leaders care mostly about their own advancement, servant leaders want to see their whole team grow and succeed. 

A traditional leader will measure success through results and prioritize shareholders over their customers and teammates. A servant leader puts their team first, customers second, and shareholders last. While this may not be the fastest way to success, it can be more sustainable. 

Finally, a traditional leader will use their authoritative rank to stand above others, which reflects in their communication style as well. Servant leaders view leadership as an opportunity to serve others, so they’ll focus on listening and understanding their teammates versus speaking to and commanding things from them.

Regardless of what communication style you use, your team can benefit from clear communication and dedicated 1:1 time. Make sure you’re giving team members a space to build trust and be heard, no matter which leadership style you practice. 

Origin of servant leadership

The idea of servant leadership came to Robert K. Greenleaf, a retired AT&T executive, after reading Hermann Hesse’s novel Journey to the East . The storyline is simple: A group of men head out on a mythical journey accompanied by their servant Leo who sustains the group with his song and spirit. After Leo disappears, the group falls apart and the journey is abandoned. Years later, the narrator of the story finds out that Leo was in fact the head of the order that had sponsored the journey. He wasn’t just a servant—he was the guiding spirit, their great leader.

As romantic as this may sound, Greenleaf saw parallels to the corporate world.

In 1970, he used the inspiration of Hesse’s story to write an essay that coined a new style of leadership: “The Servant as Leader.” Greenleaf believed : “The servant-leader is servant first [...] Becoming a servant-leader begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.” 

In 1964, he founded the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership to advance the awareness, understanding, and practice of this leadership style by organizations and individuals.

Characteristics of servant leadership

Former president and CEO of the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, Larry C. Spears , defined the 10 characteristics of effective, caring leaders . They’re based on Greenleaf’s essays and writings and can help you better understand how to be a servant-first leader.

[inline illustration] The first P: Product (infographic)According to Spears, you can learn and develop these 10 characteristics with practice and patience. Here’s how to get started.

1. Listening

Servant leaders prioritize active listening . Communication and decision-making skills are important aspects for all good leaders to practice, but a key characteristic of servant leadership is to listen to their team and gain a deep understanding of what they’re saying.

Robert K. Greenleaf accredited a leader’s listening skills as crucial to an innovative work environment.

Example: When a team member comes to you with a problem, listen to them and make them feel heard. This way, they’ll always feel comfortable reaching out to you.

Empathy is another skill Spears deemed important to become a servant leader. He writes: “The servant-leader strives to understand and empathize with others. People need to be accepted and recognized for their special and unique spirits.”

Example: Always assume that your team members are doing their work with the best intentions. Keep an open mind to foster creativity and courage in the workplace. 

Servant leaders recognize the negative experiences and habits their team members have developed to cope with unpleasant situations.

Greenleaf talked about “understanding the search for wholeness” as something servant leaders and led teams have in common. By prioritizing a healthy work environment and guiding teammates through their healing process, you can create a culture that strives toward this wholeness.

Example: Create an environment that serves your team by providing resources and support such as weekly 1:1 meetings, a mentorship program, or access to mental health care.

4. Awareness

A servant leader’s awareness includes self-awareness and general awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of their team. It allows servant leaders to understand ethics and values from a more integrated and holistic perspective.

Example: To increase your self-awareness , implement an honest and frequent feedback loop where your team can let you know what works for them and what doesn’t. Keep track of your personal goals and plans. You can also take psychometric tests to gain new perspectives on your personality and reflect on how others see you.

5. Persuasion

Servant leaders persuade others instead of using their authority to make decisions. Convincing their teammates of something rather than coercing compliance is one of the clearest distinctions between the servant leadership style and the authoritarian approach.

Using persuasion also helps in building consensus and a level of trust within a team.

Example: Next time your team is making a decision, try using the word “we” instead of “you” when presenting your strategy to make everyone feel more like it’s a team decision and not just you calling the shots. 

6. Conceptualization

Thinking beyond day-to-day realities requires discipline and practice. However, the ability to look at a project, team, or organization from a conceptualization perspective allows servant leaders to keep dreaming of great things. 

Example: Share dreams and aspirations with your team. Short-term goals are important, but with one eye on the horizon, you can continue to inspire your team members even on difficult days.  

7. Foresight

A servant leader is able to anticipate future events and the impact they’ll have on their team. This characteristic isn’t as magical as it may sound but rather a skill that’s developed over time through experience and intuition. 

Example: Use tools like a SWOT analysis to help you better understand past events, manage upcoming projects, and predict future outcomes. 

8. Stewardship or accountability

Stewardship is “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.” In his book on stewardship, Peter Block urges his readers to “act in service of the long run” and in service “to those with little power.”

Inspired by Block’s words, Spears included stewardship as one of the 10 characteristics of servant leadership. It helps servant leaders acknowledge the importance of their responsibilities.

As a servant leader, the stewardship characteristic can help you uphold the trust and confidence given to you by your organization.

Example: If you make a mistake, share the story with your team. Prove that you’re holding yourself accountable, and show your team the steps you took to resolve the issue.

9. Commitment to the growth of people

When you prioritize serving others, your team receives the support and resources they need to succeed. Servant leaders are deeply committed to the growth of their team members. Whether it’s the personal or professional growth of their team members, servant leaders will do anything in their power to support them.

Example: You can show this through concrete actions like allocating funds for professional development , encouraging your team’s decisions, or assisting and supporting your team members beyond their work performance (or even employment).

10. Building community

A servant leader will bring their team together and foster an environment that feels like a community. Connecting your team members with one another will create a level of trust and companionship that will not only help teammates grow on an individual level but also shine through in their performance.

Bringing teams together in a remote world but nonetheless important and possible.

Example: In a virtual team , you can still build a strong community by regularly checking in with your teammates. Whether that’s through weekly 1:1s, virtual coffee chats, or online team-building exercises, it’s important to connect with your team members, regardless of how far away they are.

How to become a servant leader

There are six actionable tips so you can learn to lead as a servant first. 

1. Lead by example

A servant leader will always walk alongside their team members and lead by example . Teams of servant leaders notice that their managers are willing to put the same time and effort into projects as they do and appreciate it. This will encourage teams to work hard and with integrity.

However, leading by example goes beyond working hard together. Servant leaders can also encourage their team members to take time off and recharge by doing it themselves. Teams are more likely to benefit from paid time off or mental health days when their leaders do the same.

Example : As a servant leader you may offer to lend a hand with a task that’s not necessarily part of your job description to support a teammate. This will allow your team members to focus on more important initiatives without worrying that their work isn’t getting done.

2. Show your team why their job matters

Team members tend to care more about their work when they understand how it impacts the larger company goals. Helping a teammate understand that their work matters is a crucial part of being a servant leader.

A servant leader can do this by acknowledging smaller milestones but also by consistently reminding their team of the bigger picture they’re all contributing to.

Example : You can share success stories or ways in which a product or service has positively impacted customers to motivate your team and show them that their work is seen. At Asana, we connect our goals and the work to support them in one place so teams can keep track of their work and see the progress at the same time.

3. Encourage teamwork

Servant leaders know that teams are stronger when they’re putting in a combined effort. They will encourage collaboration by giving each team member space to grow, a place to shine, and a group they can rely on. Creating this sense of community will benefit the individuals and the organization.

Example : You can promote teamwork by frequently scheduling team building activities . Whether that’s through a virtual call or an in-person event, spending fun time together will strengthen your team’s relationships.

4. Help your team members grow and develop

One of the 10 characteristics of servant leadership is the commitment to help your teammates grow professionally and personally. By giving their team members plenty of opportunities to take on leadership roles during group projects, participate in education or development programs, and expand their skills, servant leaders actively contribute to their team’s professional growth.

Example : As a servant leader you can help your team grow and develop by asking for their goals. You can then create learning opportunities and milestones to support your team reaching these goals.

5. Care personally for your team

Besides supporting their team members professionally, servant leaders also take a genuine personal interest in them. The knowledge of what’s going on in their team’s personal lives helps servant leaders lead with empathy.

