The Servant as Leader

By Nikos Batsios, Agile Coach

“The servant-leader is a 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.”

Robert K. Greenleaf

Back in the 70s, Robert Greenleaf, in his thought-provoking essay titled “The Servant as Leader”, introduced the concept of servant leadership and argued that the best way to identify servant leaders is through the manifestation of certain outcomes to their followers. According to his work the “best test” of servant leadership is to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served:

But what does it mean for a practitioner to become a servant leader? Which are the characteristics central to the development of servant leadership?

In an attempt to describe what is servant leadership for practitioners, Spears, in his work based on Greenleaf’s writings, created a model of 10 core characteristics that were considered important behaviours of servant leaders: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, growth and community building.

This model was enhanced by Barbuto and Wheeler with an additional characteristic, calling, which they believed to be fundamental to servant leadership and consistent with Greenleaf’s view and initial message.

Now, let’s examine these characteristics separately:

Calling. Servant leaders’ motivation begins with a conscious choice to serve others. An internal desire and willingness to sacrifice self-interest for the benefit of their followers.

Listening. Servant leaders communicate, by first listening, what others have to say, their ideas, their suggestions. They believe that listening is a skill that involves practice and requires of one to being receptive to and value the ideas of others. Such a behavioural pattern increases followers’ commitment.

Empathy. Empathy extends listening by walking in the shoes of another person and trying to see the world from that person’s point of view. A servant leader tries to fully understand others’ thinking, needs and feelings. Being an empathetic listener makes others feel unique, accepted and recognized. Those that have become skilled empathetic listeners and are able to appreciate the circumstances that others face are the most successful servant leaders.

Healing. Servant leaders care about the well-being of others and support them by helping them overcome their personal and relationship problems. They provide a forum to help others express their feelings and — through empathetic listening — help them with the healing process or the emotional resolution. Broken spirits are part of our nature as human beings, and servant leaders can recognize when and how to foster the healing process. As Greenleaf mentioned, the process of healing helps not only others in the search of wholeness but is a healing process for servant leaders as well: “There is something subtle communicated to one who is being served and led… the search for wholeness is something they share.”

Awareness. Servant leaders are able to step aside and notice what is happening in the greater context of a situation by reading and interpreting different signs. Awareness includes understanding oneself (self-awareness) and the impact one has on others. Awareness helps servant leaders to view most of the situations from a more integrated and holistic perspective.

Persuasion. Persuasion is seen as the ability of servant leaders to convince others to change without using any formal authority or power but with clear, persistent and nonjudgmental argumentation.

Conceptualization. Servant leaders go beyond daily routines, realities and the achievement of short-term operational goals. They nurture their ability to dream great dreams and see the big picture. They provide clarity on goals and direction, they foster an environment that uses mental models and encourages creativity in response to complex problems.

Foresight. Foresight is a servant leader’s ability to predict what might come based on what is happening in the present and what has happened in the past. It’s about understanding the lessons learned from the past, the current reality and anticipate the impact and the consequences of a decision in the future.

Stewardship. Stewardship is about not only being committed to serving the needs of others but to further contribute to the greater good of society. Stewardship also emphasizes the use of openness and persuasion when leading people instead of using command and control.

Growth. Servant leaders’ core belief is that everyone is a unique person with intrinsic value that goes beyond their contributions to the organization. As a servant leader, one is committed to the growth of everyone. it is in their own responsibility to support and nurture the personal and professional growth of their followers, employees, colleagues. They are doing this by providing opportunities for career development, helping them develop new skills, taking personal interest in their ideas and involving them in decision making.

Community building. Servant leaders encourage and foster the building of communities among those who work together within a certain organization, people that have shared interests and a need for unity and relatedness. Servant leaders provide a place where people can feel safe to express their own views while being connected with others.

These 11 characteristics of servant leadership represent Greenleaf ’s initial message on the servant as leader. They are the areas someone could dive deeper into understanding the complexities of servant leadership. For more than 30 years, a lot of studies have aimed to create a theory around servant leadership and many models and instruments have been created that could help practitioners to “measure” servant leadership.

One instrument someone could use is the servant leadership questionnaire developed by Barbuto and Wheeler. They refined the 11 characteristics into the following five dimensions:

1. altruistic calling (desire to make a positive difference in others’ lives)

2. emotional healing (fostering a spiritual recovery from hardship or trauma) 3. wisdom (a combination of awareness of surroundings and anticipation of consequences)

4. persuasive mapping (use of mental models)

5. organizational stewardship (making a positive contribution to society and fostering community development).

The servant leadership questionnaire consists of 23 items on a Likert-type 1–4 scale (1=strongly disagree, 2=somewhat disagree, 3=somewhat agree, 4=strongly agree). As a practitioner, you can use the questionnaire with your groups or any teams you happen to work with.

Altruistic calling

• This person puts my best interests ahead of his/her own.
• This person does everything he/she can to serve me.
• This person sacrifices his/her own interests to meet my needs.
• This person goes above and beyond the call of duty to meet my needs.

Emotional healing

• This person is one I would turn to if I faced personal trauma.
• This person is good at helping me with my emotional issues.
• This person is talented at helping me emotionally heal.
• This person is one that could help me mend my hard feelings.

Wisdom

• This person seems alert to what’s happening.
• This person is good at anticipating the consequences of decisions.
• This person has great awareness of what is going on.
• This person seems in touch with what’s happening.
• This person seems to know what is going to happen.

Persuasive mapping

• This person offers compelling reasons to get me to do things.
• This person encourages me to dream “big dreams” about the organization.
• This person is very persuasive.
• This person is good at convincing me to do things.
• This person is gifted when it comes to persuading me.

Organizational stewardship

• This person believes that the organization needs to play a moral role in society.
• This person believes that our organization needs to function as a community.
• This person sees the organization for its potential to contribute to society.
• This person encourages me to have a community spirit in the workplace.
• This person is preparing the organization to make a positive difference in the future.

Another widely used questionnaire is the one developed by Liden, Wayne et al., and consists of 28 items that measure seven major dimensions: conceptualizing, emotional healing, putting followers first, helping followers grow and succeed, behaving ethically, empowering, and creating value for the community.

The questionnaire can be found here with instructions on how to use it.

To conclude, being a servant leader first requires an understanding of the main characteristics and behaviours one needs to demonstrate. Secondly, it requires a lot of practice to grow the weak areas and strengthening the already strong ones as indicated by the various tools. However, as Greenleaf argued, it is more important to understand that servant leaders make a conscious choice to serve first and place the good of their followers over their self-interests.

Servant Leadership: a journey worth taking!