Servant leadership has been in the leadership literature for nearly half a century.

It was first codified in 1970 by Robert Greenleaf, following his early retirement from American Telephone & Telegraph (AT & T).

In the 40 years that he worked there, he felt that the traditional authoritarian style of leadership that dominated American organizations simply didn’t work.

We now know, of course, that he was right; but it was only after workers were given the liberty to change jobs more or less at will from the mid-1980s onwards that the environment in the world of work had changed sufficiently for this to be seen fully.

 

A little management history

You may remember that prior to 1984, there existed between employees and employers what was known as a psychological contract – an unwritten agreement that workers had jobs with their organizations for as long as they wished, barring serious offenses.

The “no job for life” movement put an end to that.

Although that was only about 30 years ago, it’s something that you rarely hear about anymore.

It’s now part and parcel of society today.

Short to medium contracts are now the norm.

Employees have to design their own careers and then use their initiative to change jobs when they think they should in order to follow the path that they want.

They know that, irrespective of any so-called personal development plans, any progress they make is now up to them.

When it was unacceptable for people to change companies every few years, employees could do very little about authoritarian leadership.

That’s because it looked as though they had some kind of personal flaw if they didn’t work for the same organization for most of their career.

Forty or even 50 years in one place was not uncommon.

Today, no one dreams of doing that.

 

Ironically, if you now stay in the same place for more than a few years, unless you are at the end of your career, you look like someone who lacks the ability to advance.

In other words, staying in the same place for any length of time is now a liability as far as your career is concerned.

Thirty years ago, it was what you expected to do.

Now in an environment where changing jobs every few years was frowned upon, authoritarian leadership was something you learned to put up with.

If you started to move around, then it looked like you were the problem.

And the reason for that was simple: Nearly all organizations shared the same leadership style.

If everyone was doing it, then that couldn’t be the problem.

It was a bit like the story about the mother watching a group of soldiers marching in parade. “Look”, she exclaimed. “Everyone is out of step except Johnny!”

The psychological contract was broken when organisations found it impossible to compete with the flexible workforce found in Japan.

Japan didn’t have the same constitutional protections that American women, in particular, had. Men were given the full-time, permanent positions, and women were hired and laid off as necessary when companies needed more people during times of growth, or less when the economy sagged.

American companies and, as it turned out, those in other countries as well needed to have similar flexibility so that their wage bill wouldn’t put them out of business.

What managers hadn’t bargained for was that workers would use the new freedom to leave willy-nilly.

You see, organizations thought that they held all the cards, and as long as people wanted to work in the same place for 40 years, they did; but once workers realised that they now had the freedom to leave one company and go to another without penalty, they started to do so.

Managers couldn’t on the one hand fail to give people jobs for life while on the other hand criticise them for changing jobs.

After all, it was they who had caused that problem to happen in the first place.

They couldn’t have it both ways, and everyone knew it.

And once people got over the shock of not having a job for life and realised the freedom that that gave them, organizations lost control of their workforce.

They had opened Pandora’s Box, and they had only themselves to blame.

The result was that no one had to put up with the abuses of traditional authoritarian leadership.

When organisations could say, “Do what I tell you to do or you’re out”, and finding work again was difficult or impossible, managers could get away with it.

 

However, when they said, “It doesn’t matter if you do what we tell you to do, we can’t afford to keep you”, the game changed.

People said in effect, “If you’re not going to be loyal to me, then why should I be loyal to you?

Why should I put up with your nonsense?”

And they didn’t.

And they left.

So that’s a brief history of how we got to where we are.

 

How servant leadership is different

Notwithstanding our propensities toward laziness, most of us want to work; but we want to do work that is interesting and challenging, and we want the people that we work for to recognise our abilities and to treat us with respect.

That is something that servant leadership does.

That’s because this style of leadership begins with the needs and interests of workers.

Traditional leadership began with the power and the interests of the leader.

Servant leaders immediately cast the light on those who do the work, or the work that enables the organisation to invoice customers.

 

Back to the floor

Years ago, there was a television programme called Back to the Floor. The gist was that a new MD or operational director would attempt to disguise him- / herself and get a job working as a new recruit in one or more locations of the company. Each episode consisted of the various experiences that that person had.

Quite often, weaknesses in the pay structure, equipment, and systems of the various companies came to light.

One of the most interesting things, however, occurred when these senior people discovered that they themselves couldn’t actually do the work that they expected their junior employees to perform.