A teammate that’s going through a rough time personally will appreciate extra support at work and likely return with a sense of gratitude that can boost morale and benefit the team and the project down the road. Servant leaders focus on long-term goals—to care personally for the people on their team helps them create a team with a strong work ethic.

I believe someone who is empathetic, passionate, and has good social skills is more likely to be a great leader.” ”

Example : Ask about your team’s personal lives and share stories of your own to create a genuine relationship. This transparency creates a level of trust that will allow team members to share when they’re in need of extra support at work.

6. Always ask for feedback

Only a leader who is open to feedback and encourages it will be able to stay self-aware (another one of the 10 characteristics of servant leaders). Receiving criticism from their team and others in the organization allows servant leaders to constantly improve their leadership skills.

Teammates who feel empowered to provide honest feedback are also more likely to speak up about issues or roadblocks they encounter with projects, which can help to create an innovative and flexible work environment.

Example : You can end meetings or emails with a few simple questions to gather honest feedback: “Do you have any feedback for me? Are there any things that I can improve on? What’s working well for you?”

Pros and cons of servant leadership

As with any leadership style, there are advantages and disadvantages of being a servant leader. Before adopting servant leadership as your leadership style, take a look at a few other pros and cons of being a servant-first leader:

Fosters strong team culture: Servant leaders give ownership to their team  members to increase their motivation, courage, and creativity.

Creates people-focused culture: Servant leaders establish a people-focused culture by fostering deep, trusting relationships with and between their teammates. This level of trust and connection allows teams to make decisions in the best interest of the organization and everyone involved. 

Boosts team morale: A team that feels seen and valued by their leader tends to have stronger integrity and show a higher level of pride in their work. Servant leaders can boost team morale across teams and help develop future leaders by giving them opportunities to shine.

Formal authority may be lost: Because servant leaders get down on such a personal level with their teams, their formal authority is easily lost. This can become difficult when individuals take advantage of their leader’s transparency. It can also cause confusion when other leaders in the organization take a different approach.

Time intensive leadership style: Servant leadership requires a lot of time, energy, and experience. Servant leaders have to know their team members on a professional and personal level so they can support them to the fullest. 

Team members may struggle with decision making: By giving their team members opportunities to prove themselves, servant leaders also risk overestimating and overburdening their teammates. Individuals that don’t have the courage or confidence for data-driven decision making on their own yet may feel discouraged and lost in a work environment that provides them with this much executive power. 

Finally, keep in mind that the servant leadership style may not align with your corporate performance management or incentive systems, which are often focused on short-term goals. However, you can still implement the servant leadership approach by leading with authenticity, providing direction for your teammates, giving them opportunities to grow and develop their skills, and building a strong community within your team.

Serve your team by being the best leader for them

Whether you choose the servant, transformational, or laissez-faire leadership style as the right approach for yourself (or something entirely different) is ultimately up to you.

We believe that the best leaders are capable of adjusting their leadership style depending on the situation, their teammates, and the needs of particular projects. The best thing a leader can do is to identify the motivators and needs of their team to support them in a way that allows them to thrive.

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Servant Leadership: How to Transform Your Leadership Style

In times like ours, in which fostering engagement, enhancing staff wellbeing, and preventing staff burnout are high on the agenda of many leaders and organizations, we have much to gain from revisiting the principles of this model.

Let us examine its core features, psychological benefits, and how servant leadership can serve us on our mission of being outstanding leaders.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Leadership Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or others adopt positive leadership practices and help organizations thrive.

This Article Contains

• What Is Servant Leadership? Definition & Examples

Servant Leadership Theory by Robert Greenleaf

Traditional leadership vs. servant leadership, what does servant leadership look like in practice, 5 excellent servant leadership quotes, 4 suggested leadership books, positive leadership tools from positivepsychology.com, a take-home message, frequently asked questions, what is servant leadership definition & examples.

Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy that prioritizes serving others and fostering their growth. It is, in that sense, a non-egoistic approach to transformational leadership ; the servant leader really puts their staff and organization above their own status and ego needs.

Service leadership aims to satisfy the needs of self, others, and systems in ethical and prosocial ways. It rests on leadership competence, character, and care (Shek et al., 2023).

Servant leaders actively listen to, empathize with, and seek to empower their team members. They aim to create an environment where trust, collaboration, and personal development are the utmost priorities.

Servant leadership emphasizes morality and integrity and seeks to support emotional, relational, and ethical growth in followers. These leaders are committed to investing in personal relationships with employees. They seek to increase trust, loyalty, and commitment.

“Key qualities of servant leaders are humility, ensuring followers’ development, listening, sharing in decision-making, behaving ethically and promoting a sense of community. The idea is that when followers’ needs and well-being are prioritized, they are able to achieve their goals, and this flows upward so that the leader’s and the organizational goals are met in turn.”

Canavesi & Minelli, 2022, p. 414

When we think of powerful servant leaders, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela may come to mind. All served their communities with tremendous humility, compassion, and dignity.

We may also think of military personnel who serve in the literal sense, although the military is of course a highly hierarchical domain, and servant leadership in civilian organizations is based on different models.

An example of servant leadership in action in the business world is that of Herb Kelleher, the cofounder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines. Kelleher prioritized his employees’ wellbeing, believing firmly that happy employees would lead to satisfied customers and, as a consequence, to business success.

As he put it, “Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that” (Hyken, 2018, para. 4).

Kelleher created a corporate culture that became known for employees who took themselves lightly, but their jobs seriously.

We can also recall Agile Scrum masters, whose key function is simply to serve their teams as effectively as possible. Depending on the situation at hand, Scrum masters use their soft skills to act as servant leaders, facilitators, coaches, managers, mentors, teachers, impediment removers, and change agents.

Robert K. Greenleaf is often regarded as the pioneer of servant leadership. In 1970, he published an essay on the topic, and in 1977, he published an influential book called Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness .

In this book, he outlines a comprehensive model that encapsulates the core principles of servant leadership. Greenleaf’s (1977) theory emphasizes the following key components:

• Listening Servant leaders listen actively to their team members and seek to understand their perspectives and needs.
• Empathy They demonstrate empathy by caring deeply about the wellbeing of their employees.
• Healing Servant leaders aim to facilitate both healing and personal growth in their team members, at a professional and personal level.
• Self-awareness They are highly aware of their impact on others and the world around them.
• Persuasion Instead of relying on authority, servant leaders use the art of persuasion to guide their team members toward shared goals.
• Conceptualization They have the ability to paint vivid pictures and communicate compelling visions of a better future to their team.
• Foresight Servant leaders are future oriented and always consider the long-term consequences of their decisions and actions.
• Stewardship They take responsibility for the wellbeing of their teams and the wellbeing of their organization as a whole.
• Commitment to the growth of others Servant leaders are passionately dedicated to helping others grow and reach their full potential.

Greenleaf also emphasized that organizations as well as individuals could be servant-leaders. He believed that servant-leader-organizations had the potential to change the world.

In his second major essay, The Institution as Servant , Greenleaf (as cited in Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, n.d., para. 6) wrote:

“This is my thesis: caring for persons, the more able and the less able serving each other, is the rock upon which a good society is built. Whereas, until recently, caring was largely person to person, now most of it is mediated through institutions – often large, complex, powerful, impersonal; not always competent; sometimes corrupt.”

“If a better society is to be built, one that is more just and more loving, one that provides greater creative opportunity for its people, then the most open course is to raise both the capacity to serve and the very performance as servant of existing major institutions by new regenerative forces operating within them.”

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Servant leadership differs from traditional leadership in various ways. In traditional leadership, power, control, status, and authority are often paramount. Servant leaders, by contrast, focus on nurturing trust, collaboration, and personal growth. By shifting the focus from the leader to the team, servant leaders create psychologically safe environments of empowerment and shared responsibility (Spears, 1995).

