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The Truth About Servant Leadership
And Why You Should Strive to Be One
I read a distressing article today that did two things. First, it touted Servant-Leadership as a “new thing” in management. Second, it relegated such leadership to only creative environments, where “thought” was more involved than production.
I wanted to toss my coffee cup at the author, in hopes of rattling loose some sense.
Alas, I am only equipped with writing as my forum to truly respond, so here goes.
Servant Leadership is as applicable to manufacturing (hence the photo above) as it is to software design as it is to education. It’s that simple. The author misunderstood the very nature of servant leadership, and that’s more than a bit troubling.
The term “Servant Leadership” was first coined by Robert K Greenleaf, in his 1970 essay ‘The Servant as a Leader’. You can pick it up for ten bucks here. In it, Greenleaf develops ideals, values, and philosophies that have come to fully redefine organizational leadership as a practice. Greenleaf believed that the individual efforts of a manager, permeated with vision and a servant ethic, are of great benefit to the overall quality of not just industry, but society.
Greenleaf is very clear in noting that servant leaders put the aspirations, goals, and needs of their teams above…
