Review of "The Servant as Leader" (Part 1)

 

            In 1970, Robert Greenleaf published his landmark essay, The Servant as Leader. Deeply moved by Herman Hesse’s novel Journey to the East, Greenleaf was particularly inspired by a central character in the story named Leo, who servilely ministers to travelers through action and song. When Leo disappears, the group’s cohesiveness falls into disarray and the travelers abandon the trip. Later, one of the travelers, H.H., meets up with Leo and realizes that Leo was in fact the leader of the organization that sponsored the trip, even though he acted obsequiously. Noting this fictional character “as a man of enormous presence”(Loc. 35) in the story, Greenleaf was moved by the irony of Leo being a leader, yet ministering as a servant.

As an outcome of this impression and his own personal research, Greenleaf, a former executive at American Telephone & Telegraph for 40 years, proposed a new type of leadership rather than the top-down leadership prevalent in American culture as an aftereffect of World War II. This new leadership mentality, what he coins as “servant-leadership,” is a type of leadership that recognizes the value of each worker and his own personal impact on an organization.

In writing his essay, Greenleaf divided his essay into the components a servant-leader should display. This blog post is part 1 of 2, and in this particular post, key highlights of each component are listed for the understanding of how Greenleaf defines servant-leadership. In the second part of this essay review, Greenleaf’s components are contrasted to the Biblical understanding of what a servant-leader should be and the qualities he should display.

 

Component of                 Servant-Leadership	Description
Initiative	“The forces for good and evil in the world are propelled by the thoughts, attitudes, and actions of individual beings. What happens to our values, and therefore to the quality of our civilization in the future, will be shaped by the conceptions of individuals that are born of inspiration” (Loc. 156).
Goal Setter	“A mark of a leader, an attribute that puts him in a position to show the way for others, is that he is better than most at pointing the direction. As long as he is leading, he always has a goal. It may be a goal arrived at by group consensus; or the leader, acting on inspiration, may simply have said, ‘Let’s go this way.’ But the leader always knows what it is and can articulate it for any who are unsure. By clearly stating and restating the goal the leader gives certainty and purpose to others who may have difficulty in achieving it for themselves…Not much happens without a dream, and for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams” (Loc. 165-176).
Listening and Understanding	“I have seen enough remarkable transformations in people who have been trained to listen to have some confidence in this approach. It is because true listening builds strength in other people. Most of us at one time or another, some of us a good deal of the time, would really like to communicate, really get through to a significant level of meaning in the hearer’s experience. It can be terribly important. The best test of whether we are communicating at this depth is to ask ourselves, first, are we really listening? Are we listening to the one we want to communicate to? Is our basic attitude, as we approach the confrontation, one of wanting to understand?” (Loc. 191).
Language and Imagination	“Nothing is meaningful until it is related to the hearer’s own experience. One may hear the words, one may even remember them and repeat them, as a computer does in the retrieval process. But meaning, a growth in experience as a result of receiving the communication, requires that the hearer supply the imaginative link from the listener’s fund of experience to the abstract language symbols the speaker has used” (Loc. 200).
Withdrawal	There are two types of individuals. Those who seek out pressure and those who “endure pressure to have the opportunity” (Loc. 219). “Systematic neglect [is] to sort out the most important from the less important…Pacing oneself by appropriate withdrawal is one of the best approaches to making optimal use of one’s resources. The servant as-leader must constantly ask himself, how can I use myself to serve best?” (Loc. 227).
Acceptance and Empathy	“If we can take one dictionary’s definition: acceptance is receiving what is offered, with approbation, satisfaction, or acquiescence; and empathy is the imaginative projection of one’s own consciousness into another being” (Loc. 227). “The servant always accepts and empathizes, never rejects. The servant as leader always empathizes, always accepts the person but sometimes refuses to accept some of the person’s effort or performance as good enough” (Loc. 237). “Acceptance of the person, though, requires a tolerance of imperfection. Anybody could lead perfect people—if there were any. But there aren’t any perfect people. And the parents who try to raise perfect children are certain to raise neurotics” (Loc. 246). “Men grow taller when those who lead them empathize and when they are accepted for what they are, even though their performance may be judged critically in terms of what they are capable of doing. Leaders who empathize and who fully accept those who go with them on this basis are more likely to be trusted” (Loc. 255).
Knowing the Unknowable	For this leadership quality, Greenleaf oddly postulates about telepathy and clairvoyance and settles his argument with intuition in what he delineates as “a feel for patterns.” “There usually is an information gap between the solid information in hand and what is needed. The art of leadership rests, in part, on the ability to bridge that gap by intuition, that is, a judgment from the unconscious process. The person who is better at this than most is likely to emerge the leader because he contributes something of great value” (Loc. 237).
Foresight (Prescience)	“Foresight means regarding the events of the instant moment and constantly comparing them with a series of projections made in the past and at the same time projecting future events—with diminishing certainty as projected time runs out into the indefinite future” (Loc. 322). “Foresight is the “lead” that the leader has. Once he loses this lead and events start to force his hand, he is leader in name only. He is not leading; he is reacting to immediate events and he probably will not long be a leader” (Loc. 322).
Awareness and Perception	“The cultivation of awareness gives one the basis for detachment, the ability to stand aside and see oneself in perspective in the context of one’s own experience, amidst the ever present dangers, threats, and alarms. Then one sees one’s own peculiar assortment of obligations and responsibilities in a way that permits one to sort out the urgent from the important and perhaps deal with the important. Awareness is not a giver of solace—it is just the opposite. It is a disturber and an awakener. Able leaders are usually sharply awake and reasonably disturbed. They are not seekers after solace. They have their own inner serenity” (Loc. 351-361).
Persuasion	“Leadership by persuasion has the virtue of change by convincement rather than coercion. Its advantages are obvious” (Loc. 397).
One Action at a Time	“Such are the wondrous ways in which leaders do their work—when they know who they are and resolve to be their own men and will accept making their way to their goal by one action at a time, with a lot of frustration along the way” (Loc. 415).
Healing and Serving	“This is an interesting word, healing, with its meaning, “to make whole.” The example above suggests that one really never makes it. It is always something sought. Perhaps, as with the minister and the doctor, the servant-leader might also acknowledge that his own healing is his motivation. There is something subtle communicated to one who is being served and led if, implicit in the compact between servant-leader and led, is the understanding that the search for wholeness is something they share.” (Loc. 487).
Community	“Only community can give the healing love that is essential for health.” (Loc. 505)…Love is an undefinable term, and its manifestations are both subtle and infinite. But it begins, I believe, with one absolute condition: unlimited liability! As soon as one’s liability for another is qualified to any degree, love is diminished by that much” (Loc. 525).
Power & Authority	“The trouble with coercive power is that it only strengthens resistance. And, if successful, its controlling effect lasts only as long as the force is strong. It is not organic. Only persuasion and the consequent voluntary acceptance are organic” (Loc. 576).

 

Picture: 

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Reference:

Greenleaf, R. (1970). The servant as leader. [Kindle Edition]. The Robert K Greenleaf Association.