Leaders who prioritize meeting the needs of their subordinates over their own or the organization's are practicing servant leadership. But subordinates serve leaders, not the other way around, right? Is “servant leadership” nothing more than an oxymoron?
Well, it turns out that servant leadership is a concept that has been around for quite a while, and it is gathering momentum. Putting people ahead of power is not the usual leadership paradigm most of us are accustomed to, and yet, research is beginning to show that amazing things can happen when leaders decide to make serving their team a priority.
In this post, we will explain what servant leadership is and tell you which behaviors to adopt if you want to practice this leadership style.
Servant Leadership vs Traditional Leadership
The primary distinction between traditional leadership styles and servant leadership lies in the direction of the "service" flow.
In a traditional, top-down hierarchy, subordinates are expected to serve the leader's vision and prioritize immediate organizational success. The leader typically "calls the shots," focusing on orders, directions, and instructions that must be followed to meet performance metrics.
In contrast, servant leadership flips the script by putting people ahead of power. While company success remains the ultimate goal, the servant leader views employee growth, engagement, and well-being as the primary drivers to reach that outcome.
This approach creates a culture built on trust, accountability, and inclusion by prioritizing the needs of the team over the leader’s own ego. However, the efficacy of this style is not universal; it is significantly influenced by the personality of subordinates. More on that later.
Roots of Servant Leadership
The term "servant leadership" was first coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in his 1970 essay, The Servant as Leader. Greenleaf’s central premise was a radical departure from the traditional "great man" theories of the era; he argued that the desire to serve others should be the initial impulse for any leader, rather than the desire for power or material success.
While the formal theory is relatively modern, its roots are deeply embedded in classical philosophy and ethical teachings that emphasize humility and social responsibility. In a professional context, this theory has evolved from a niche philosophical concept into a gathering momentum within organizational psychology.
It challenges the long-held assumption that subordinates exist solely to serve leaders, proposing instead that an oxymoronic "servant-leader" creates more value by focusing on the growth of their team and society at large. This historical change laid the groundwork for modern frameworks that prioritize emotional intelligence and self-awareness as core leadership traits.
Key Attributes of Servant Leadership
Different researchers have proposed a variety of frameworks to describe the behaviors a servant leader engages in. Some of these frameworks have considerable overlap.
If you want to check your own behaviors against some of the most important benchmarks for servant leadership, try to ask yourself how many of the following examples of servant leadership you practice.
Empathy and Active Listening
At the heart of servant leadership is the ability to recognize and understand the unique perspectives of every team member. Unlike traditional leaders who may prioritize their own instructions, a servant leader focuses on active listening to uncover the "why" behind a subordinate’s actions.
This attribute requires the leader to accept the person for who they are, even if they do not always accept their performance or behavioral choices. By creating an environment where employees feel truly heard, the leader fosters deep trust and psychological safety, which are essential for a healthy workplace culture.
Ethical Stewardship and Conceptualization
Stewardship involves a commitment to serving the needs of others and the organization as a whole, rather than seeking personal gain. A servant leader acts as a "steward" of the team’s resources and potential, ensuring that daily decisions align with a broader moral compass.
This is paired with conceptualization: the ability to look beyond short-term metrics and "day-to-day" fire-fighting. By balancing the immediate needs of the department with a long-term vision, the leader ensures the organization creates lasting value for both the internal community and society at large.
Commitment to the Growth of People
This attribute goes beyond professional training; it is an investment in the subordinate's full potential. Servant leaders take a personal interest in the skills and experiences their team members need to acquire to flourish.
This involves challenging subordinates without overstretching their current competencies and maintaining a high level of tolerance for honest mistakes during the learning process.
Building Community and Foresight
A servant leader’s influence extends beyond the immediate team to the broader organization and society at large. This attribute requires you to systematically search for opportunities to create value for others, moving beyond short-term benefits for your specific department.
By being sensitive to issues of sustainability and corporate social responsibility, you help foster a cohesive community that feels connected to a larger purpose. Foresight acts as the strategic partner to this community-building; it is the ability to understand lessons from the past and the realities of the present to identify global growth trajectories.
This prevents the leader from "calling the shots" in a vacuum. Instead, it allows for proactive decision-making that protects the collective interest, ensuring that the team is prepared for future industry shifts while maintaining a culture of trust and shared success.
