Robert Greenleaf first coined the term servant leadership in 1970. Since that time through to today the principles espoused by Greenleaf have been lauded and practised by many eminent persons in all manner of leadership positions. Sir Richard Branson among them.
Servant leadership seems, on the face of it, to be a total contradiction in terms…for most often we have been led to believe that a leader is one who leads and a servant is one who does the menial tasks and waits on the leader.
It's a paradox really. Servant and leader - can these two roles be fused into one real person, in all levels of status and calling? If so can that person be productive and effective in the real world of the present? The evidence from many sources says quite clearly that it can.
Servant leadership is not a skilled response to ratios and policies. Its fidelity lies in an enticing and workable vision, in beliefs about persons, in enabling values, in actions taken on reflection, much learned from worthy mentors.
It relies primarily on building competence in relationships with people who, together with the leader, produce the results and conditions. Together they will continually reach for both personal and organisational potential.
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. Greenleaf went on to say, and this is also true of most effective leaders of any type of organisation that, 'they aren't possessive about their positions.'
Leaders, leading leaders, each is - 'primus inter pares' i.e. first among equals.
We will find great difficulty in fulfilling our leadership potential until we really desire to serve others.
Yet desire alone is not enough… we also need to make the decision to want to lead in this way … then there is a determination to do that and finally there requires development utilising the principles of servant leadership.
There is one very simple truth to retaining the support of the people, be they volunteers, staff members, or citizens of a community.
"Continue to meet my needs and I'll stay loyal. Keep seeking ways to enhance our relationships and I'll not only stay, but I'll bring others to you too, and I'll do more, willingly. Dismiss my needs, or not keep pace with, or not take my needs seriously, and I'm off!"
Greenleaf espoused 10 principles. The one that he, and other writers, hold to be the first and the last is listening. He proposed this was the first characteristic of effective servant leaders. Think about how we feel when we know, really know, that "the boss" is actually listening to us. There are myriad valid and valued responses to that simple matter of listening (or is it so simple really?).
The best test is: "Do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?"
or, "The growth that I have achieved can be measured and seen in the growth that I have been able to bring about in others."
It is no wonder that leadership is said to be the most researched subject in human kind. Since time began others have wanted to know what made some leaders stand out and take hundreds, thousands of followers with them to satisfy a cause. Yet history shows that others, even with fancy titles, never make it.
We need more servant leaders to really progress the future that we all want.
* Ron Rowe is a Life Fellow of the NZ Institute of Management and has had years of active leadership in community-based and volunteer organisations.
