A Different Way of Looking at the Leadership Environment

Tell Me More About Servant Leadership

Bob Molenda, Likes to go from nothing to something

7 min readJul 16, 2024

Article 13 in a Series

by Two Guys From Stillwater, Minnesota

John Buettner and Bob Molenda

Tell Me More About Servant Leadership

There are two things that we will tackle on this ride in the old truck. One of them is about ‘Stakeholders’ and how we have to include them in the mix. The other thing is about ‘Servant Leadership’. They are related.

First, we mentioned that we are all Leaders. Then we found out that we are all Followers, too. It turned out that there are characteristics that are common to both of these important roles.

Along comes Aristotle, 2,574 years ago, casually mentions that we all have to be good followers in order to be a leader and now we have to hold some steaks ? It makes us wonder why he never talked about these stakeholder peeps when everyone wore togae?

Stakeholders

If it is any comfort to you, You might be a stakeholder and not know about it. You could hold stakes in a few other things, too. A stakeholder is defined as an organization or one who directly or indirectly benefits or is negatively affected by decisions made by leaders in enterprises.

Are you a stakeholder if you push the ‘Follower’ button on Medium? Are you a bigger stakeholder if you write a comment?

Who are the direct people who benefit, and who on earth are the ones who benefit indirectly? Not only that, but why are these stakeholders important to Leaders, Followers and Missions?

By the way, this adds another dimension to our “Different Way of Looking at the Leadership Environment” theme. None of us are happy about finding out that stakeholders are important, but they are. We just have to figure out a way to include them in some kind of model or metaphor. We have some ideas, but need your help so that everyone has a tool to remember to serve the needs of stakeholders.

Direct Stakeholders

The direct stakeholders are easy! Just look around you when you come to work or log in remotely. Everyone there is a stakeholder and they depend on the success or failure of your mission. This includes the bosses, managers, fellow employees, other leaders, followers and even the CEO and all the accountants and lawyers. What about the Shareholders? They are the owners, after all.

Indirect Stakeholders

The ‘Indirect Stakeholders’ are a little harder to find. They are sometimes invisible, sometimes forgotten, often ignored. They are there. In the dark, when you are alone with nobody to consult, think about these invisible people and organizations.

Do you think your Customers are stakeholders? How about those who are part of your product distribution chain? Do they have a stake in your success or failure?

How about the community where many of your co-workers live ? What if the community provides water, sewer service, power and transportation to your enterprise and its people? What about the issue of clean water in that community being contaminated by something that was sourced by one of your factories or products?

Have you thought about the suppliers of components for your enterprise? Do you think the people who provide data storage are stakeholders in your enterprise? What about energy needed to store data that is used by your enterprise? What if cooling the servers used to store your data is using water that limits the drinking water to another community?

Here’s one for you, “How do enterprises show responsibility to other communities elsewhere in the world?” Do we really care about global warming, recyclable packaging, data security and other governments or cultures? Stakeholders, one and all and we need them!

Why are stakeholders important, you ask?

It could be because there are a lot of them but they are not here with you, not present at the meetings, invisible and sometimes forgotten, for all practical purposes. They are affected directly and indirectly. They have rights. We have obligations. We share things in common. In essence, they are part of a larger picture and give us all more perspective. We owe them respect.

They all have to be kept happy, satisfied and involved. We probably need to throw them much more than a ‘bone’ once in a while. If we need to ‘serve’ one of these stakeholders, we might as well do the same for others. This is the origin of ‘Servant Leadership’.

History

It turns out that serving the these stakeholders has paid some big dividends to enterprises. How did they do this? Well, this is where the concept of ‘Servant Leadership’ came into play.

Robert K. Greenleaf coined the term ‘Servant Leadership’ in 1970. Since that time, there have been many peer-reviewed studies on this topic. The basic notion of Greenleaf was that the betterment of others was the true intention of a servant leader.

There has been a demand for participative and community needs that have allowed servant leaders to direct their responsibilities toward multiple stakeholders. Servant Leadership seems to be directed at the needs of not only employees and shareholders, but customers and communities as well.

Greenleaf thought Benevolent Service to Others was the way for leaders to provide the best outcomes for the largest number of stakeholders.

It turns out that Servant Leadership works well with customers and communities. Benefits came to the enterprise when it was found that it built trust with the employees, improved job satisfaction in service-oriented cultures, sales performance and a positive impact on creativity and collaboration with individuals.

Benefits

The benefits of Servant Leadership to the enterprise are improved work performance, job satisfaction, team performance improvement, trust, shared vision, collaboration, creativity and innovation improvements, skill set improvement and enterprise culture.

Risks

Some of the risks of Servant Leadership include the facts that few leaders are familiar with it and adaptation may require change in the enterprise culture. Servant Leadership is not always conducive to quick decision-making. Finally, followers may have responsibilities beyond their capability.

Servant Leadership Characteristics and Competencies

A systematic review of the literature provided eight characteristics of Servant Leaders and four competencies. This work was published in 2017 by Michael Frederick Coetzer, Mark Bussin and Madelyn Geldenhuys.

Only one or two of the characteristics fall into the “Mission” bucket of our earlier analysis of leadership characteristics. The other characteristics are developed early in life and reinforced thru experience. Does everyone remember which one won the ‘Horse Race’ a few weeks ago?

Templeton World Charity Foundation (2023) Study

A recent publication about Character Based Leadership by Templeton World Charity Foundation in 2023, focussed on Character Virtues Needed to Advance Human Flourishing, showed that Servant Leadership was the most prominent model in academic research. Character-based Leadership Virtues are what people seek when facing challenges and uncertainty, such as climate change, poverty, war and inequality. This survey was done on Low and Middle Income Countries (137 Countries). The results show positive impact on Followers and Leaders in the way of improved work performance and job satisfaction, team performance improvement, collaboration, communication and decision-making.

Do you see any differences between these and the characteristics and competencies of Leaders you have known? Which one of these would make you climb mountains for such a Servant Leader?

What are some general examples of indirect stakeholders?

There are lots of them, stakeholders, that is. Leaders and Followers will wear themselves out if they had to address them all. The list includes Investors, Creditors, Communities, Governments, Customers, Partners and Other Employees. Each of these listed items generates its own list of specific stakeholders.

If we want to be global as Servant Leaders, we might want to find out how our work impacts Climate Change or how it impacts Energy Use. The ‘Community’ might be bigger than we think.

Summary

So, in trying to include ‘Stakeholders’ in the leadership task, a relatively recent trend is toward training leaders to be ‘Servant Leaders’.

Servant Leadership is based upon the Leader’s ability to satisfy the needs of the Followers and Stakeholders in the Enterprise. Leaders are there to serve the needs of these two groups of people. Servant Leadership is the most prominent ‘Character-based’ leadership model studied in academic research at this time.

Stakeholders include those internal as well as external to the enterprise.

There are benefits and risks involved with Servant Leadership.

Servant Leaders provide benevolent service to others, care and concern for multiple stakeholders, the best outcomes for the largest number of stakeholders, along with gains for the enterprise. It sounds like we all could use such a culture change.