Are You a Servant Leader?

Developing Stronger Leaders, Leadership Development

What is Servant Leadership?

Servant leadership is defined as a leadership style (many would call it a leadership philosophy) that emphasizes the leader’s responsibility to the success of the organization as well as his or her moral responsibility to subordinates, customers, and other stakeholders. Although it may seem like a new leadership style is being introduced every month, servant leadership is still quite unique from other leadership styles such as transformational, sacrificial, authoritarian, and laissez-faire leadership. Servant leadership is best described in the short book by Max DePree, Leadership Is An Art.

How is Servant Leadership Unique?

Serving and developing others is the driving source of motivation for servant leaders: they strive for achievement so that they are in the best position to invest in their people and their organizations. They feel intrinsic satisfaction when their employees succeed, and as such they are regular champions of certain processes such as: employee training & development, performance management, and continuous process improvement (to the extent that CPI encourages a high degree of employee involvement). To make a comparison, servant leadership is at the opposite end of the spectrum from narcissistic leadership, and has some overlap with transformational leadership. Servant and transformational leadership lead to different outcomes and work better in different organizational contexts. For example, researchers have found that servant leadership promotes generativity, collaboration, and well-being, while transformational leadership promotes empowerment and ability to manage organizational change.

Servant leadership is characterized by seven dimensions

Acting ethically
Showing sensitivity to others’ personal concerns
Putting subordinates first
Helping subordinates grow and succeed
Empowering others
Creating value for the community
Having the skills to effectively support and assist followers

Outcomes of Servant Leadership

A recent study looked at more than a hundred CEOs in technology organizations over multiple time periods. The results of this study are quite interesting:

Firm performance (return on assets) was predicted by the degree of servant leadership exhibited by the CEO, in that servant CEOs had higher-performing organizations.
There was a negative relationship between CEO narcissism and servant leadership. Narcissists were viewed as egotistical, manipulative, and exploitive in their interactions with others.