Servant Leadership

By Jim Heskett

Servant leadership is an ageold concept, loosely used to suggest that a leader’s primary role is to serve others, especially employees… Lao-tzu wrote about servant leadership in the 5th-century BC, “The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware… The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words.

When his task is accomplished and things completed, all the people say, ‘We ourselves have achieved it!’ ” It is natural, rightly or wrongly, to relate servant leadership to the concept of an inverted pyramid organisation in which top management “reports” upward to lower levels of management.

The modern era of servant leadership began with a paper, The Servant as Leader, by Robert Greenleaf, in 1970. In it, he said, “The servant leader is servant first…” It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.

Now, it appears that a group of organisational psychologists, led by Adam Grant, are attempting to measure the impact of servant leadership on leaders, not just those being led.

Grant describes research in his recent book, Give and Take, that suggests that servant leaders are not only more highly regarded than others by their employees and not only feel better about themselves at the end of the day but are more productive as well. His thesis is that servant leaders are the beneficiaries of important contacts, information and insights that make them more effective.

From “Why Isn’t ‘Servant Leadership’ More Prevalent?”