Servant Leadership
Last week The Daily Biz offered a brief definition of leadership. I promised to follow up with separate articles about different forms of leadership. Today we start with one of the more fascinating approaches to modern leadership: “servant leadership”.
From 30,000 feet, servant leadership is driven by the notion that organizations open up myriad opportunities for “caring” or “nurturing” in modern society. By viewing leaders as servants, we can best distribute help and attention to do the most good. By framing this task in a certain way, we can redefine business leadership as the process of helping people to achieve success.
Servant leadership is the brainchild of Robert K. Greenleaf. In the 1970s he published a series of essays outlining his new concept. In his essay The Institution as Servant, he laid out his credo:
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.
The above quote is courtesy of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.
As with any long-standing theory, there are many vocal opponents of servant leadership. Some say that the concept of “caring” needs to be better defined in terms of contribution to the organization. Some say that this leadership method only grooms followers and does not nurture an entrepreneurial, goal-driven spirit. Take a look at this page for a good survey of some of the criticisms against servant leadership.
