Although the term servant leadership was coined by Robert Greenleaf in 1970, this concept existed for thousands of years. It delivers a leadership approach that caters to the leader’s need of belonging and a sense of purpose, while enabling them to deal with the challenges of present times.
Throughout history, the world has struggled to find a proper definition of leadership. Psychologists and social scientists like Bennis, Burns, and Stogdill claim that leadership is one of the most revered yet one of the least understood concepts in the world. Most often, we see people associating leadership with the physical or mental characters, which makes this concept confined to a few “lucky” members of the society.
In contrast, servant leadership is adaptable to any person regardless of their personality or physical attributes; and any situation that may affect one person or the whole world. You only need to be self-aware to be an effective leader.
Who is a Servant Leader?
Servant leadership views leadership as service to other people. It views leadership as a responsibility rather than a privilege. The servant leader engages with others in relational, emotional, and ethical dimensions to empower and inspire the people to realize their true capabilities. It prioritizes the well-being of people over any tasks. However, improved well-being has been proven to improve the engagement and effectiveness of people in their work.
“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.”
-Robert K. Greenleaf
The motive of a servant leader stems from their external environment. Such a leader moves away from personal ambitions and commits to solving the problems of others. Their effectiveness as a leader is based upon the strength of their self-concept and psychological maturity. Therefore, people who are unwilling to let go of their personal desires to serve others, could not be effective leaders.
Application of Servant Leadership
The concept of servant leadership is among the most versatile of leadership styles as it recognizes that every individual is unique and possesses different needs, strengths, and limitations. Therefore, to serve others, the leader must understand other people’s beliefs, values, behaviors, goals, and assumptions. Then the leader would work on improving people’s well-being and emotional and ethical maturity to elevate them to their better selves. Thereby, a servant leader will create more leaders rather than followers.
“Servant leadership is a centrifugal force that moves followers from a self-serving towards other-serving orientation, empowering them to be productive and prosocial catalysts who are able to make a positive difference in others’ lives”
–Nathan et al. (2019)
It focuses on creating a chain effect that keeps on transmitting inspiration from one person to another. Ultimately, it makes a community where people care, protect, and cherish each other and themselves. It also allows the leaders to continue their mission even after they are long passed. Thus, the servant leader becomes a timeless inspiration that people can translate to their unique environments.
See how we can apply servant leadership in our everyday life.
Servant Leadership vs. Transformational Leadership
Among the leadership styles, servant leadership shares many of its attributes with transformational leadership. In essence, both these styles are focused on improving the people around the leader. However, there are also some significant differences between a servant leader and a transformational leader.
Transformational leaders need to be very competent in communication. They also need clarity of agenda and goals that they want people to achieve. They focus specifically on those goals and inspire people to achieve them. On the other hand, servant leadership is focused on the people rather than the personal or organizational goals. It focuses on the development of people’s positive attributes and behaviors rather than their performance.
Transformational leadership emphasizes improving people’s motivation to work, their self-confidence, and their understanding of their essential contributions towards shared goals. It focuses on achieving “the greater good” and, through the means of a good environment, improves individuals’ well-being.
Servant leadership emphasizes making each individual happy. While they may be working towards a shared goal, they understand their self-worth, prioritize and utilize their unique personality traits, and achieve and sustain happiness. It focuses on achieving individual well-being and maturity. Through improved individual self-concepts, it reaches an overall culture of respect and value.
Empirically, both transformational leadership and servant leadership have been found impactful in terms of achieving task-based and people-based goals. Through their charisma, transformational leaders have achieved extraordinary outcomes throughout history, but some of these outcomes have also been major disasters due to the absence of moral safeguards. Instead, by focusing on psychological and ethical maturity attributes, servant leadership instills inspiration along with moral safeguards. It holds true to the two-thousand-year-old saying of Lao Tzu,
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
-Lao Tzu
Which one do you think is more applicable in your life? Let me know in the comments.