Greenleaf said that servant leadership is about making the people around you to grow as persons, to be healthier , wiser , freer , more autonomous , and more likely themselves to become servants . Servant leaders facilitate the growth of others along a maturity continuum to greater and greater levels of maturity. Although Robert Greenleaf is considered the father of the modern servant leadership model, no single perspective is complete. Rather than thinking of Greenleaf s description of servant leadership as a single model, one might view it as a portal into a whole new universe of models based on certain fundamental principles. Other leadership thinkers such as Senge, Block, DePree, and Covey give us additional important insights into this universe.
Servant leadership manifests itself in different ways in different organizations.
Yet both organizations base their organizational culture on the servant leadership principles articulated by Greenleaf. Some think that the servant leadership model is too soft and doesn t recognize the political nature of organizations and institutions. Nothing could be further from the truth. Where there is power there will always be politics. What the servant leadership model does is reshape the political environment so that political power is used to protect and build people, rather than keep them in a state of dependency.