It was in those moments especially, when the unacceptable leadership styles of the organisation’s managers were often exposed.

Hard working people would tell the new “recruit” of their dissatisfaction.

In most cases, when these managers got back to the boardroom, they made the changes that were necessary.

Unfortunately, only a dozen or so companies made it onto the programme.

There are thousands of others that could have benefited by doing exactly the same thing.

It’s something that you ought to consider either in your firm or for your clients.

The point is that it’s difficult to become a servant leader if you don’t know what the needs of your people are.

In organisations that are characterised by an authoritarian leadership style, people are afraid to speak out.

 

Why?

Because it could harm their chances for promotion.

They could also get sacked.

Traditional leaders don’t like push-back.

They see it as a challenge to their authority.

You can find extreme examples of this among countries that have totalitarian leaders. Dissenters are exiled or executed.

Getting sacked is the organisational equivalent.

 

In an earlier article, we saw how important it was to be a servant leader at heart, and how it wasn’t something that you could fake.

We saw, too, that in order to obtain the heart of a servant leader that you needed to become sensitive to the plight of others.

Back to the Floor did that for many of the senior leaders.

It was there that they discovered people working two jobs in order to make ends meet.

It was there that they learned that employees worked with inadequate equipment in harsh conditions and for very little compensation.

They were visibly shocked by what they witnessed and experienced.

That’s what has to happen to you.

We sometimes make the comment about how the other half live.

That ratio is far too generous.

It’s more like how the other one percent lives.

If you’re among that one percent or ten percent, then you’re going to have to not only discover, but experience viscerally, how the other 90-99% live and feel before you can serve them.

You’re going to have to share the feeling of what those needs are before you can do anything about them.

Otherwise, the temptation will be too great to just throw a little money at the problem.

The lack of money may be part of the problem, but it’s usually a reflection or a result of the actual problem.

Fundamentally, the problem is likely to be that the leader is self-centred.

If you get nothing else from this article, then get this: It’s impossible to be selfless and self-centred at the same time.

You can’t be a servant leader and embrace a traditional authoritarian leadership style.

You can’t wash the feet of others while expecting them to wash yours.

In order to be a servant leader, you have to decide that from this day forth, you will do whatever it takes to serve those in your organisation.

 

Role models

One of the problems with becoming a servant leader is the lack of role models.

If you’ve never seen it or have only read about it, then it will be difficult to change your attitude from one who expects to be served into one who serves.

Difficult, but not impossible.

Where do you start?

One place is by reading biographies of those who made it their life’s work to serve others.

Abraham Lincoln is one person that you might want to study.

He wasn’t perfect.

No one is; however, rather than taking the easy route and letting the South secede from the United States, he went to war to preserve the nation and to free the nearly four million slaves that were “owned” in the country at the time.

Another life you could read about is that of Dr Martin Luther King.

He could have refused to accept the responsibility to lead the civil rights movement in the United States.

One of the most remarkable aspects of that movement was the non-violent element of it.

If ever there was someone who practised what he preached, and turned the other cheek, it was this man.

David Livingstone, Albert Schweitzer, and Mother Teresa are other examples of people who made it their life’s work to sacrifice what could have been a fairly comfortable life for one that was characterised by service to others.

The ultimate example, of course, is Jesus Christ, the person in whom Greenleaf initially recognised as having the qualities of servant leadership.

You could study Him for your entire life and still not fully grasp all that it meant.

 

A calling

In a sense, these are extreme examples. Few people are called to be servant leaders.

That said, it does reveal something that is often overlooked.

In your own experience, you will know that anytime a new leadership or management method, technique, movement or discovery comes by, someone writes a book or two about it, then everyone jumps on board, tries it for a little while, and then abandons it when the next one comes along.

While that is a foolhardy way to approach any change, servant leadership is very different from any other.

It isn’t a style, or even a lifestyle.

No.

It’s a calling.

It’s something you do because you couldn’t live with yourself if you did anything else.

That may be why we witness such dedication in those who have it.

Those who have a calling to do anything know that that’s why they’ve been put on this earth.

They know that they aren’t here for their three score and ten to make an easy life for themselves, but rather to give their lives for the benefit of others.

Those who are called expect hardship, resistance, and even hostility; but none of those things matter because each knows that they won’t live forever, and that they need to employ all of their strength to do the most good for as many people as they can in the little vapour that we call life.

 

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