We can say that servant leadership entails a particular style of leadership that rests on clearly defined theoretical principles. However, it also requires particular traits and qualities in a leader, above all humility and altruism, as well as kindness and compassion. Servant leaders also need to master specific skills, such as active listening and building trust.

Servant leadership has been linked to various positive individual and collective outcomes (Eva et al., 2019). Servant leadership, for example, helps with fostering staff engagement (Howell & Shields, 2017; Zhou et al., 2022).

It also supports proactive and citizenship behavior, job satisfaction , and performance. Several companies, “including some of those ranked by Forbes as among the ‘best 100 to work for,’ such as Marriott, Starbucks, SAS, and Zappos.com, foster an organizational climate based on service, ethics, and healthy work relationships that significantly contribute to organizational success” (Canavesi & Minelli, 2022, p. 414).

In practice, servant leaders do the following: (Greenleaf, 1977; Sendjaya et al. 2008):

• Listen actively to understand their team’s core needs
• Empower and encourage team members to make decisions
• Lead by example, demonstrating integrity and humility
• Prioritize the wellbeing, personal growth, and healing of their team
• Foster a culture of trust, collaboration, and innovation
• Create value for their communities

Liden et al. (2015) created a seven-item composite measure of servant leadership, a shorter version of their previous 28-item Servant Leadership Questionnaire (Liden, 2008).

It covers seven different dimensions identified in servant leadership (see Canavesi and Minelli, 2022, p. 416):

• Emotional healing
• Creating value for the community
• Conceptual skills
• Helping subordinates grow and succeed
• Putting subordinates first
• Behaving ethically

So then, how can you become a powerful servant leader in practice?

Knowing what servant leadership should look like and having completed the leadership questionnaire to get a measure of your current abilities, reflect on the following focus areas.

Listen actively to ensure employee wellbeing

Be committed to and involved in your team’s wellbeing . This includes taking a genuine interest in your employees’ personal lives and lending an ear when they experience personal problems. It involves connecting deeply and authentically to other people, not just seeing them as replaceable “human resources.”

Serve the community and create value

Ask yourself, “How am I serving the wider community of which I am a part? How could I serve it even better?” Consider the traits of a positive community .

Be a great communicator

The task of a servant leader is also to mediate between people, teams, and wider organizational goals and to communicate clearly and honestly when there is conflict or tension. Here is an article providing guidance: How to Improve Communication Skills .

Empower and trust

A servant leader trusts their employees and equips them with autonomy and responsibility. They also support them to use both wisely. In other words, a servant leader combines challenges with support and builds trust .

Support and encourage

Helps employees grow by supporting their personal and professional development, believing in them, and encouraging them to reach their full potential.

Be a role model

A servant leader models all the behaviors they want to bring out in their teams. They behave with integrity and honesty and own up to failures in an authentic way when they occur.

In that way, a servant leader creates trust. This also includes being vulnerable.

Inspire and motivate

Finally, a servant leader needs to inspire, motivate, paint a powerful picture, and share a compelling vision with their employees.

All of this involves the ability to mentalize, to imagine the world from other people’s points of view. What do your employees care about? What motivates them? What do they fear? What do they truly need to grow?

For more inspiration on how to become a great service leader, you may enjoy the following two videos.

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi

“Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge.”

Attributed to Simon Sinek

“It is not the genius at the top giving directions that makes people great. It is great people that make the guy at the top look like a genius.”

Simon Sinek, 2014, p. 21

“Every single employee is someone’s son or someone’s daughter. Like a parent, a leader of a company is responsible for their precious lives.”

Simon Sinek, 2014, p. 19

“The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.”

Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, n.d., para. 2

If you seek inspiration for how to become a powerful servant leader, there are outstanding books out there that can help you develop the core skills you need. These books cover the theory of servant leadership and also contain numerous practical examples from servant leadership in action.

1. Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness – Robert K. Greenleaf

This is the classic book on servant leadership by Robert K. Greenleaf, who coined the term.

Greenleaf outlines a transformative approach to leadership that puts serving others, including employees, customers, and community, first.

Listening, connecting, and deeply committing to building a positive organizational culture are central to Greenleaf’s approach. You will learn how to lead by example, generate trust, and create an environment in which your employees can truly thrive.

Find the book on Amazon .

2. The Institution as Servant – Robert Greenleaf

This book features a long essay by Robert Greenleaf, in which the author extends the idea of service leadership to institutions.

Institutions and organizations, too, Greenleaf argues, should operate with a servant leadership mindset. They should remember their social purpose and aim to increase the wellbeing of their communities and stakeholders.

Like leaders, institutions have an obligation to contribute to the greater good. The success of a service leadership institution is measured by not only the usual metrics of success, but also how it positively affects society. They focus on long-term sustainability, rather than just on short-term profit and gains.

3. Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t – Simon Sinek

In Leaders Eat Last , the international bestselling author Simon Sinek investigates great leaders who don’t just sacrifice their place at the table but often their own comfort and even their lives for those in their care.

They range from Marine Corps officers to the heads of big business and government. They all share that they put aside their own interests to protect their teams. For them, leadership is not a rank but a responsibility.

4. The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business – Patrick M. Lencioni

New York Times bestselling author Patrick Lencioni argues that the key difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has everything to do with how healthy they are.

He argues that an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent, and complete and when its management, operations, and culture are unified.

Leaders can find precious lessons in this book about how to be truly of service to their organizations and teams.

Positive psychology offers valuable tools that align seamlessly with the servant leadership philosophy. Here at PositivePsychology.com, we provide resources like strengths assessments, gratitude exercises, self-awareness worksheets, and emotional intelligence tools that can help leaders cultivate a positive and supportive work environment.

You may find these articles on related topics of interest:

• What Is the Coaching Leadership Style? by Jeremy Sutton
• What Is the Authentic Leadership Style? by Nicole Celestine
• Positive Leadership: 30 Must-Have Traits and Skills by Courtney Ackerman

A core servant leader skill is active listening. Enjoy downloading our free active listening worksheet  to hone this skill.

You may also find our Back Writing Exercise useful for strengthening your team’s cohesion and care for each other.

As a team, you may also benefit from bringing Ikigai into your workplace.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others develop positive leadership skills, this collection contains 17 validated positive leadership exercises . Use them to equip leaders with the skills needed to cultivate a culture of positivity and resilience.

17 Exercises To Build Positive Leaders

Use these 17 Positive Leadership Exercises [PDF] to help others inspire, motivate, and guide employees in ways that enrich workplace performance and satisfaction. Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

Servant leadership is a transformative leadership approach that empowers individuals and organizations to grow.

If you wish to become a powerful servant leader, you can begin by embracing principles like active listening, empathy, and a serious commitment to the development of others. Your key priority should be creating a thriving organizational culture in which compassion and empowerment are key.

Servant leadership is based on the ancient virtues of humility, temperance, and altruism. It is a form of leadership that rests on character strengths and genuine care for others. It is therefore important to model these virtues in your organization and to see service leadership as a daily developmental practice.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Leadership Exercises for free .

Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy that prioritizes serving others, active listening, and empowering team members. It emphasizes the wellbeing and personal growth of those who are being led, rather than the leader’s need for status and power.

Servant leadership is vital as it fosters trust, collaboration, and engagement within teams and organizations. It leads to higher job satisfaction, improved performance, and a more positive work environment in which employees can truly thrive.

The four main principles of servant leadership, as outlined by Robert K. Greenleaf (1977), are listening, empathy, healing, and self-awareness. These principles form the foundation of servant leadership philosophy.