Persuasion vs Coercion
The transition from traditional to servant leadership is perhaps most visible in how a leader influences their team.
Rather than relying on the old notion that leaders must always "call the shots" or use their instructions as a blunt instrument, a servant leader utilizes persuasion to foster independence and autonomy.
This involves recognizing specific opportunities where your subordinates need to develop their own decision-making skills. True empowerment occurs when you give your team the chance to exercise autonomy and make choices without the fear of heavy-handed correction.
By choosing persuasion over coercion, you strengthen their sense of competence and involve them actively in the decision-making process. This collaborative approach ensures that when subordinates take initiative, it is because they believe in the goal, not because they are following a top-down order.
Self-Awareness and Mindfulness
Cultivating self-awareness is the internal work that allows a servant leader to "walk the talk". It requires a rigorous understanding of your own moral compass and how your personal values align with your professional actions.
When you practice mindfulness, you become more attuned to whether you are treating subordinates equitably and if you are being perceived as a fair, transparent partner in the relationship.
This attribute is essential for building trusting relationships, as it forces you to ask: "Do my employees know what I stand for?". By maintaining a high level of EQ and self-awareness, you ensure that your presence in the workplace is one of stability and integrity.
This transparency ensures that subordinates know they can rely on you, creating a foundation of trust that is necessary before any meaningful empowerment can take place.
Emotional Support
In the usual leadership paradigm, we’re taught to leave our personal problems at the door. But servant leadership acknowledges that we are all human beings, and sometimes, life gets in the way.
It requires being capable of putting your subordinates' success and well-being over your own; creating a space where people feel safe enough to recover from setbacks, whether those are professional "honest mistakes" or personal hurdles.
Practicing this means being tolerant when things go wrong and offering a level of emotional support that strengthens a subordinate's self-confidence.
You have to ask yourself: can you make the tough choices that benefit your team even when they don't benefit you?
By prioritizing this kind of healing, you aren’t just "being nice", you’re building a foundation of trust that allows your team to venture into new territory and take the risks inherent in empowered behaviors.
Accountability and Transparency
Practicing accountability means having a clear moral compass at work and making sure your team knows exactly what ethical principles you stand for. It is one thing to have a set of values on a website, but it is another to apply them rigorously when you have to make difficult choices.
This has to do with leading by example so that your subordinates know they can rely on you to be fair in every interaction. Transparency is the tool that makes this accountability visible.
You want to move away from the old notion that leaders should always hide behind closed doors to call the shots. Instead, you treat your subordinates equitably and keep the lines of communication open regarding why certain decisions are made.
When you are transparent about your own expectations and mistakes, it encourages your team to do the same. This honesty builds a level of trust and inclusion that is the key ingredient for guest satisfaction and seamless service delivery.
Why Does Servant Leadership Promote Team Empowerment?
Team or individual employee empowerment is a psychological state in employees that has several facets:
- Employees work towards a goal that is aligned with their own beliefs and values.
- They are competent enough to perform their tasks.
- They can make autonomous decisions in their work environment.
- They can make a difference through their work for others.
Servant leaders promote most if not all of these perceptions; they help their subordinates realize their full potential, which instills meaning and shows that they can make a difference. Servant leaders also strengthen their subordinates' skills and actively involve them in decision-making processes.
This strengthens their sense of competence and autonomy. In other words, when leaders engage in servant leadership behaviors, their subordinates' sense of empowerment should grow considerably.
Who Benefits From It?
All service employees, and all human beings, as a matter of fact, differ with regard to their personalities. The “big five” personality model: highlights “openness” as one defining characteristic of personality. Individuals who are high in openness are creative, imaginative individuals who welcome other people’s opinions and are generally curious about new experiences.
When service employees are high in openness, chances are that they will have a stronger sense of empowerment, to begin with. Their natural creativity and interest in trying out new things will lead them to actively seek out opportunities for taking initiative and responsibility.
Not surprisingly, our research suggests that while servant leadership benefits all employees, those who lack “openness” benefit more than all others from interacting with a servant leader.
Servant leadership behaviors may strengthen their self-confidence and encourage them to venture out into new territory and take some of the risks that are inherent in empowered behaviors. Without a servant leader, they may have refrained from showing such new attitudes.
