The Servant as Leader by Robert K. Greenleaf

Greenleaf has written a series of unconnected essays moving through his life-experiences, literature and poetry, as well as history and religion. The Servant as Leader is not a scientific paper rather a philosophical collection of thoughts.

Natural Leadership

He describes a true leader as someone who acts for their people first – a servant – before pursuing their own goals.

“Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived?”

Servant Leadership cares not (only) for the top performers but rather tries to achieve an improvement of the average.

Servant leaders may be critical of the performance in comparison to what they are capable of. But never for who the person is.

Ambiguity

The world is full of contradictions and it is under the stewardship of the Servant Leader that we move through Ambiguity .

In chaotic or at least complex environments, how can we know the best decision and result? We cannot! Thus, after some study and experience, we hypothize with a splash of doubt. We act on this hypothesis and examine the results.

“Faith is the choice of the nobler hypothesis. Not the noblest; one never knows what it is. But the nobler, the best one can see when the choice is made.”

Communicating a Vision

Servant leaders are described as prophets with a clear vision and message for people to move towards. This vision is built from listening with awareness to our surroundings and people; and intuitively building upon what we perceive. It is founded on ”sensing the unknowable” and “foreseeing the unforseeable”.

To listen well you need to ask questions well.

”In saying what I have in mind will I really improve on the silence?”

The vision must be presented in the context and experiences of the listeners.

Decision-making

Leaders must live with the trade-off to make decisions without having full information. In a complex world, one cannot gather all data before a decision. There is always more information, but the cost and delay might not be worth it.

Leaders strive to create opportunities and enable autonomous decision-making for people. They are wary of using their power to coerce and manipulate people into pre-defined paths and decisions.

Create Dangerously

“For the person with creative potential there is no wholeness except in using it.”

In an ambiguous world with complex problems, we cannot fall back to best-cases. Instead, we need to be aware of our pasts and futures to create new solutions in the now.

Implications

“Able servants with potential to lead will lead, and, where appropriate, they will follow only servant-leaders.”

People will rather follow a non-servant for order than a servant leader for chaos. Thus, a servant leader must not create chaos for society will crave order.

The ability to serve and lead does not rely on age alone. Thus, we must we open to educate and grow people as soon as their ability becomes apparent.