• Canavesi, A., & Minelli, E. (2022). Servant leadership: a Systematic literature review and network analysis. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal , 34 , 267–289.
• Eva, N., Robin, M., Sendjaya, S., van Dierendonck, D., & Liden, R. C. (2019). Servant leadership: A systematic review and call for future research, The Leadership Quarterly , 30 (1), 111–132.
• Greenleaf, R. K. (1977). Servant leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness . Paulist Press.
• Howell, E. E., & Shields, J. E. (2017). Servant leadership and employee engagement: Does the leadership style of the supervisor matter? Advances in Developing Human Resources , 19 (3), 299–315.
• Hyken, S. (2018, March 18). How Southwest Airlines Keeps the Romance Alive With Its Customers . Forbes. Retrieved September 24, 2023, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2018/03/18/how-southwest-keeps-the-romance-alive-with-its-customers/.
• Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Zhao, H., & Henderson, D. (2008). Servant leadership: Development of a multidimensional measure and multi-level assessment. The Leadership Quarterly , 19 (2), 161–177.
• Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Meuser, J. D., Hu, J., Wu. J., & Liao, C. (2015). Servant leadership: Validation of a short form of the SL-28. Leadership Quarterly , 26 (2), 254.
• Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership. (n.d.) What is servant leadership? Retrieved September 24, 2023, from https://www.greenleaf.org/what-is-servant-leadership/.
• Sendjaya, S., Sarros, J. C., & Santora, J. C. (2008). Defining and measuring servant leadership behavior in organizations. Journal of Management Studies , 45 (2), 402–424.
• Shek, D. T. L., Zhu, X., Dou, D., & Tan, L. (2023). Self-leadership as an attribute of service leadership: Its relationship to well-being among university students in Hong Kong. Frontiers in Psychology , 14 .
• Sinek, S. (2014). Leaders eat last: Why some teams pull together and others don’t . Penguin.
• Spears, L. C. (1995). Reflections on Robert K. Greenleaf and servant-leadership. The Leadership Quarterly , 6 (2), 315–319.
• Zhou, G., Gul, R., & Tufail, M. (2022). Does servant leadership stimulate work engagement? The moderating role of trust in the leader. Frontiers in Psychology , 13 .

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Servant Leadership

Putting your team first, and yourself second.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better. – Jim Rohn, American entrepreneur.

Everyone on Samit's team knows that he's "there for them." He checks in with them often to see how they are, and he helps them develop the skills they need to advance their careers, even if this means that they may move on.

Samit also makes an effort to see situations from others' perspectives. He makes decisions with the team's best interests in mind, and ensures that everyone has the resources and knowledge they need to meet their objectives.

As a result of this, his team is one of the most successful in the department, with low staff turnover and high engagement.

Samit is an example of a "servant leader." In this article, we'll explore what servant leadership is, and the advantages it can bring you as a leader. We'll also look at situations where it isn't appropriate.

What Is Servant Leadership?

Robert K. Greenleaf first coined the phrase "servant leadership" in his 1970 essay, " The Servant as a Leader ." However, it's an approach that people have used for centuries.

As a servant leader, you're a "servant first" – you focus on the needs of others, especially team members, before you consider your own. You acknowledge other people's perspectives, give them the support they need to meet their work and personal goals, involve them in decisions where appropriate, and build a sense of community within your team. This leads to higher engagement, more trust, and stronger relationships with team members and other stakeholders. It can also lead to increased innovation .

Servant leadership is not a leadership style or technique as such. Rather it's a way of behaving that you adopt over the longer term. It complements democratic leadership styles, and it has similarities with Transformational Leadership – which is often the most effective style to use in business situations – and Level 5 Leadership – which is where leaders demonstrate humility in the way they work.

However, servant leadership is problematic in hierarchical, autocratic cultures where managers and leaders are expected to make all the decisions. Here, servant leaders may struggle to earn respect.

Remember that servant leadership is about focusing on other people's needs – not their feelings. Don't avoid making unpopular decisions or giving team members negative feedback when it's needed.

Also, do not rely on it exclusively – use it alongside styles like Transformational Leadership, where you develop an inspiring vision of the future, motivate people to deliver this, manage its implementation, and build an ever-stronger team.

How to Become a Servant Leader

According to Larry C. Spears, former president of the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, these are the 10 most important characteristics of servant leaders:

• Persuasion.
• Conceptualization.
• Stewardship.
• Commitment to the growth of people.
• Building community.

From "Character and Servant Leadership: 10 Characteristics of Effective, Caring Leaders" by Larry C. Spears, published in "The Journal of Virtues and Leadership," Vol. 1, Issue 1. Reproduced with permission.

Once you've decided to prioritize other people's needs over your own in the long term, you can work on developing your skills in each area. Let's look at how you can do this.

1. Listening

You'll serve people better when you make a deep commitment to listening intently to them and understanding what they're saying. To improve your listening skills , give people your full attention, take notice of their body language, avoid interrupting them before they've finished speaking, and give feedback on what they say.

Servant leaders strive to understand other people's intentions and perspectives. You can be more empathetic by putting aside your viewpoint temporarily, valuing others' perspectives, and approaching situations with an open mind.

This characteristic relates to the emotional health and "wholeness" of people, and involves supporting them both physically and mentally.

First, make sure that your people have the knowledge, support and resources they need to do their jobs effectively, and that they have a healthy workplace . Then take steps to help them be happy and engaged in their roles.

You could also use a tool such as the Triple Bottom Line to think about how your organization can make a positive impact on the people you lead and the customers you serve.

4. Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the ability to look at yourself, think deeply about your emotions and behavior, and consider how they affect the people around you and align with your values .

You can become more self-aware by knowing your strengths and weaknesses , and asking for other people's feedback on them. Also, learn to manage your emotions , so that you consider how your actions and behavior might affect others.

5. Persuasion

Servant leaders use persuasion, rather than their authority, to encourage people to take action. They also aim to build consensus in groups , so that everyone supports decisions.

There are many tools and models that you can use to be more persuasive, without damaging relationships or taking advantage of others. You should also build your expert power – when people perceive you as an expert, they are more likely to listen to you when you want to persuade or inspire them.

6. Conceptualization

This characteristic relates to your ability to "dream great dreams," so that you look beyond day-to-day realities to the bigger picture.

If you're a senior leader in your company, work through and develop a robust organizational strategy . Then, whatever level you're at, create mission and vision statements for your team, and make it clear how people's roles tie in with your team's and organization's long-term objectives. Also, develop long-term focus so that you stay motivated to achieve your more distant goals, without getting distracted.

7. Foresight

Foresight is when you can predict what's likely to happen in the future by learning from past experiences, identifying what's happening now, and understanding the consequences of your decisions.

You can use tools such as SWOT Analysis and PEST Analysis to think about your current situation and environment, while Scenario Analysis helps you understand how the future could play out. Use the ORAPAPA checklist when you make a decision, to learn from experience and make sure that you've considered all the angles.

Also, learn to trust your intuition – if your instinct is telling you that something is wrong, listen to it!

8. Stewardship

Stewardship is about taking responsibility for the actions and performance of your team, and being accountable for the role team members play in your organization.

Whether you're a formal leader or not, you have a responsibility for the things that happen in your company. Take time to think about your own values, as well as those of your organization, so that you know what you will and won't stand for. Also, lead by example by demonstrating the values and behaviors that you want to see in others, and have the confidence to stand up to people when they act in a way that isn't aligned with them.

9. Commitment to the Growth of People

Servant leaders are committed to the personal and professional development of everyone on their teams.

To develop your people , make sure that you use Training Needs Assessments to understand their developmental needs and give them the skills they need to do their jobs effectively. Also, find out what their personal goals are, and see if you can give them projects or additional responsibilities that will help them achieve these.

10. Building Community

The last characteristic is to do with building a sense of community within your organization.

You can do this by providing opportunities for people to interact with one another across the company. For instance, you could organize social events such as team lunches and barbecues, design your workspace to encourage people to chat informally away from their desks, and dedicate the first few minutes of meetings to non-work-related conversations.

Encourage people to take responsibility for their work, and remind them how what they do contributes to the success and overall objectives of the organization.

See our article on Leadership Styles to explore popular leadership approaches and the advantages and disadvantages of each one.

And see this Expert Interview for a valuable discussion on the misconceptions and realities of servant leadership.

You are a servant leader when you focus on the needs of others before you consider your own. It's a longer-term approach to leadership, rather than a technique that you can adopt in specific situations. Therefore, you can use it with other leadership styles such as Transformational Leadership.

