Discerning the Servant’s Path: Applying Pre-Committal Questioning to Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership

Robert K. Greenleaf’s servant leadership has become an attractive approach for morally-motivated leaders. However, paradoxes found in servant leadership have the potential to create confusion among those individuals interested in its practice. To assist prospective leaders in deciding upon whether to follow the concepts of servant leadership, an exhaustive literature review was conducted by the researcher to find and code definitions from servant leadershiprelated writings. The results from the initial coding phase were the following themes: Personal Growth, Development, and Empowerment of Employees; Spiritual, Affirmational, and Ethically-Minded Approach toward Employees; Steward Dedicated to Service of Community and Placing Others First; and Traits-Based Leadership. The second round of selective coding yielded Repetitively Embracing Personal Sacrifice as its core theme. Three questions that arose from this specified theme were, “Am I willing to embrace personal sacrifice on a continual basis to practice servant leadership? If so, how do I stay motivated to sustain the concept of putting others first? If not, is there a way to negotiate an understanding where employees are supported in the leadership approach/style I feel most comfortable using? ” These self-assessing questions were recommended for connecting Greenleaf’s (1977) questions-based logic on the practice of servant leadership between his call to service and the final decision of becoming a servant leader. Introduction Servant leadership theory is well known for its selfless approach to managing others. In describing what a servant leader should embody, Robert K. Greenleaf (1977) put forth the image of moral individuals whose main purpose was to act as a resource for their respective employees, nurturing their abilities for the greater good of the organization. The attributes linked to this brand of leadership include being empathetic and accepting of other people, administering healing to strained relationships, promoting accountability beyond organizational walls for the common good of society, and using persuasive measures that appeal to one’s sense of decency (Spears, 1998). For loyal practitioners, these affirmations make servant leadership an attractive alternative to authoritative, top-down management styles. Similarly, servant leadership draws strong parallels to religious figures such as Jesus Christ and St. Paul, attracting individuals searching for a morally-just leadership approach (Agosto, 2005). While servant leadership has wide-ranging appeal, issues on its applicability in real world scenarios remains a source of curiosity. Select scholars have concluded that servant leadership is more philosophy than a techniques-driven leadership model (Prosser, 2010a). Servant leadership is an attitude consisting of intangible qualities that are consciously chosen and incorporated into one’s personality (Sendjaya, 2010). The nondescript nature of the servant leadership approach leads to numerous questions on how to harness these characteristics into a systematic and conceptual method for practicing leadership. As highlighted by Prosser (2010b): How can the absence of a simple definition of servant leadership, and the intentional lack of a formulaic set of rules, be reconciled with a leader’s need to appreciate fully how the (servant leadership) concept can be applied within their organizations? (p. 25) Contrary perceptions that have been posed regarding servant leadership range from its purported aversion to authoritative power to its lopsided emphasis on employee needs over that of stakeholders (McCrimmon, 2010). As countered by Autry (2004), the confusion between being a supportive servant leader and exercising authority in the form of taking stern measures with an employee does not contradict the approach as servant leaders are still expected to perform necessary duties. It is from the self-perceived paradox of servant leadership that practitioners might show hesitancy in enacting this approach. Whereas establishing servant leadership as a refined method as opposed to an abstract behavioral set is beyond the scope of this paper, generating questions for individuals to assess and reflect upon their commitment to servant leadership ideals is within reason. Purpose of Paper The purpose of this paper is to analyze definitions associated with servant leadership, identifying the core theme found across these descriptions to create a series of questions for potential servant leaders to weigh upon before committing themselves to servant leadership. In turn, this paper aims to create a precursor to Greenleaf’s questions-based logic on the practice of servant leadership from his foundational work, The Servant as Leader. Processing Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership Robert K. Greenleaf’s personal definition of servant leadership remains the standard for understanding the approach he brought into prominence, having been quoted by numerous servant leadership scholars such as Spears (1998) and Sipe and Frick (2009). According to Greenleaf (1977): (Servant leadership) begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served (p.13). Greenleaf’s initial response of what servant leadership entails has been expanded upon by subsequent authors. Noted servant leadership scholar Larry C. Spears (1995) wrote of servant leadership: it “attempts to simultaneously enhance the personal growth of workers and improve the quality and caring of our many institutions through a combination of teamwork and community, personal involvement in decision-making, and ethical and caring behavior” (p. 2). Faith-based servant leadership practitioner and situational leadership originator Ken Blanchard (2003) contributed a more transcendent outlook, saying that “servant leadership starts with a vision and ends with a servant heart that helps people live according to that vision” (Blanchard & Hodges, 2003, p.122). For researchers like Patterson (2010), qualities such as love best define servant leadership as this specific act drives the leader to be a guiding force for good. Despite the individual categorizations of Greenleaf’s servant leadership, there is an ethical element that is inherent in each account, pointing leaders to their main calling ― to assist and care for those around them (Peck, 1995). Being a resource for others is integral to Greenleaf’s brand of servant leadership. To accomplish this feat, he devised a series of questions that operated as an internal checklist meant to align servant leaders with the servant-first approach. One must ask, “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? ” (Greenleaf, 1977, pp.13-14). This question-based approach provides the servant leader with a qualitative outlet to assess the treatment of employees, offering a practical form within which to probe the conscious and unintentional motives attached to the act. Assessing servant leadership is not a new venture. The development of quantitative instruments for measuring prevailing qualities found in servant leadership may be traced to Laub’s (1999) Servant Organizational Leadership Assessment (SOLA) Instrument that uncovered six groupings linked to servant leadership behavior: “values people, develops people, builds community, displays authenticity, provides leadership and shares leadership” (p. 66). Successive instruments have contributed to defining those traits servant leaders prioritize as being vital to the servant leadership paradigm (van Dierendonck, 2011), augmenting previous characteristics established in the primary literature. While useful in formalizing servant leadership, these quantitative instruments explicitly concern themselves with uncovering servant leader attributes found within organizations. They do not necessarily encourage introspection from leaders exploring servant leadership’s applicability within their own situation or the intangible spirit of servant leadership similar to Greenleaf’s (1977) inquiry. Recurring Themes from Perceptions on Servant Leadership After conducting a review of literature ranging from peer-reviewed journal articles to books on, or addressing, servant leadership, numerous repetitive themes were found within the collected writings. Segments of the works were abstracted during an initial coding phase for comparison analysis as performed in qualitative research (Saldana, 2009). Four categorical themes were then generated from the chosen segments and divided into their respective groups with several texts appearing in multiple categories. Those categories were as follows: Personal Growth, Development, and Empowerment of Employees; Spiritual, Affirmational, and Ethically-Minded Approach toward Employees; Steward Dedicated to Service of Community and Placing Others First; and Traits-Based Leadership. A second round of analysis known as selective coding was implemented on the uncovered themes. In selective coding, categorical themes are examined with the purpose of identifying the relational element central to the expressions (Strauss, 1987). The core categorical theme, Repetitively Embracing Personal Sacrifice, served as an outline for creating 3 questions to be used in conjuncture with Greenleaf’s (1977) questions for the servant leader. Personal Growth, Development, and Empowerment of Employees Making a concerted effort towards energizing employees in their work and subsequent careers was a significant theme for servant leadership authors. Influenced by Greenleaf’s (1977) concept of cultivating employee talents, numerous ar