‘Servant Leadership’ is Too Under the Radar
Have you heard of “servant leadership”?
While this business leadership philosophy can be traced back to the teachings of Jesus Christ, it rose to prominence in modern times thanks to Robert K. Greenleaf's 1970 essay "The Servant as Leader".
A few years prior to publishing this essay, Greenleaf founded the Greenleaf Center, a nonprofit organization. Today this nonprofit is known as the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.
Small-world side note: I’m proud to be connected in a small way to this organization. I was formerly Director of Content Development for a nonprofit called Winning Workplaces. When it was dissolved by the philanthropic family that ran it in 2011, the Greenleaf Center absorbed its assets and knowledge-base articles, and I was part of that transition.
What is servant leadership in practice?
You can think of it most simply as turning the “people serve their leader” notion on its head. The leader who practices servant leadership is there to serve his or her people.
The business benefits of servant leadership
Atlassian’s Leadership blog summarizes this well:
“In their book Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading by Serving, James Sipe and Don Frick share that during the 10-year period they studied, stocks from the 500 largest public companies (S&P 500) averaged a 10.8% pre-tax portfolio return. Companies featured in Jim Collins’ book Good to Great averaged a 17.5% return. However, the servant-led companies’ returns averaged 24.2%.
And researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago saw measurable increases in key business metrics, including a 6% increase in job performance, 8% increase in customer service, and 50% increase in employee retention.
The results are clear: servant leadership is not only good for the soul; it’s good for the spreadsheet.”
Servant leadership’s recent popularity
Here’s an interesting trend I found, via Google Trends. Over the past year, searches for “servant leadership” have outpaced searches for other popular business leadership approaches — and pretty decently, I might add:
OK, so where is the media on this popular business search?
If you Google “servant leadership”, it’s not until the 6th result that we see a major media source (Forbes) cover it:
The next major media or trade source result is currently CIO.com at position #25. Granted, Harvard University appears above that. But for the purpose of this conversation, I’m using media coverage as a barometer for target audience (business owners and leaders) interest.
If servant leadership delivers outsized gains for businesses compared to other leadership methods, then why don’t we see more extensive coverage of it in the first 20-30 search results from the likes of Entrepreneur, Inc., etc.? After all, business ownership structures and designations where distributed power is tied to outcomes that beat the market overall — such as ESOPs and certified B Corporations — have gotten a lot more of the limelight lately.
My guess is that the word “servant” in the phrase “servant leadership” undercuts more widespread media adoption, given its negative connotations.
If this is the case, I get it. However….
While “servant” has some historically negative connotations, I keep going back to the root word, “serve”.
In the ecosystem of marketing consultants and business leaders, we consultants serve our clients by leading through strategy guidance and tactical recommendations. In this way, we are objectively servant leaders, whether we call ourselves that or not.
What do you think?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on “servant leadership”. Does your business use this phrase? Do your leaders and managers serve those who report to them, but your firm calls this approach something else? Let me know.