You can become a servant leader by working on these 10 characteristics:

Servant leaders are likely to have more engaged employees and enjoy better relationships with team members and other stakeholders than leaders who don't put the interests of others before their own.

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Publications, robert greenleaf on servant-leadership.

Below you’ll find Robert K. Greenleaf's timeless essay "Who is the Servant-Leader?" along with a brief introduction written by Gonzaga University Professor of Leadership Studies, and editor of the International Journal of Servant-Leadership, Dr. Shann Ray Ferch, PhD, MFA

This piece appeared in the first volume of the International Journal of Servant-Leadership (IJSL) , a publication issued by Gonzaga University in collaboration with the Spears Center for Servant-Leadership. The IJSL's complete archives are available online.

Gonzaga University's School of Leadership Studies  is internationally recognized for its focus on servant-leadership, attracting undergraduate, masters, and PhD students from throughout the world. Four of our Gonzaga University PhD alumni from the School of Leadership Studies have won national awards for their research in servant-leadership, and the Doctoral Program in Leadership Studies faculty and alumni have published 5 critically acclaimed anthologies on servant-leadership: Servant-Leadership, Feminism, and Gender Well-Being ; Servant-Leadership and Forgiveness ; Conversations on Servant-Leadership ; Global Servant-Leadership ; and The Spirit of Servant-Leadership .

Robert K. Greenleaf coined the term servant-leadership in his seminal 1970 essay, "The Servant as Leader." The servant-leader concept has had a deep and lasting influence over the past three decades on many modern leadership ideas and practices. Greenleaf spent his first career of 40 years at AT&T, retiring as director of management research in 1964. That same year Greenleaf founded The Center for Applied Ethics (later renamed The Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership ). He went on to have an illustrious 25-year second career as an author, a teacher, and a consultant. Greenleaf, who died in 1990, was the author of numerous books and essays on the theme of the servant as leader. His available published books now include The Servant-Leader Within (2003), Servant-Leadership (2002, 1977), The Power of Servant-Leadership (1998), On Becoming a Servant-Leader (1996), and Seeker and Servant (1996), along with many other separately published essays that are available through The Greenleaf Center.

This short excerpt from Greenleaf' s essay "The Servant as Leader" contains an essential understanding of the origin of the term and definition of servant-leader . Here Greenleaf relates how his reading of Hermann Hesse's Journey to the East led to his developing the servant-as-leader terminology.

Who Is the Servant-Leader?

By Robert K. Greenleaf

Servant and leader–can these two roles be fused in one real person, in all levels of status or calling? If so, can that person live and be productive in the real world of the present? My sense of the present leads me to say yes to both questions. This chapter is an attempt to explain why and to suggest how.

The idea of the servant as leader came out of reading Hermann Hesse's Journey to the East . In this story we see a band of men on a mythical journey, probably also Hesse's own journey. The central figure of the story is Leo, who accompanies the party as the servant who does their menial chores, but who also sustains them with his spirit and his song. He is a person of extraordinary presence. All goes well until Leo disappears. Then the group falls into disarray and the journey is abandoned. They cannot make it without the servant Leo. The narrator, one of the party, after some years of wandering, finds Leo and is taken into the Order that had sponsored the journey. There he discovers that Leo, whom he had known first as servant, was in fact the titular head of the Order, its guiding spirit, a great and noble leader.

One can muse on what Hesse was trying to say when he wrote this story. We know that most of his fiction was autobiographical, that he led a tortured life, and that Journey to the East suggests a turn toward the serenity he achieved in his old age. There has been much speculation by critics on Hesse's life and work, some of it centering on this story, which they find the most puzzling. But to me, this story clearly says that the great leader is seen as servant first, and that simple fact is the key to his greatness. Leo was actually the leader all of the time, but he was servant first because that was what he was, deep down inside. Leadership was bestowed on a man who was by nature a servant. It was something given, or assumed, that could be taken away. His servant nature was the real man, not bestowed, not assumed, and not to be taken away. He was servant first.

I mention Hesse and Journey to the East for two reasons. First, I want to acknowledge the source of the idea of the servant as leader . Then I want to use this reference as an introduction to a brief discussion of prophecy.

In 1958 when I first read about Leo, if I had been listening to contemporary prophecy as intently as I do now, the first draft of this piece might have been written then. As it was, the idea lay dormant for 11 years during which I came to believe that we in this country were in a leadership crisis and that I should do what I could about it. I became painfully aware of how dull my sense of contemporary prophecy had been. And I have reflected much on why we do not hear and heed the prophetic voices in our midst (not a new question in our times, nor more critical than heretofore).

I now embrace the theory of prophecy which holds that prophetic voices of great clarity, and with a quality of insight equal to that of any age, are speaking cogently all of the time. Men and women of a stature equal to the greatest prophets of the past are with us now, addressing the problems of the day and pointing to a better way to live fully and serenely in these times.

The variable that marks some periods as barren and some as rich in prophetic vision is in the interest, the level of seeking, and the responsiveness of the bearers. The variable is not in the presence or absence or the relative quality and force of the prophetic voices. Prophets grow in stature as people respond to their message. If their early attempts are ignored or spumed, their talent may wither away.

It is seekers, then, who make prophets, and the initiative of any one of us in searching for and responding to the voice of contemporary prophets may mark the turning point in their growth and service. But since we are the product of our own history, we see current prophecy within the context of past wisdom. We listen to as wide a range of contemporary thought as we can attend to. Then we choose those we elect to heed as prophets-both old and new-and meld their advice with our own leadings. This we test in real-life experiences to establish our own position.

One does not, of course, ignore the great voices of the past. One does not awaken each morning with the compulsion to reinvent the wheel. But if one is servant, either leader or follower, one is always searching, listening, expecting that a better wheel for these times is in the making. It may emerge any day. Any one of us may discover it from personal experience. I am hopeful.

I am hopeful for these times, despite the tension and conflict, because more natural servants are trying to see clearly the world as it is and are listening carefully to prophetic voices that are speaking now. They are challenging the pervasive injustice with greater force, and they are taking sharper issue with the wide disparity between the quality of society they know is reasonable and possible with available resources and the actual performance of the institutions that exist to serve society.

A fresh, critical look is being taken at the issues of power and authority, and people are beginning to learn, however haltingly, to relate to one another in less coercive and more creatively supporting ways. A new moral principle is emerging, which holds that the only authority deserving one's allegiance is that which is freely and knowingly granted by the led to the leader in response to, and in proportion to, the clearly evident servant stature of the leader. Those who choose to follow this principle will not casually accept the authority of existing institutions. Rather, they will freely respond only to individuals who are chosen as leaders because they are proven and trusted as servants. To the extent that this principle prevails in the future, the only truly viable institutions will be those that are predominantly servant-led.

I am mindful of the long road ahead before these trends, which I see so clearly, become a major society-shaping force. We are not there yet. But I see encouraging movement on the horizon.

What direction will the movement take? Much depends on whether those who stir the ferment will come to grips with the age-old problem of how to live in a human society. I say this because so many, having made their awesome decision for autonomy and independence from tradition, and having taken their firm stand against injustice and hypocrisy, find it hard to convert themselves into affirmative builders of a better society. How many of them will seek their personal fulfillment by making the hard choices, and by undertaking the rigorous preparation that building a better society requires? It all depends on what kind of leaders emerge and how they–we–respond to them.

My thesis, that more servants should emerge as leaders, or should follow only servant-leaders, is not a popular one. It is much more comfortable to go with a less-demanding point of view about what is expected of one now. There are several undemanding, plausibly argued alternatives from which to choose. One, since society seems corrupt, is to seek to avoid the center of it by retreating to an idyllic existence that minimizes involvement with the "system" (with the system that makes such withdrawal possible). Then there is the assumption that since the effort to reform existing institutions has not brought instant perfection, the remedy is to destroy them completely so that fresh, new, perfect ones can grow. Not much thought seems to be given to the problem of where the new seed will come from or who the gardener to tend them will be. The concept of the servant-leader stands in sharp contrast to this kind of thinking.

