Servant leadership

Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy in which the goal of the leader is to serve. This is different from traditional leadership where the leader's main focus is the thriving of their company or organization. A servant leader shares power, puts the needs of the employees first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.[1] Instead of the people working to serve the leader, the leader exists to serve the people.[2] As stated by its founder, Robert K. Greenleaf, a servant leader should be focused on "Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?"[3]

When leaders shift their mindset and serve first, they benefit as well as their employees in that their employees acquire personal growth, while the organization grows as well due to the employees' growing commitment and engagement. Since this leadership style came about, a number of different organizations including Starbucks and Marriott International have adopted this style as their way of leadership.[4]

According to a 2002 study by Sen Sendjaya and James C. Sarros, servant leadership is being practiced in some of the top-ranking companies, and these companies are highly ranked because of their leadership style and following.[1] Further research also confirms that servant leaders lead others to go beyond the call of duty.[5]

  1. ^ a b Sendjaya, Sen; Sarros, James C. (September 2002). "Servant Leadership: Its Origin, Development, and Application in Organizations". Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies. 9 (2): 57–64. doi:10.1177/107179190200900205. S2CID 145320548.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Kashyap & Rangnekar 2016 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Greenleaf, Robert (2007). "The Servant as Leader". Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance. pp. 79–85. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-70818-6_6. ISBN 978-3-540-70817-9.
  4. ^ Li, Fengyu; Liu, Bing; Lin, Weipeng; Wei, Xin; Xu, Zikun (October 2021). "How and when servant leadership promotes service innovation: A moderated mediation model". Tourism Management. 86: 104358. doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2021.104358.
  5. ^ Sendjaya, Sen; Eva, Nathan; Robin, Mulyadi; Sugianto, Lyfie; ButarButar, Ivan; Hartel, Charmine (November 8, 2019). "Leading others to go beyond the call of duty: A dyadic study of servant leadership and psychological ethical climate". Personnel Review. 49 (2): 620–635. doi:10.1108/PR-08-2018-0285. S2CID 210538519.