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Servant Leadership

💼 Business By CampusDown Wiki Editorial Team Last updated
Quick answer: servant leadership holds that a leader's influence comes from serving followers and helping them and their community grow.
Contents
  1. 1. Background
  2. 2. Ten characteristics (Spears)
  3. 3. Compared with other styles
  4. 4. Examples and criticism
  5. 5. References

Background

Robert Greenleaf, a former AT&T; executive, was inspired by Hermann Hesse's Journey to the East, in which the servant Leo turns out to be the group's true leader. In The Servant as Leader (1970) he wrote that the servant-leader begins with "the natural feeling that one wants to serve", and that the test is whether those served grow healthier, freer and more autonomous.

Ten characteristics (Spears)

  • Listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion
  • Conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, building community

Compared with other styles

Where transformational leadership inspires followers toward organisational goals, servant leadership puts followers' needs and growth first and treats performance as the result. It is often drawn as an inverted pyramid.

Examples and criticism

William Pollard of ServiceMaster and Southwest Airlines are common examples. Critics say the concept is vague, hard to measure and may not fit crises that need fast decisions.

References

  1. Greenleaf, R. K. (1970). The Servant as Leader. Robert K. Greenleaf Center.
  2. Spears, L. C. (Ed.). (1995). Reflections on Leadership. Wiley.
  3. van Dierendonck, D. (2011). Servant leadership: A review and synthesis. Journal of Management, 37(4), 1228-1261.

Reports and materials that use this theory (Korean)

There are no materials dedicated to this theory yet, but you can search related reports in the CampusDown library (Korean).

Find more reports · Search '서번트 리더십' on CampusDown →
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This article was last updated on October 15, 2026. It is based on widely recognized original works and textbooks; when citing it in a paper, please check the original sources listed in the references.