Yet it is understandable that the easier alternatives would be chosen, especially by young people. By extending education for so many so far into the adult years, normal participation in society is effectively denied when young people are ready for it. With education that is preponderantly abstract and analytical it is no wonder that a preoccupation with criticism exists and that not much thought is given to "What can I do about it?"

Criticism has its place, but as a total preoccupation it is sterile. In a time of crisis, like the leadership crisis we are now in, if too many potential builders are completely absorbed with dissecting the wrong and striving for instant perfection, then the movement so many of us want to see will be set back. The danger, perhaps, is to hear the analyst too much and the artist too little.

Albert Camus stands apart from other great artists of his time, in my view, and deserves the title of prophet, because of his unrelenting demand that each of us confront the exacting terms of our own existence, and, like Sisyphus, accept our rock and find our happiness by dealing with it. Camus sums up the relevance of his position to our concern for the servant as leader in the last paragraph of his last published lecture, entitled Create Dangerously :

One may long, as I do, for a gentler flame, a respite, a pause for musing. But perhaps there is no other peace for the artist than what he finds in the heat of combat. "Every wall is a door," Emerson correctly said. Let us not look for the door, and the way out, anywhere but in the wall against which we are living. Instead, let us seek the respite where it is–in the very thick of battle. For in my opinion, and this is where I shall close, it is there. Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation; others, in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. As a result, there shines forth fleetingly the ever-threatened truth that each and every man, on the foundations of his own sufferings and joys, builds for them all.

The servant-leader is servant first–as Leo was portrayed. Becoming a servant-leader begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such people, it will be a later choice to serve–>after leadership is established. The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them are the shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant first to make sure that other people's highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and most difficult to administer, is this: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived?

All of this rests on the assumption that the only way to change a society ( or just make it go) is to produce people, enough people, who will change it (or make it go). The urgent problems of our day–the disposition to venture into immoral and senseless wars, destruction of the environment, poverty, alienation, discrimination, overpopulation–exist because of human failures, individual failures, one-person-at-a-time, one-action-at-a time failures.

If we make it out of all of this (and this is written in the belief that we will), the system will be whatever works best. The builders will find the useful pieces wherever they are, and invent new ones when needed, all without reference to ideological coloration. "How do we get the right things done?" will be the watchword of the day, every day. And the context of those who bring it on will be: All men and women who are touched by the effort grow taller, and become healthier, stronger, more autonomous, and more disposed to serve.

Leo the servant, and the exemplar of the servant-leader, has one further portent for us. If we assume that Hermann Hesse is the narrator in Journey to the East (not a difficult assumption to make), at the end of the story he establishes his identity. His final confrontation at the close of his initiation into the Order is with a small transparent sculpture: two figures joined together. One is Leo, the other is the narrator. The narrator notes that a movement of substance is taking place within the transparent sculpture.

I perceived that my image was in the process of adding to and flowing into Leo's, nourishing and strengthening it. It seemed that, in time... only one would remain: Leo. He must grow, I must disappear. As I stood there and looked and tried to understand what I saw, I recalled a short conversation that I had once had with Leo during the festive days at Bremgarten. We had talked about the creations of poetry being more vivid and real than the poets themselves.

What Hesse may be telling us here is that Leo is the symbolic personification of Hesse's aspiration to serve through his literary creations-creations that are greater than Hesse himself-and that his work, for which he was but the channel. will carry on and serve and lead in a way that he, a twisted and tormented man, could not-as he created.

Does not Hesse dramatize, in extreme form, the dilemma of us all?

Except as we venture to create, we cannot project ourselves beyond ourselves to serve and lead. To which Camus would add: Create dangerously! 

What Is Servant Leadership and Why Does It Matter?

Should a leader be a servant to the people.

Posted December 9, 2018

What is the purpose of a leader? Should a leader set direction, decide strategy, and tell others what to do, or should a leader be a facilitator, helping the group to achieve shared goals ?

Most of us think of a leader as the person in charge – the decision maker, the authority, the person who tells us when to jump and how high. Yet, another approach is to view the leader as performing a service for the group or team – a servant leader.

Servant leadership is actually a very old concept, with historical roots in Confucian philosophy . The modern version of servant leadership was conceptualized by Robert Greenleaf, who worked for 40 years at AT&T. Greenleaf argues that a leader is obliged to make followers’ welfare and well-being a priority and serve followers by providing for their needs and responding to their concerns. The end result will be a high-functioning team.

According to one model of servant leadership (Liden et al., 2008), there are 7 critical behaviors that servant leaders perform:

1. Conceptualizing. This involves the leader utilizing his or her experience and the resources provided by the organization to help solve problems.

2. Emotional Healing. The servant leader is supportive of followers and sensitive to their feelings and ideas. The goal is to be available and listen to followers and their concerns.

3. Putting Followers First . This is the core of servant leadership. It’s not about the leader.

4. Helping Followers Grow and Succeed. As in all theories of exemplary leadership, servant leaders grow the leadership capacity of followers – leaving them better off and better able to lead in the future.

5. Behaving Ethically. Caring about others first, and doing the right thing are critical to servant leadership.

6. Empowering. It is through the process of empowering followers that the servant leader builds followers’ leadership capacity.

7. Creating Value for the Community. Rather than focusing on the outcomes for the leader and the followers, the servant leader is concerned about having a positive impact on the larger community – the organization, the sector, the nation.

As you can see, servant leadership is quite different than traditional approaches to leadership. It seems particularly appropriate, however, for government leaders (they should serve the people who elected them), religious leaders, and leaders of nonprofit organizations. Many for-profit organizations have also adopted servant leadership as a model for their managers and executives.

Does it work?

A growing body of research suggests that servant leadership has a positive effect on followers – followers become more engaged and motivated – and, as a result, there is a positive impact on performance.

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http://twitter.com/#!/ronriggio

Liden, R.C., Wayne, S.J., Zhao, H., & Henderson, D. (2008). Servant leadership: Development of a mutidimensional measure and multi-level assessment, The Leadership Quarterly, 19 , 161-177.

Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D. , is the Henry R. Kravis Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology at Claremont McKenna College.

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Why servant leadership is more important than ever.

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This global pandemic is a time of unprecedented challenge, and a time when servant leadership is more important than ever before. Service before self is paramount.

The pandemic is affecting us all — individually, organizationally and societally. We are having to find new ways of working, and normal business concerns are overlaid by added challenges: different ways of operating, keeping staff safe and handling sickness, layoffs, furloughs and loss of income. Wider societal impacts include adverse effects on the global economy. This all calls for a more comprehensive, communal leadership approach: leadership that is focused on serving others.

The Servant As Leader

In his essay The Servant as Leader ,  Robert K. Greenleaf first coined the phrase "servant-leader," writing, "The servant-leader is servant first … That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions."

In fields that are vital in this pandemic, like health care and global development, you might believe that values like caring and serving others are integral to the role, but not every leader embodies these traits. Even in the caring professions, money, power or day-to-day decision-making can cause leaders to lose sight of their altruistic goals. They may lead the organization without prioritizing service to the community. Although Greenleaf does say, "The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them, there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature."

The differences are:

• A servant-leader's focus is primarily on other people's (and their communities') well-being and growth.

• The servant-leader isn't a sole leader with power, but rather, a power-sharer.

• They put other people's needs above their own and enable their team to grow, develop and perform to the best of their ability.

During this pandemic, we all need to step up and do what we can for the greater good.

The Organization And Servant Leadership

In The Institution as Servant , Greenleaf said that in caring for people and serving each other, servant leadership was the foundation of a good society.

