What is Servant Leadership?
While this might sound like a modern concept, the idea of servant leadership has existed for decades. The term was first coined by Robert Greenleaf in his essay “The Servant as Leader,” in 1970.
According to Greenleaf, servant leadership begins with the natural feeling of wanting to serve first. Therefore, a servant leader has to conduct their workers in a selfless way, putting other people’s needs and the organization’s needs before themselves.
More than commanding and serving as an authority, the servant leader constantly looks for ways to serve those below. Servant leaders contribute to their workers’ growth and development, inducing creativity and fostering a sense of purpose. As a result, employees feel more aligned with the overall purpose and goals of the company.
Servant Leadership in Action
Servant leadership has been adopted by some of the world’s best-performing companies. Corporations such as Google, SAS, Starbucks, FedEx, and Marriott International have been cultivating this leadership style with clear results. Not only do servant leadership and traditional leadership operate differently, but they also generate significantly distinct outcomes.
Putting an emphasis on employees makes them feel more valued, appreciated, and satisfied, Google reached unprecedented levels of employee satisfaction with a metric increase as high as 37%. Furthermore, Google concluded that happy employees are 12% more productive than unhappy ones.
“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” — Sir Richard Branson
Employee satisfaction and consequently boosted company performance are but one of the many benefits of servant leadership. Other upsides include:
- More collaborative and tighter teams
- Moral boost in the teams
- Sense of belonging felt by everyone involved
- Companies openly share a vision, allowing employees to adhere to it
- A more positive work environment
- Improved agility in organizational terms
- Collaborative decision-making
As with any other leadership style, servant leadership falls short in some aspects. These are mostly related to time. Using a collaborative decision-making process, decisions can take longer to be made which slows down some processes. Then, if the company or project started with a different leadership style, it will take time and adjustment to get the servant leadership style running smoothly.
Still, judging by the numbers, it pays off to shift towards this direction. Employees who feel their voice matters are 4.6 times more likely to perform better at their job. 96% of employees identify empathy as essential for employee retention. And 89% of employees at companies that support well-being programs tend to recommend their company as a good place to work.
The benefits are clear. But once you decide to adopt servant leadership in your organization, how exactly does that look?
