Servant leadership is a field that is now coming full circle. With the publication of Robert Greenleaf’s seminal booklet ‘The Servant as Leader’, in the 1970s, we saw companies like TDIndustries that started organization developmental trajectories to rebuild their organizational culture into a servant leadership culture. Though there was not more to work from other than Greenleaf’s booklet, they embarked on this journey. These trajectories often involved development at all levels of the organization, with leadership development of their management as an integral part. Given the lack of theoretical models, they were primarily practically driven, servant driven, taking on the challenge of rebuilding their culture into combinations that worked toward a synergy between the needs and goals of their people while steadily making a healthy profit.
It took about 25 years, until end of the last century, that a start was made with more academic interest into servant leadership. More than a decade later, when we brought out our first edited volume (Van Dierendonck and Patterson 2010), there was a clear need to bring more conceptual clarity into the field. The aim of that volume was to bring together the main conceptual frameworks at that moment. Frameworks were building on Greenleaf’s original work, and this helped bring more clarity and a deeper understanding of servant leadership as the academic world tried to conceptualize, and ultimately measure, the idea of serving. Since 2010, we have seen servant leadership gain its rightful place within the academic literature. Several well-validated measures now exist and empirical articles are being published in a wide range of journals, including the top-tier journals in the fields of business and leadership studies. Empirical evidence for its effectiveness is appearing in peer-reviewed articles, studying underlying processes of servant leadership and its impact on key performance outcomes. Leadership research, in general, is also now more focused on the soft aspects of leadership such as humility, authenticity, and ethics. A recent meta-analysis by Hoch et al. (2016) even showed that it is servant leadership that can explain 12% additional variance on key employee outcomes beyond that of the more organizational focus of transformational leadership. Research continues to confirm that servant leadership is not only effective but it is needed – for the leader, the follower, and the organization.
Currently, attention is returning to servant leadership development within the broader context of organizational development. The conceptual models that have been formulated the last decade or so, are providing building blocks for a research-based organizational practice grounded in the original thinking of Greenleaf. As with leadership development in general, it is useful to realize that servant leadership development takes place at different levels, from the invisible – strongly linked to adult development process, via the less visible – leader identity and self-regulation, to the visible – leader competences (Day and Sin 2011). Given the central place of the motivation to become a leader within servant leadership (‘It begins with the desire to serve…’; Greenleaf 1970), it will be no surprise that attention for the person and for a leader’s character take a central stage. Additionally, it is clear from this literature that encouraging the development of one’s identity as a servant leader is more important than specific skills. Persons who perceive themselves as servant leaders will let this reflect in their goals and aspirations. Servant leader development is explicitly a dynamic process that evolves through challenges and time. It certainly is not a one-time process but rather a long-haul model that is worth the investment. Yes, individual training for leaders can be instrumental in their development, yet can never be truly effective unless the leader is truly changed internally with the bent toward servant, based on Greenleaf’s admonition of the servant leader being a servant first. It is also essential to take the organizational context into account.
Leadership development in general has seen a strong surge the last decades (McGonagill 2010). New approaches are under development, driven by developments within a society that are becoming more complex and globally interconnected. Recent developments within psychology have given a deeper understanding of adult development and the field is gaining from new insights derived from leadership studies. In an overview study of best practices, McGonagill (2010) described nine general principles that the best programs seem to have in common: Reinforcing a supportive organizational culture, sponsorship from top management, context-tailored goals, attention for the specific audience, and integrative approach with strong linkages between the different elements, using a variety of learning methods over an extended period, a central role of self-development and commitment to continuous improvement . This study emphasized the importance of using different tools that address development at intrapersonal, interpersonal, organizational, and systemic levels. Tools mentioned ranged from personal mastery and mindfulness to facilitation skills and developing a shared vision to storytelling and social networking. Within servant leadership development programs, we also see a similar broad focus and range of techniques used.
A challenge of servant leadership development is that it may go together with turning the organizational culture upside down. Underlying implicit ideas that most people have about what constitutes a good leader is reflected in words like being assertive, strong, charismatic , and visionary. A nurturer is not the first thought that comes to mind, and in fact some would not appreciate this thought. These implicit ideas focus on being decisive, a person that leads the troops to victory. Servant leadership, on the other hand places empowerment, stewardship and a virtuous attitude in terms of humility, gratitude, forgiveness, altruism, and even compassionate love into central stage (Van Dierendonck and Patterson 2015). Of course, a servant leader is still responsible for providing direction, but the way it is done differs when taking the ideas behind servant leadership as starting point. Servant leadership provides a challenge for leaders aiming to combine humility with courage; with providing a vision and encouraging autonomy, indeed this requires a different mind-set, a mind-set that embraces the philosophy of servant first. It certainly asks for a certain level of maturity and self-control, both among leaders and among the rest of the people within an organization. As such, choosing to work from the principles behind servant leadership may not be a sign of weakness, but one of strength. And the road toward it certainly is not always easy—in fact, you can count on it not being easy—this is why servant leadership is for the bravest of souls.
This book consists of four parts. In Part I, Don Frick Don Frick begins by addressing how Greenleaf’s thinking and writing is related to wisdom, distinguishing between two kinds of wisdom: transmitted and experiential. Transmitted wisdom can be found in history, sacred writings, and unexpected places, like the reflections of common people. Transmitted wisdom, however, has built-in boundaries because wisdom is not acquired in this way. One acquires authentic wisdom through ...