Criticisms of This Theory
While the benefits of servant leadership are significant, the theory is not without its detractors. Critics often argue that "servant leadership" is nothing more than an oxymoron because it seems to contradict the very nature of organizational hierarchy.
One common concern is that putting people ahead of power might lead to a lack of clear direction or a "soft" approach that avoids necessary, tough decisions. In high-pressure environments, there is a risk that prioritizing individual needs could slow down the pace of work or conflict with the immediate goals of company success.
Another point of contention is the potential for the style to be perceived as pandering rather than empowerment. If a leader’s humility isn't backed by intent, it can feel quite disingenuous and performative rather than authentic service. Additionally, the effectiveness of the theory is highly dependent on the personality of the team.
Not every employee is ready for the autonomy it provides, and some may interpret a leader's lack of a traditional "command and control" style as a lack of competence. These challenges suggest that servant leadership requires a high level of EQ to implement without losing sight of organizational results.
FAQs
Transitioning to a service-oriented model often brings up practical concerns about how these theories translate to a real-world office environment. While the principles of trust and growth sound great in an internet blog, implementing them requires navigating complex team dynamics and organizational politics.
Below, we’ve addressed some hurdles you might face when moving away from a traditional hierarchy, such as maintaining authority, managing personality types, and handling potential friction with other departments that still follow a more conventional approach.
What are some examples of servant leadership in action?
One of the most famous real-world examples of servant leadership is Herb Kelleher, the co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines. Kelleher fundamentally shifted the traditional leadership paradigm by famously stating that his employees came first, even before the customers or shareholders.
He believed that if he served his employees well, they would in turn provide better service to passengers, leading to organizational success.
How do you retain respect while practicing servant leadership?
Respect follows naturally when your team realizes that your primary goal is to make them better, not just to look good yourself.
You maintain your authority by staying clear on the distinction between being a "servant" and being "subservient." You aren't there to do everyone’s job for them or avoid the hard calls; you’re there to make sure they have what they need to succeed.
When you’re the one holding high standards and being transparent about the "why" behind tough decisions, you aren't seen as a pushover. Instead, you're seen as a grounded leader whose integrity makes them worth following.
Do I have to practice servant leadership across the board?
Not exactly. While the core values like ethical behavior and trust should be consistent, your specific leadership behaviors should adapt to the individual. Research shows that how effective this style is depends heavily on the personality of your subordinates.
Specifically, people differ based on their level of "openness". Individuals high in openness are naturally creative and already seek out responsibility. However, those who lack openness actually benefit more from a servant leader who can strengthen their self-confidence and encourage them to take risks they might otherwise avoid.
Treating people differently based on their needs isn't favoritism; it is about recognizing who needs more independence and who needs more active support to reach their full potential. As long as you treat everyone equitably and maintain transparency, you can provide tailored support without creating disdain.
Will adopting this theory cause clashes with other leadership teams?
Clashing with other leadership teams is almost a given if you’re the only one moving away from a top-down model. To traditional managers, your focus on empowerment can look like a lack of discipline or "running a loose ship."
They might worry that by giving your team autonomy, you’re making their own rigid instructions look bad. Or they might see your department as an outlier and worry that your subordinates are becoming "too independent" to manage through standard corporate instructions.
The key to navigating these clashes is to let the results speak for themselves. While other teams might focus on short-term metrics through coercion, a servant-led team usually sees higher engagement, lower turnover, and a more sustainable output.
You bridge the gap with other leaders by being a steward for the whole organization, not just your own "island." By showing that your team’s autonomy actually creates more value for the company and lightens the load for upper management, you turn potential conflict into a proof of concept for the theory’s effectiveness.
Summing Up
The shift to servant leadership requires the guts to abandon the old notion that a leader's primary job is to "call the shots." It is a fundamental move away from top-down control toward a model where your success is measured by the growth of the people around you.
When you prioritize the needs of your team, you create a culture of empowerment that directly impacts the front lines. This sense of ownership is often the missing ingredient for seamless service delivery and high levels of guest satisfaction.
By giving servant leadership a try, you stop being a bottleneck for decisions and start becoming a catalyst for results. Observe how your team rewards that trust; the outcomes usually far exceed what any rigid instruction manual could produce.
