Servant Leadership: Where’s the Organizational Payoff?
I see a bun fight brewing. The target: “servant leadership.”
Coined by Robert Greenleaf in a seminal 1970 essay, servant leadership refers to leaders who serve their fellow workers, helping them to develop as “healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous” individuals who become servants themselves. Judging by buzz alone, servant leadership is growing in popularity. Its proponents say servant leaders boost the motivation and morality of their followers and position their organizations as values-based, innovative, and committed to internal and external service.
Flummadiddle, says Jon Aarum Andersen (Lilllehammer University College, Norway). Writing in Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Andersen takes a hard-boiled management view of servant leadership and finds it wanting. Here’s why:
Lack of rigor. There is no generally accepted definition of servant leadership: is it a behavioural pattern or a personality trait? Consequently there is no empirical measurement of whether or not managers are servant leaders. “As for an instrument measuring the degree of servant leadership,” Andersen writes, “we still do not know how much ‘servility’ a leader must exhibit in order to be or to be seen as a servant-leader.”
Confused priorities. For servant leaders, followers and their needs are the first concern. What about the organization and its needs? “Managers are hired to contribute to organisational goal attainment. These goals can only be attained by having subordinates (not followers) solving tasks that lead to productivity and effectiveness. Leadership has to do with the systematic influence on other people so that they solve tasks related to the pursuit of organisational goals.”
Low mojo. Servant leaders score high on humility and empathy but low in need for power. According to Andersen, an established body of research shows that managers with a high need for power are more effective than others. Ergo, servant leaders are wired to be relatively ineffective.
Phone lines are open: Your thoughts?
When a Servant-Leader Comes Knocking . . ., Jon Aarum Andersen; Leadership & Organization Development Journal (Vol. 30 No. 1, 2009, pp. 4-15)
Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com
photo credit: Pulpolux !!!
Leadership is situational and personal. Any leadership theory that purports to have the “right approach” to leadership will always be somewhat simplistic and suspect.
Here’s a situation where I think it is working — a professional service firm that has just experienced a difficult and painful leadership coup. In this organization, leadership is an obligation to serve. You are asked to serve and you do it as a way to “give back” to your firm. As in most firms all partners are peers whether they are in leadership or not. This particular organization needed also needed some healing. Servant leadership is a fit in this case.
The criticisms of this style are valid and are being leveled at the leader in question in this firm. Is this a sustainable style? We’ll see. Is any leadership style sustainable?