What is Servant Leadership?

In other recent Leadership pieces, I have looked at multiple Leadership Styles including Adaptive Leadership, Authentic Leadership, Present Leadership & the importance of humility to becoming a ‘Good to great’ Leader.

Today though I want to take a closer look at Servant Leadership.

Robert K Greenleaf first coined the phrase Servant Leadership in an essay published in 1970. The Servant Leader is a Servant-1st he wrote:

“It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. The conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead”.

Greenleaf argued that this individual was different from one who is a Leader-1st, perhaps because the Leader-1st needed to assuage an unusual power drive or was motivated to acquire material possessions.

So, would a Servant Leader be Shakespeare’s Henry V or Prince Hal?

As Prince Henry says in Henry 1V, Part 1 — Act 1, Sc 2:

“… I imitate the sun , who doth permit base contagious clouds to smother up his beauty from the world”.

Through his actions Hal is serving some other purpose and chooses not to reveal himself and what he truly feels. In fact, he’s having a fine time romping & carousing with Falstaff, Pistol, Bardolph and the rest of his gang.