Servant Leadership

The concept of servant leadership was developed by Robert Greenleaf, who drew from his 40 years directing management research for AT&T to create a business and leadership consulting practice centered on his ideas about leaders as servants. After retiring from AT&T in 1964, Greenleaf launched his second career with the publication of the 1970 essay, “The Servant as Leader,” in which he acknowledged Herman Hesse's Journey to the East with providing the key insight for his theory of servant leadership. In this story, a group of men embark on a pilgrimage to the East, accompanied by their servant, the spiritual and charismatic character Leo. Deep into the journey, Leo mysteriously disappears and the men are so confused [Page 1896]and disorganized without him that they fail to complete their journey. Years later, it is discovered that Leo was actually the head of the organization that had sponsored the pilgrimage.

Greenleaf's approach to leadership could be described more as a spirituality of leadership than a theory of leadership, anchored in the human quest for meaning, wisdom, and community rather than in a critical analysis of theory or empirical data. In the 1970 article, which became the first chapter of his book on servant leadership, Greenleaf begins with the assertion that prophetic vision and voices are always present in the world but that people do not always listen to their wisdom. Greenleaf saw in the social upheavals of the late 20th century the seeds of a new moral vision of power and authority that would reshape traditional notions of leadership in organizations. In this social context, Greenleaf reflects the widespread emergence of leadership theory as a discursive domain of people and relationships distinctly different from management theory focused on operations, authority, roles, and tasks.

Greenleaf's framework of leadership as service shows similarities to the larger body of developing leadership literature, for example, the charismatic and visionary “new leadership” theories of Burns, Bryman, Kouzes, and Posner or the charismatic theories of Bennis, Conger, and Kanungo. Greenleaf shares with his contemporaries an emphasis on the dynamic, relational aspects of leadership with special attention to the character of the leader and the leader's relationship to followers. His emphasis on the character of the leader is viewed essentially as the desire and choice to serve; the defining moment for the servant leader is in valuing the good of others through service over a personal drive for power or gain. Servant leadership views people and human communities as the ultimate end (telos) of leadership rather than as the means to an external organizational or political end.

With the formation of his Center for Applied Ethics, now known as the Greenleaf Center, a second generation of servant leadership writers emerged from its seminars, lectures, and publications. Hunter, Autry, and Blanchard, for example, apply servant leadership to business, government, politics, churches, and family life by distinguishing leadership from management and emphasizing the spirituality of work and the character of the leader in influencing and inspiring people for the common good. Covey, Block, Senge, De Pree, Wheatley, and Blanchard view servant leadership as compatible with a more holistic approach to the distributed power dynamics of a collaborative organizational model. Servant leadership is seen by some executives and managers as a means of personal leadership and character development. It has also been applied in some settings as an organizing ethos for enabling people to reach their full potential, thus helping them achieve optimal performance. Phil Jackson, for example, applied a servant leadership philosophy as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers to build a strong, highperformance team. Herb Kelleher adopted a servant leadership organizational development strategy as CEO of Southwest Airlines to build a culture of shared vision and customer-service-focused community among Southwest employees. This approach is especially attuned to the social mission sensibilities of service and nonprofit organizations but may be less suited to the organizational culture of public corporations with profit margins and shareholder expectations to consider.

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