The Work of the Servant Leader

It seemed fitting that the Archbishop of Canterbury speaking at the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II invited world leaders in attendance to follow the Queen’s example of servant leadership.

What is Servant Leadership?

I was asked this question earlier this year by a professional services firm that wished to move towards becoming a servant leadership organisation who asked me to work with their ‘top’ 150 leaders.

I use the word ‘top’ in quotations as even this description has some embedded assumptions on the nature of leadership and hierarchy. I am always driven by an inner question whenever I meet a new client or organisation with a simple self-reflection.

How does leadership happen around here?

I rarely ask this question directly to the client, but it guides my diagnostic first meetings and then allows me think through how I can best help. When the client asked for help in working with them on servant leadership, I was curious.

Servant leadership was popularised by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970s and the concept is disarmingly simple.

‘The leader is servant first…it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve first… to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served’

I am always interested in the source of ideas and Greenleaf helps us by signposting us directly to the Swiss-German poet and novelist Hermann Hesse in 1932.

The idea of The Servant as Leader came to me as a result of reading a book by Herman Hesse, Journey to the East. It is the story of a band of men on a mythical journey. The key person in the story is Leo. He is a servant who does chores for the travellers, but he also lifts their morale with his positive spirit and his singing. He is the glue that holds the group together. The travellers all sense Leo’s extraordinary presence. The journey goes well until one day when Leo disappears. Without Leo, the group falls apart, and the journey has to be abandoned. They simply can’t continue. The traveller who tells the story goes looking for Leo, and after some years of wandering, he finds him. He discovers that Leo, whom he had known first as servant, was in fact the head of the Order that sponsored the journey. Leo is its guiding spirit, a great and noble leader.

Servant leaders are visible in everyday work and life — some known and famous, others known and appreciated in their own communities. They do however have three things in common.

Firstly, they have a sense of purpose bigger than themselves — this is often a deeper conviction and has been recently and dramatically played out Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard who has irrevocably transferred ownership on the company to a set of trusts and non-profit organisations to fund climate change activities.

Secondly servant leaders understand the source of their power and how to use it. David Burnham and the late David McClellland wrote their seminal paper ‘Power is the Great Motivator’ and concluded that those leaders who ‘return authority’ to the team or people with the issue or opportunity outperform the norm. Servant leaders have a different motive than more individually driven leaders.

Thirdly servant leaders manage change differently. Fons Trompenaars work on culture suggests that the most capable leaders reconcile dilemmas when they lead change. Servant Leaders manage through others to drive innovation. They avoid leading through instruction.

‘To innovate as a leader is to combine value that are not easily joined — therefore scarce — therefore profitable. Innovative leaders have the propensity and the competence to help organizations and their teams reconcile dilemmas for sustainable innovation’

Trompenaars sees servant leadership as the ultimate embodiment of dilemma reconciliation. In practice he focusses on how leaders can give their team autonmy, help the team achieve mastery and encourage them to be inspired by the organisations purpose. The change process of servant leadership creates a constructive tension on the team as it places responsibility with the person closest to the issue or opportunity.

Servant leadership can only ever be an aspiration against our usual human frailties. I am interested in finding more examples — here are three to start us off.

Yorkshire Building Society has recenlty appointed Susan Allen as it’s new CEO. Allen was widely regarded in her previous roles at Barclays, Santander, and NatWest of as a strong example of a servant leader- working though and with teams. She made a direct link to ‘purpose’ in her joining the business as her informing frame to drive transformation in Yorkshire Building Society.

‘I’m really excited to have the opportunity to lead an organisation which has such a strong sense of purpose, and which supports members at key points in their lives’

A second example is Mercedes F1 Team Principal, Toto Wolff, and an Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, commented to me on his team clinching a record breaking seventh constructors’ championship in November 2020 in Imola that:

“You stand among your team and not above them”.

The current season is of course a real test of Wolff’s servant leadership as Mercedes continue to search for a win at the time of writing in 2022 he reflects ‘that there is no sense of entitlement from winning’. He also interestingly never seems to use the word ‘I’, rather, ‘we’ or ‘us’. Wolff also reframes the tough days.

‘The day we lose are the days we learn the most. Those learnings will help us over the years’

From the voluntary sector, a third example is Rachel Walton, who moved from Kenya to the UK and founded African Families in the UK in 2015. African Families Uk is a community led network aimed primarily at young women and has grown from a weekly drop in centre in Colchester to co-create youth clubs, training courses and provide entrepreneur start up support. Walton is a true social entrepreneur and is described by her team ‘as drawing her strength from empowering and nurturing the leadership she sees in everyone she meets.’ She is simply all about others.

Who are the servant leaders in your midst? How do they do what they do? Let’s start this conversation.