Caring used to be an individual responsibility, but now, most caring is delivered through institutions or organizations — which can be complex, large, impersonal, sometimes incompetent and even corrupt. However,  collectively, organizations have the power to be world-changers. To create a better, just and more caring society with more opportunities for people, we need to increase our organizations' capacity to serve. We need to improve their "serving" performance, by examining operations and the people operating within them. Organizations have the power to change society, but first, capacity must be built, people developed and servant leadership must be given the necessary climate to thrive and prosper.

How To Develop Servant Leadership

In Leadership: Theory and Practice , Peter G. Northouse describes 10 characteristics of servant leadership: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people and building community. How do you practice these? Whether you are at work, or in your family or community, servant leadership has a vital role to play, now more than ever.

These three things can help you to become a better servant leader during the COVID-19 pandemic:

Communicate and engage with others. These days, people are looking for certainty and safety. In his article "The Psychology Behind Effective Crisis Leadership," Gianpiero Petriglieri advocates "holding" — a concept from psychology describing the way someone "contains and interprets" events in uncertain times. Containing refers to the ability to soothe distress, and interpreting to the ability to help others make sense of a confusing predicament. Offering reassurance — about a person's life, job, the organization, the future — and presenting a clear direction are all part of holding. Petriglieri writes, "In groups whose leaders can hold, mutual support abounds, work continues, and a new vision eventually emerges. When leaders cannot hold, and we can't hold each other, anxiety, anger, and fragmentation ensue." Sharing ideas and communicating are important, and so is team spirit. Engage employees in finding solutions and working on projects that benefit those they serve, both in and outside of the organization. Build resilience by sharing positive stories of what your organization and/or employees have been doing well!

Create a plan. It is important to prepare for potential challenges. Think of the things that need to happen, including obstacles that might get in the way and plan how you will respond. Include your team, and consider this to be a real, working risk assessment with practicable actions. Address all the possible scenarios — extended periods of lockdown, illness, loss of income streams, continued new ways of working or adapted business practices. How will you react to each scenario? Planning ahead, considering all eventualities and knowing what you'll do in each case will help alleviate anxiety, stress and panic, and enable you to act in a calm, measured way. Furthermore, communicating this information with candor builds trust and demonstrates transparency, which is especially important during times of uncertainty.

Model servant leadership. In times of perceived danger, the primitive "fight, flight, freeze" responses prevail and extraordinary behavior can manifest, like people hoarding toilet paper or reporting their neighbors to the police for taking a walk. In times of crisis, people often look to leaders for how they should respond. So lead by example. Demonstrate servant leadership by modeling the kind of attitude and behavior you want others to have in the face of crisis — one of calmness, sharing, gratitude and compassion for others. Encourage "we" before "me" and walk your talk.

During this pandemic, we have already seen many acts of servant leadership around the world. Let's think about how we can continue to show up as servant leaders and continue to serve others, while we live and lead.

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Servant Leadership Research Paper | Term Paper

Introduction, definition of leadership, definitions of servant leadership, history of servant leadership, characteristics of servant leadership, how servant leadership bridges with management, works cited.

This paper is based on the topic of servant leadership. It highlights the history of the concept, the various definitions of the concept by different authors and how the concept bridges with management. Servant leadership fits in management by helping managers fully understand the issues which affect their employees.

Through servant leadership, managers are able to cultivate a cohesive organizational culture which holds the organization together as one people. Key scholars who have defined the concept include Robert Greenleaf, Larry Spears and John Schermerhorn.

It will be argued that servant leadership is indispensable especially for those organizations which aspire to realize their mission and vision in an effective and efficient manner. Also discussed are the characteristics of servant leadership as well as its shortcomings.

Leadership is defined as the ability of a person to influence other people to do things which they would not have done without the influence. People with this ability are referred to as leaders and can be found in different contexts.

In the context of organizations, leading entails the leader consolidating the efforts and resources of the organization and focusing on the future by setting up a vision for the organization which it intends to achieve in a given period of time using the consolidated efforts and resources.

Leading constitutes building and sustaining teamwork, strategic thinking, managing conflicts, coaching, inspiring a shared vision, problem solving, performance management and accountability, decision making, delegation, systems thinking, leading change, dealing with ambiguities, developing trust, employee development, customer service, innovation and creativity, emotional intelligence, servant leadership, quality and productivity improvement.

According to Robert Greenleaf and Larry Spears, servant leadership involves a leadership derived from the passion to serve rather than to lead. With this definition, serving others precedes leading them (Greenleaf and Larry 123).

On his part, Larry Spears defined servant leadership in terms of four elements namely power sharing in decision making, a holistic approach to work, service to others and cultivation of a sense of community (Spears 4).

This definition portrays a servant leader as one who does not keep things to himself or herself but one who applies efforts to reach others so as to have all people get involved in making decisions which affect them.

According to John Schermerhorn, servant leadership is based on the commitment to serve others and the passion to help others realize, develop and use their talents as they work in organizations which benefit the society as a whole (Schermerhorn 315).

The concept of servant leadership was developed by Robert Greenleaf in 1970. According to him, servant leadership was based on the philosophy that for leaders to be effective, they must have the passion to serve others. He was disturbed by the many instances where leaders wanted to lead or become leaders first so as to serve people.

His argument was that if people and organizations were to put service first, they were able to transform the world and make it a better place to live.

He argued that servant leadership was the key to the realization of a world with justice; a world where people were not driven by their self interests but the desire and passion to stand for those who are oppressed and those who are not able to articulate their feelings in a highly competitive and biased world.

Kurt Lewin outlined three broad categories of leadership namely autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire. These types of leadership are distinguished by the characteristics of the leaders and the techniques they use in their leadership.

The autocratic type of leadership is characterized by failure to share power with others. In an organizational context, autocratic leaders are the sole decision makers and they perceive the other employees simply as objects which are not capable of making any decision.

Democratic leadership is the opposite of autocratic leadership. This leadership is sometimes referred to as participative leadership because the leaders lead through bringing everybody on board in decision making with the idea that inclusiveness brings about sustainability as far as realization of organizational goals and objectives is concerned. With this style, all members of the team are involved in identifying essential goals and strategies for attaining those goals.

Servant leadership falls under the category of democratic leadership which is characterized by the inclusion of everybody in making decisions which affect their work and their organizations at large.

The laissez-faire type of leadership is actually not leadership at all because people just do as they wish. This type of leadership lacks a central authority responsible for making decisions. It is rare to find organizations with this type of leadership today.

One of the defining characteristic of servant leadership is the ability of the leaders to listen to their followers. What is more valuable to the servant leaders is listening not talking to others. They pay close attention to what their followers have to say. They then think how their followers can be assisted to realize their full potential at the work place. Listening makes the leaders bond with their followers which enhance teamwork in organizations (DelHousaye and Robert 25).

After listening to employees, servant leaders try to put themselves in the shoes of the employees. This enables them to accurately understand the issues affecting their employees and what can be done to solve them.

Servant leaders are fully aware of their strengths, weaknesses, biases, feelings and values. This awareness enables them to serve their followers effectively. The leaders can capitalize on their strengths to bring everybody on board in decision making. They are also able to work on their weaknesses and biases so that they do not affect their ability to serve their followers.

Servant leadership is also about the leaders having a foresight. The foresight enables servant leaders to understand through intuition where the organization has come from, where it is and where it wants to be in the future and how to get there.

Servant leaders are able to persuade and appeal to their followers. The ability to persuade and appeal to the followers makes the leaders very influential. The ability to influence followers is very crucial especially in the implementation of organizational change.

Through the influence, the leaders are able to convince their followers to accept the change and therefore, organizational change is implemented with little or no resistance from the employees.

Servant leaders also have high degrees of commitment to the growth and development of people and organizations. They are ever focused on the enhancement of employees’ skills as well as development of their organizations. Servant leaders are also committed to the establishment of communities of people within organizations which enhances cohesiveness within organizations.

Under the servant leadership philosophy, all members of organizations are involved in identifying organizational goals and development procedures for reaching those goals. The role of the servant leader is to facilitate the attainment of organizational goals.

In organizations with servant leadership, employees are able to give their suggestions freely and are involved in decision making. Morale, capacity and relationship between the leaders and employees are greatly improved.

