What is Servant Leadership?: Forbes

5 Qualities Of Servant Leadership In 2024
By: Rachel Wells, Contributor Award-winning serial entrepreneur and leadership expert. Forbes Magazine

Of late in business circles, you might be hearing the buzzword, “servant leadership.” And it shouldn’t come as a surprise. There are numerous scientific studies and corporate research that validate the effectiveness of this style of leadership.

One such study, led by the University at Buffalo in 2023, revealed that this style of leadership directly impacts improved decision-making, resulting in more dollars to the company. “A one-point increase in servant leadership scores (on a seven-point scale) resulted in $11.3 million in additional revenue for the company, about a 6% increase. And, at the same time, employees who were more other-oriented were giving more to charities.”

This study proves that servant leadership leads to tangible successes such as boosted profits, improved productivity, and positive corporate social responsibility (CSR) outcomes.

But what exactly is servant leadership? And what are its core defining characteristics?

What Is Servant Leadership?
The term servant leadership is a timeless concept that was exemplified in history, for example when Jesus referenced leading as a servant in the Bible. However, it was recently coined and swelled into a movement, by the scholar Robert K. Greenleaf in his 1970 essay appropriately titled, “The Servant As Leader.”

Servant leadership differs from the more traditional view of leadership as being an authoritarian, autocratic business-first approach, and it occurs when the primary goal of the leader is to serve their people—not their profits. This concept was perhaps best summed up concisely in a 2020 study published in Sage Journals:

“Servant leaders strongly believe that they have a duty of stewardship. They are people-centric and value services to others in general and more specifically to their followers. In organizational settings, servant leaders believe in every employee and treat them with respect and humility. The employee is given an opportunity to do meaningful work. Favorable attitudes of employees toward their supervisors were found to be related to the productivity of employees.

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