Servant Leadership: By Robert Greenleaf

This is the third in our series of posts that will explore the nature and practice of leadership through the lenses of different leadership theories and the biographies of different notable leaders and leadership teams. Here are links to the previous two posts.

See a list of other posts in this series at Blog Post Series

Servant Leadership: By Robert Greenleaf

Robert K. Greenleaf (1904–1990) founded the modern servant leadership movement and the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership. Greenleaf, born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1904, graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota and went to work for AT&T, then the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. For the next forty years he researched management, development, and education. All along, he felt a growing suspicion that the power-centered authoritarian leadership style so prominent in U.S. institutions was not working, and in 1964 he took an early retirement to found the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership (first called the “Center for Applied Ethics”). (Source: Wikipedia)

The size and complexity of Greenleaf’s writings on Servant Leadership make it difficult to do it justice in a single blog post. For that reason, I will focus on the two quotes most often referred to in his writings.

“It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.” (Source: Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf)

This first quote speaks to the character of each individual leader and what their motivation should be. It might be best understood by examining what is absent. It does not begin with a natural feeling of ambition, that one wants power, authority, wealth, privilege or a feeling of superiority. Although many, if not most, leaders would not admit they want to be in a leadership position for those reasons, most do. In addition, Greenleaf uses the word servant rather than subservient or subordinate. Greenleaf is not speaking of servitude to followers or the abdication of power and responsibility. In fact, he proposes that legitimate power is critical for leaders to succeed but this legitimate power is only possible if leaders are in service to the organizations they serve and society as a whole. Greenleaf offers the following test for Servant Leadership.

“Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?” (Source: Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf)

In this second quote, Greenleaf puts the development of other servants, leaders, as the primary objective of Servant Leaders while he sets the requirement that the least privileged not be further deprived. Although these two responsibilities are not mutually exclusive there is clearly a tension between them that requires both clarity and creativity to accomplish the first goal without violating the second.

From the second quote emerges the characteristics of Servant Leadership. Empowerment is the foundation of Servant Leadership and the development of Servant Leaders. Empowerment includes a balance of ability, autonomy and accountability. The ability to do what is needed, autonomy to act and the accountability to accomplish the objectives within the requirements necessary for a successful outcome. This is not only a formula for good leadership, it is a tool for effective leadership development.

Greenleaf goes one step further and suggests that leadership is best done by a team of peers with no single omnipotent leader. In addition to the potential for abuse of power this kind of structure leaves the organization vulnerable to the mistakes of a single decision maker and a power vacuum when that leader leaves. For team leadership to be possible there must be multiple leaders with the ability to lead together. The additional characteristic necessary for this kind of leadership structure is persuasion. If no one person has the authority to decide then there must be agreement. Although coercion could also achieve this, Greenleaf felt that it would ultimately lead to the same issues as a single omnipotent leader whereas persuasion would lead to significantly better outcomes.

In addition to leadership teams to distribute power and authority Greenleaf believed that there should be two separate teams who lead an organization. An executive team and a governing board. The first would be responsible for the operations of the organization and the later the vision, mission and objectives. Many organizations today have a single individual as both the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors. Greenleaf felt this structure leaves organizations vulnerable to many of the problems we see in failed organizations today.

At Ethical Leaders in Action we believe that most, if not all people, can develop themselves to play leadership roles in many different spheres both large and small. The foundation of this development process is a short but powerful list of virtues which can be developed and improved through conscious effort. For more information feel free to take the Virtues of Ethical Leadership Self Inventory (VELSI) which breaks these virtues down into features that can be individually developed. The results of the VELSI come with a quick reference guide to help you understand how the virtues and their individual features fit together. https://ethinact.com/velsi/

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