What do servant leaders do?

One of the most popular leadership theories is the servant leadership theory. This type of leadership was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf and supported by many leadership and management writers. I found really interesting that Greenleaf never specifically defined servant leadership because it is not a concept or a principle. Servant leadership is an inner standard of living which requires a spiritual understanding of identity, mission, vision and environment.

Servant leaders devote themselves to serving the needs of organization members, focus on meeting the needs of those they lead, develop employees to bring out the best in them, coach others, facilitate personal growth in all who work with them and listen well to build a sense of community. A strength of this way of looking at leadership is that it forces us away from self-serving, dominant leadership and makes those in charge think harder about how to respect, value and motivate people reporting to them.

Unlike leadership approaches with a top-down hierarchical style, servant leadership instead emphasizes collaboration, trust, empathy, and the ethical use of power. At heart, the individual is a servant first, making the decision to lead in order to better serve others, not to increase their own power. The objective is to enhance the growth of individuals in the organization and increase teamwork and personal involvement.

At the beginning I wanted to talk about autocratic leadership, but I realized that that type of leadership is starting to be left behind, at least in the hospitality industry because everyone in this industry should be focusing on serving others, trying to help the employees to be a better person and making sure the guests have the best experience.

In order to get all the information about this theory I started by looking at websites such as Wikipedia in order to get a general idea of what the theory is about. After that, I searched for more information in websites that had specific information about servant leaders like the website of Robert L. Greenleaf’s organization that not only has great information, but shows all the Greenleaf conferences and programs they offer. Finally, I looked at leadership blogs of different people that wrote about that theory to see the point of view of real people that have had the opportunity to be a servant leader or follower of one.  Reading all this information convinced me that we definitely need more servant leaders in our country and we all should learn from those that apply the servant leadership theory.