Leadership Theory Overview - Servant Leadership

Leadership Theory Overview: Part II, Servant Leadership

Alumni_Leadership Development_Servant leadership theory

The sheer volume of different perspectives, models, concepts and buzz words around leadership can be daunting. Perhaps you have felt like you either have to commit to being a full-time leadership researcher to keep track at all, or simply give in to just reading the occasional HBR article and hoping no-one notices?

With this series of short articles, I hope to provide a very brief overview of some of the most common and influential theories within leadership, to cure any feeling of impostor syndrome.

Welcome to part two: Servant Leadership (SL).

Historical context

As discussed in part I of this series on Transformational Leadership, history has seen lots of leadership theories come and go; they arise in a certain context of ideas, scientific research and societal movements, and they in turn influence subsequent theories.

By the latter half of the 20th century, the world had seen two world wars, the descent of the colonial empires and upheaval of many pre-industrial societal structures. Societies were boiling with ideas of emancipation and equality and questioning old paradigms for hierarchies and distribution of power.

And when we talk about power, we are sooner or later bound to be talking about leadership.

In 1977, Robert Greenleaf introduced his basic ideas on SL in his work “The Servant as Leader”. While the book can be seen as the advent of the concept in the world of leadership theories, SL was not clearly differentiated and collated into a comprehensible theory until the 90s, and has continued to evolve after that as well.

It should also be noted that the ideas of SL have been around for a very long time. Philosophies and religions dating back to ancient times, Buddhism being one noteworthy example, have expressed thoughts and prescribed behaviours that are well aligned with many of the concepts of SL.

Servant Leadership Theory

How does leadership relate to human beings? The groups we as a species evolved to function in, do not very well match our big organisational structures of today. In the family or tribe, there was no difference between the private and public self of the leader. In essence, we as humans are wired to follow a whole person, not a role. This leaves a kind of authenticity gap in many traditional leadership approaches. Also, many modern organisations fail to tend to yet another of our basic needs the way the tribe did - the feeling of belonging. In a way, SL can be seen as an attempt to apply the understanding of those basic human needs, in order to create thriving organisations.

Followers first

According to SL theory, servant leaders are primarily driven by empathy, altruism, and a sense of community stewardship. The servant leader engages followers on many levels, such as relationally, ethically, and emotionally, to empower them to grow into their full potential. Followers, in turn, become more engaged and perform better. It is important to note that servant leaders do not ignore performance expectations even though they focus on the personal development of their followers. The idea is that by first enabling the fulfilment of followers’ personal ambitions, the achievement of long-term organisational objectives will follow.

Nathan Eva et al. formulated a popular three-component definition in 2018 of SL as:

an other-oriented approach to leadership…
manifested through one-on-one prioritizing of follower individual needs and interests…
and outward reorienting of their concern for self towards concern for others within the organisation and the larger community.

For those of you who have read the first post in this series on transformational leadership, maybe you are feeling slightly confused now – aren’t there quite big similarities between what is described here about SL, and the TL concepts of Individualised Consideration and Idealised Influence?

You are absolutely right. And there are yet other leadership theories that also strongly emphasizes the needs and motives of the followers. Here are some examples to hopefully differentiate a bit:

Servant leadership vs transformational leadership - SL is more focused on the psychological needs of followers as a goal in itself, while TL gives importance to the needs of individuals as a means to an end.

Servant leadership vs authentic leadership – while acknowledgement of the importance of being authentic in one's interaction with others is shared by both these approaches, SL has more emphasis on the leader having a higher calling or inner conviction to serve and make a positive difference for others.

Servant leadership vs ethical leadership (EL) - EL theory may focus more on prescribing behaviours in terms of what is good based on ethical rules, while servant leader behaviour is more flexible, weighing in both follower and organisational context.

8 key dimensions

Since Greenleaf’s original formulation of the SL concept, it has gone through subsequent development and refinement. Dierendonck and Nuijten have defined these key dimensions of SL, in brief:

Empowerment: enabling people, encouraging personal development, and building follower self-confidence.
Accountability: setting clear expectations, showing confidence in followers to perform, and holding people accountable for performance (the elements which they can actually influence and control).
Standing back: giving priority to the interest of others first, and providing the support needed as well as appreciation.
Humility: understanding one’s strengths and weaknesses, admitting that one is not infallible and does make mistakes.
Authenticity: expressing oneself in ways that are consistent with inner thoughts and feelings.
Courage: challenging the status quo, daring to take risks and trying out new approaches.
Interpersonal acceptance: being able to understand and empathize with the psychological perspective of other people, experiencing warmth and compassion. Being able to forgive and look past wrongdoings and mistakes.
Stewardship: acting as a role model, and taking responsibility for the larger system, beyond the self.

What does the science say?

One challenge in determining the strength of SL’s scientific support is that it fairly recently got clearly defined and differentiated from other schools of theory. This means that the body of research that has focused on what we today refer to as SL is limited. In some instances, results of studies from older and less well-defined versions of SL might even cause the support to appear weaker than it perhaps is – we do not know, and the only way to find out is through more research.

With that said, the results we do see today are definitely promising enough to encourage such continued efforts. Several studies find SL to be positively correlated with:

Work performance
Innovation and creativity
Organisational Citizenship Behaviours (OCB), helping behaviours and collaboration
Psychological safety, well-being of both individuals and teams

When it comes to these benefits, there are great overlaps between SL and other leadership theories, such as transformational-, ethical, or authentic leadership. SL is however an especially strong predictor of individual and team-level OCB and individual creativity.

Another interesting unique feature of SL relates to personality. There are indications that SL behaviours correlate with being less extroverted. Resonates well with the image of the leader who does not seek focus for him- or herself, right? What is interesting though, is that this is in contrast to what we typically find in similar studies related to other leadership styles, where extraversion more commonly comes out as a positive correlate. These results might therefore hold clues to what the unique value of SL might be in a multi-faceted landscape of leadership approaches, and include larger groups of the population to be seen as holding potential of becoming effective leaders, within a framework that is more suitable for them.

One challenge though: can SL be taught? It can be said that those who are not empathetic or motivated by serving others are not suitable for SL. These kinds of characteristics and motivations are not typical skills, and it is questionable if they can be trained.

All in all, the indicated benefits speak in favour of considering SL as a theoretical framework to use. SL might be especially well-suited for organisations that look for sustainable long-term growth rather than focus on short-term shareholder profits, that want to increase collaboration and well-being, and/or in settings where innovation is crucial. In order to build a servant leadership culture though, one needs to be prepared that it will require time. As some of the characteristics are challenging or even impossible to train, you will need to greatly rely on hiring and promoting leaders that show strong potential for SL.

Did you know that Alumni, in addition to being one of the top Executive Search, Interim and Recruitment firms in the Nordic market, are also experts in the field of Leadership Assessment and Development? Victor Reis is an Occupational Psychologist with extensive experience of leadership and talent management, and is happy to help if you are looking for ways to select and grow the leaders that will boost the success of your organisation.