The Nature of Servant Leadership
Eleanor Roosevelt once famously proclaimed, “For our own success to be real, it must contribute to the success of others” (Goodreads, 2023).
In keeping with Roosevelt’s philosophy of empowering others, servant leadership focuses on lifting people up in an organization by placing the needs of others within the organization at a higher priority than their own. Through leading by example, servant leaders unlock the potential for others to thrive.
They realize that the happiness of employees has a direct impact on developing a positive work culture. As Flood (2019) contends, servant leaders not only lead by example, but also “are careful listeners, are encouraging, remove barriers for others, and equip others with the tools necessary for success” (para. 1).
Greenleaf Coins the Term Servant Leadership
While servant leadership is not a new concept, the modern version of the phrase “servant leadership” was coinedby Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, an essay first published in 1970:
The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions (p. 6).
For Greenleaf (1970), servant leadership was the antithesis of autocratic management. Instead, as it stands today in 2023, servant leadership is focused on the individual staff member and how they can flourish while meeting their full potential.