Servant leadership enhances teamwork and employees’ performance thus creating a productive work environment. If servant leadership is adopted by leaders, employees are likely to use their skills and capabilities to their fullest (Neuschel 37).

As mentioned above, servant leaders have a great influence on their followers. The leaders are capable of directly inspiring the employees to become motivated and focused on realization of good results. The influence of the servant leaders makes employees to become agents of change in their organizations.

Servant oriented leaders have an exceptional ability to create and sustain a cohesive organizational culture. A cohesive organizational culture is one in which all members of an organization hold to similar beliefs and values which bring them together as an organization.

In cohesive organizational culture, it does not matter the organizational structure but what matters is the commitment of each and every member of the organization to the organizational beliefs and values.

Servant leadership leads to establishment of teams which work together.These teams give themselves a social identity which holds them together. The social identity leads to cooperation among the team members in all aspects which brings forth a multiplicity of ideas about how to undertake the tasks thus leading to innovation in organizations (Trompenaars and Ed 63).

Servant leadership leads to increased productivity because the employees are committed to the success of their organizations and to them; motivation comes as a result of organizational success not individual success. Every employee therefore brings his or her ideas in the organization. These ideas are combined and transformed into new ways of doing things in a more efficient and effective manner.

However, servant leadership has some shortcomings. One of them is that if not properly managed, it can lead to job dissatisfaction because it gives the employees more say in decision making by allowing them to make decisions on matters affecting their work. Such freedom can make the employees overwhelmed leading to confusion and ambiguity due to lack of a firm central authority.

If not properly managed, it can also lead to poor employee performance and increased turnover. The lack of a firm central authority for decision making may create confusion in the work place leading to low performance and increased turnover. It can also lead to duplication of duties or even failure to perform some tasks due to ambiguity and confusion.

Servant leadership is a philosophy of management but not really a style of leadership. The philosophy has been applied in many areas such as management, education, administration and in religion. In management, servant leadership enables managers to become more effective in their capacities. It also enables them to be more acceptable by their followers.

Servant leadership transforms managers into leaders thus creating what is known as management leadership which is very rare in organizations. Having managers who are leaders is very crucial for organizations which aspire to attain their goals and objectives.

The reason is that management leadership goes the extra mile to focus not only on the tasks to be performed but how they are supposed to be performed and what can be done to enhance the performance of those tasks (Blanchard and Phil 82).

Management is the art of getting things done through people. Many organizations have policies, procedures and guidelines that govern the decision making process. The manager must understand how to get people do what they are supposed to do as well as know what exactly gets done, the results to be achieved and how best the results can be achieved in an efficient manner.

For managers to effectively get employees do the right thing at the right time and in the right manner, they must be appealing to them. It should not be a matter of commanding employees on what to do or simply giving out instructions in form of job descriptions.

For managers to be able to attain their organizational objectives effectively and efficiently, they must be ready to serve their employees so that the employees can serve the organizations. They must understand that employees are social beings who have social, psychological and emotional needs.

They should also understand that employees do not work only for financial gains but also wish to get the intrinsic value of work. In this regard, servant leadership can help managers bond with their employees and view the tasks as a collective responsibility not as segmentation of jobs for various individuals. In other words, the managers must learn how to manage or lead from the front.

Management involves making decisions such as hiring and firing, adopting new market strategies and new human resource policies. A manager therefore should be a person who exercises authority and leadership over other people.

In organizations, people are seen as a resource that is relatively flexible and easy to control for organizational gain. Human resource management therefore centers on articulating the needs and aspirations of the workers and meeting their needs, giving them challenges and helping them towards self actualization.

The articulation of the needs of the workers is only possible if managers embrace servant leadership which can help them develop organizational core values centered on respect of employees.

The management functions include planning, organizing, selection or staffing, directing, controlling or coordination, recruitment, budgeting and reporting. For the human resource manager, planning means the determination of a human resource program that would contribute to the goals established for the organization.

To do this, the manager must focus on the economic, social and political environments in which the organization operates. He or she must also establish the resources needed to make the plans work.

Servant leadership aids the planning aspect by ensuring that all stakeholders are involved in the planning of all activities of an organization. Since servant leadership is all about serving others and not concentrating power on oneself, servant leaders usually organize a stakeholders meeting or workshop during which they agree on what to be done, by who, where, when and why.

During the stakeholders meeting, a work plan can be developed by members of the organization or a department in the case of big organizations. The involvement of all stakeholders in the planning of activities increases organizational efficiency because everybody is made aware of what to do.

In other words, the stakeholders own the plan of their organization. The involvement also increases employee motivation because they understand that they are valued by the management and thus utilize their potential in executing those tasks included in the work schedule.

The directing aspect of management is the actual doing of work. It is done by finding appropriate ways of motivating or getting people do their work willingly and effectively. The manager must provide directions to the staff and also help them through effective explaination and communication of what is expected of each and every one of them.

Servant leadership aids the directing aspect by ensuring that all employees are assisted to understand their roles, responsibilities and how to undertake them. The servant leader does not simply give instructions and sit down to wait for results but he or she goes the extra mile to ensure that all employees are assisted to overcome their challenges in their lines of duty.

The servant leader is always available to offer social, psychological, emotional and technical support to the employees. As a result, managers using servant leadership philosophy have been described as applying hands on approach in their management.

After controlling, the manager determines how well jobs have been done and what progress has been made towards attaining the set goals. He or she must know what is happening and make the necessary changes to ensure the attainment of the set goals and objectives (Sipe and Don 35).

Servant leadership enables managers to carry out employee appraisals in a manner which is all inclusive and not offensive to the employees.

The servant leader makes the employees fully understand why they are appraised, the results of the appraisal and what they stand to gain or lose from the appraisal. The servant leader also ensures that the appraisal of employees leaves the organization more united than divided.

After the appraisals, the servant leader must ensure that all employees are rewarded accordingly. Those who are found to be performing poorly should not be condemned but they should rather be assisted to overcome the challenges which make them perform poorly.

Servant leadership is based on the passion to serve others not to lead them. Servant leaders therefore put service first before everything else. They are empathetic, persuasive, influential and committed to building communities of people wherever they work. They also have the ability to listen to others effectively.

Servant leadership bridges with management in that it helps organizations have what is referred to as management leadership, which is very important for the attainment of organizational goals and objectives. Servant leadership is people based. The servant leader aspires to help others realize and utilize their potential to their fullest.

He or she is not driven by the desire to command others but rather by the passion to see everyone assisted to achieve what he or she wishes to achieve.

Organizations with servant leadership also have a cohesive organizational culture which is very crucial for the stability of organizations. However, if not properly managed, servant leadership has the potential of slowing organizational progress due to lack of a firm center of power for decision making.

Blanchard, Kenneth, and Phil, Hodges. The Servant Leader: Transforming Your Heart, Head, Hands, & Habits, Nashville, Tenn.: J. Countryman, 2003. Print.

DelHousaye, Darryl, and Robert, Brewer. Servant Leadership: Seven Distinctive Characteristics, Scottsdale, Ariz.: Scottsdale Bible Church Press, 2004. Print.

Greenleaf, Robert, and Larry, Spears. The Power of Servant-Leadership: Essays, San Francisco, Calif.: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1998. Print.

Neuschel , Robert. The Servant Leader: Unleashing the Power of Your People, Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2005.Print.

Schermerhorn, John. Management, Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2010. Print.

Sipe , James, and Don , Frick. Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading by Serving, New York: Paulist Press, 2009. Print.

Spears, Larry. Focus on Leadership: Servant-Leadership for the Twenty-First Century, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001. Print.

Trompenaars, Fons, and Ed, Voerman. Servant Leadership across Cultures: Harnessing the Strength of the World’s Most Powerful Leadership Philosophy, Oxford: Infinite Ideas Ltd., 2009. Print.

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Servant Leadership Research Paper | Term Paper." July 31, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/servant-leadership-term-paper/.

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