Servant leadership

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Servant leadership is an approach to leadership development, coined and defined by Robert Greenleaf and advanced by several authors such as Stephen Covey, Peter Block, Peter Senge, Max DePree, Margaret Wheatley, Ken Blanchard, and others. Servant-leadership emphasizes the leader's role as steward of the resources (human, financial and otherwise) provided by the organization. It encourages leaders to serve others while staying focused on achieving results in line with the organization's values and integrity.

[edit] Concept of Servant Leadership

Prior to the modern concept of Servant Leadership being popularized by Robert Greenleaf, the motto "Serve to Lead" was adopted by the British Army Officer training school of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS) in the 1940s. RMAS has continued to build leaders with a foundation on this approach. Greenleaf published his essay "The Servant as Leader" in 1970 and this led to further essays from Greenleaf, and further works from others, especially in recent years.

However, the concept is thousands of years older than this. Chanakya or Kautilya, the famous strategic thinker from ancient India, wrote about servant leadership in his 4th century B.C. book Arthashastra:

"the king [leader] shall consider as good, not what pleases himself but what pleases his subjects [followers]"
"the king [leader] is a paid servant and enjoys the resources of the state together with the people".

In approximately 600 B.C., the Chinese sage Lao Tzu wrote The Tao Te Ching, a strategic treatise on servant leadership:

The greatest leader forgets himself
And attends to the development of others.
Good leaders support excellent workers.
Great leaders support the bottom ten percent.
Great leaders know that
The diamond in the rough
Is always found “in the rough.”

(Quote from The Way of Leading People: Unlocking Your Integral Leadership with the Tao Te Ching.)

The concept of servant leadership in the west can be traced back, at least partly, to [[Jesus]], about 2000 years ago, who taught his disciples that

"You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10:42-45)

Many institutions and individuals have adapted the Servant Leadership approach to Christian spirituality. Most notably, Timothy H. Warneka has applied the Servant Leadership perspective to the Roman Catholic tradition in his book, Black Belt Leader, Peaceful Leader: An Introduction to Catholic Servant Leadership.

Robert Greenleaf is recognized as the father of servant leadership. Robert k. Green leaf was born in 1904 in Indiana, and died in 1990. He was the first person that defined the term “servant-leader” and he wrote about its implications for individuals, organizations, and societies. According to his essay, Essentials of Servant Leadership, The idea of the servant as leader came out of reading novelist Hermann Hesse, (1877 –1962), work of fiction in 1958, a book titled Journey to the East (1972).

Greenleaf (1977) described servant leadership in this manner:

"It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead…The difference manifest 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 grow while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?"

Through extensive work with Greenleaf, Larry Spears identified ten characteristics, which describe the essence of a servant leader. The characteristics are listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of others, and building community. Several educational theorists, such as Bolman, Deal, Covey, Fullan, Sergiovanni, and Heifetz also reference these characteristics as essential components to effective leadership.

Servant Leadership is also the main principle concept behind the film, The Emperor's Club, that shows the relation of a teacher and student after years of distinctive differences in their ambitions and philosophies on life. Servant Leadership in the film, teaches how "it is not living that is important, but living rightly". In such a context, The Emperor's Club clearly defines "right" and brings out its moral implications on a heavily mortalised world.

Unlike leadership approaches with a top-down hierarchical style, Servant Leadership instead emphasizes collaboration, trust, empathy, and the ethical use of power. At heart, the individual is a servant first, making the conscious decision to lead in order to better serve others, not to increase their own power. The objective is to enhance the growth of individuals in the organization and increase teamwork and personal involvement.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

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