My Problem With “Servant Leadership”
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jul 27, 2012
There are a lot of people that write on the topic of leadership. A specific topic that I've seen multiple times over the course of the last couple of years is called "servant leadership". In essence, its overall principle is that managers and leaders should be at the mercy of their employees by making sure they have all available tools for them to be successful and are always ready to give them everything they need, including your time.
A guy named Robert Greenleaf came up with the concept in the 70's, which figures. He wrote something called "The Servant As Leader", and was quoted with these two paragraphs:
"The servant-leader is 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. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature."
"The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?"
I have problems with a lot of this, most of which is the terminology. I may be sensitive to it, but it would follow my pattern. With my background, I have problems with the concept of the terms "master" and "slave" when used in "normal" speak.
When I was first learning about computer hardware and how to take computers apart and put them back together, I cringed every time I heard the terms "slave drive" and "master drive". I easily understood the terms, but felt they were somewhat insensitive.
That's before I learned that there was this sexual practice where one person defers to the other as the master, calls them "Master", and acts as they figured slaves acted, including getting whipped. Until hearing about the singer Rihanna last year, I had never heard of a single black person who owned up to participating in this "game"; I just couldn't imagine black people allowing themselves to ever call someone else "master", let alone be willing to think of themselves as a slave, even in role play (okay, movies don't count).
Anyway, let's get back to this concept of "servant leadership" again. Here's some reasons why I don't support the theory:
1. Leaders aren't supposed to be there for the whim of employees. That's not what it's all about at all. Leaders are supposed to be there "for" their employees when they're needed, and they're supposed to show support and, gasp, leadership.
2. Seeing leaders as servants absolves them and their employees of certain responsibilities. If the leader is the servant of the people, then the leader could potentially say "Not my fault; I gave them everything they needed to succeed." The employees could say "Hey, so and so didn't give us enough; we got lots, but not all of it."
3. Is it possible for true fairness to occur in such a relationship? In essence, if one employee has greater needs than another, can the leader possibly handle it? Teachers can't, that's for sure; they either have to decide to concentrate on the strongest students in class or the weakest, unless the entirety of the class is pretty close to each other.
4. Don't leaders have responsibilities to others instead of just their employees? Is the entire company the master of the leader? The entire clientele? The world? At what point does the leader get to deal with his or her own issues, responsibilities, duties and psyche?
I might be seeing this from an obstructed view because I hate the terminology, much like I hate the idea of one person calling another person "boss". I do believe leaders should put their own employees needs above those of someone else's, but when all is said and done leaders first must be true to themselves, then to the goals of the organization. Frankly, I don't see a servant in any of those roles.
I’ve never think about that and actually haven’t read anything about “servant leadership”, I personally doubt that this kind of leadership can exist, because there is too much contradiction, between both terms.
I don’t support it Carl, but you’ll find it easily enough if you look it up on any search engine.
Definitely I will check it, there are some points that are difficult to accept, but I guess this may be reality in large corporations and in politics.
Mitch,
I agree with servant leadership to an extent, as I think that it puts a leader in the right mindset.
I think a big problem steps in, though, when a leader moves from servant to submissive, which can happen if they’re not careful.
You mentioned several things that are important to you, and they all fall under the category of servant leadership. I think Greenleaf took the process too far, but as you mentioned, that’s not surprising given the decade when he wrote about the topic.
All in all, if you take care of your people and ensure they have what they need to be successful, that’s the course to take. Their success leads to team and organization success, which should make everyone happy in the long run.
Have a great week, my friend.
~Barry
You know Barry, I do believe that leaders need to do everything they can to support their employees and their company. I draw the line at seeing it as “servant”, most probably because of the connotation of the name as much as the concept of servitude in the first place, either by leaders or employees. I think it crosses a dangerous slope. That doesn’t mean that some of the concepts might not be good; there’s often good stuff in bad concepts. 🙂
You completely missed the point. Servant leadership is not about masters and slaves. At all. And it is not about leaders being at the whim of their employees. PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW BETTER. It is about stewardship. The ORGANIZATION makes a priority of providing resources for employees like career building and training. It uses its resources for the betterment of the community, like giving employees 8 hours during the work day so they can volunteer in the community during work hours and providing information about volunteer opportunities to its employees.
Actually, I think you missed my point. I fully understand what their premise is; I just don’t like the implication of the terminology. I believe the quote I shared specifically says what you say it doesn’t say; those aren’t my words. If you term doing what’s supposed to be done for employees as “servant” leadership, that’s your choice. I choose not to use that term or believe in it as a valid concept. I’m not the only one who believes this by the way, but those folks can speak for themselves.
If you can put yourself in my shoes, you might feel my reticence at the terminology. That’s exactly where my mind goes when I see it; deep down I know that’s not what it means, but I’m uncomfortable with it, as I explained in the most. If not… well, if the entire world believed in the same thing it would be a pretty boring place.
The things you mentioned… that just good leadership. As far as telling you I know better… since you wrote it in all caps and it’s meant as a flame, I’m just going to ignore that one for now.