What Is Servant Leadership?

Let’s take a closer look at servant leadership and why it is so beneficial to teams of all sizes and structures.

What is servant leadership?

Servant leadership comes from the belief that leaders and managers are there to serve those under them rather than rule over them. The concept of the servant as leader emphasises that true leadership begins with a commitment to serving others, prioritising their growth and well-being before personal ambition.

Lyubovnika, Tian, and Knight’s meta-analysis of servant leadership literature(*) shows that servant leadership has powerful incremental effects on individual-level task performance and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB), as well as team-level task performance and OCB. OCB is a person’s voluntary commitment within an organisation or company beyond their contractually obligated tasks. They often contribute positively to the overall effectiveness of the organisation, but they are very much discretionary and not an enforceable part of a person’s workload or everyday tasks.

It is easy to see how this way of thinking feeds into positive outcomes, while also supporting the goals of servant leadership. Ultimately, there should be a balance and a symbiotic relationship between management and employees. Both should feel like they are supporting one another.

Servant leadership is also notable because it can be found across all types of workplaces. In countries with a high power distance culture, with a strong hierarchy with one figurehead leading above workers, servant leadership is just as prevalent as in low power distance cultures where a more egalitarian approach is favoured.

What are the benefits of servant leadership?

Should you specifically and successfully choose to model servant leadership in your organisation, you may notice certain changes and benefits arising within your teams. Typically, we see the following benefits arising from those who choose to lead in this way:

Higher employee engagement and satisfaction

Employees feel like they are being respected, valued, and supported. They have a good understanding of the expectations on them and they are more likely to partake in OCBs, as we discussed above. Overall, this then leads to higher engagement and job satisfaction within the team. In turn, this leads to lower turnover rates and a more committed workforce.

Psychological safety in teams

Psychological safety involves the active creation of a working environment where an employee feels like they can make a mistake and speak up about it without fear of repercussions or the need to try to disguise the mistake. Servant leadership seeks to serve employees’ best interests. This will include giving them space to make mistakes and ensuring that they are not unduly punished in the aftermath.

Improved productivity and outcomes

When people are taken care of properly within their workplace, they will be able to fulfil tasks and outcomes more successfully. Productivity as a whole will be improved, and organisational success will rise. Leaders aim to address the concerns of their employees, leaving them free to instead focus on their tasks.

What characteristics are associated with servant leadership?

Certain servant leadership characteristics might lend themselves more to some than to others. Knowing the traits and practices of the various styles can help a leader determine and define their own leadership styles. When a person already displays certain behavioural traits, it can be much easier to align with a specific style of leadership. When discussing servant leaders, we typically see the following characteristics:

Active listening

Active listening is an important skill for all managers, not just servant leaders. Even those with more detached, traditional styles of leadership need to learn how to listen effectively if they are then to motivate their employees to do better.

Good active listening involves body language, such as nods and maintaining eye contact. An active listener will also frequently ask clarifying questions or repeat important points back to the speaker to show that they are actually taking on board what is being said.

Emotional support

A good leader cares about the well-being of their people. Servant leaders want their employees to succeed, and this can require lending them emotional support through both the good times and the bad.

They need to know how to understand and validate the feelings and perspectives of others. If one employee is struggling with their work, there could be a dozen nuanced reasons behind it. Servant leadership focuses on uplifting employees and giving them the tools they need to overcome whatever issues they may be facing.

Integrity

Servant leadership seeks to show and maintain integrity in all aspects of their work and management. This is an essential part of building trust among teams and helps to ensure everyone communicates openly and honestly.

Building community is an essential part of creating a tight-knit team. At the head of it needs to be a strong leader to hold everyone together and provide a role model for expected behaviours. The servant leadership approach gives space for everyone to be treated with the respect and fairness they deserve.

Collaboration

Collaboration is a key part of any team. When people want to work together, when they want to share experiences and knowledge, they build a sense of belonging and camaraderie.

Where would you rather work? A place where you actually want to take an interest in the lives and achievements of your colleagues, or just a place where you sit like drones and don’t want to get to know each other? Servant leaders work to create these comfortable, collaborative workplaces that employees want to engage with.

Foresight

A leader does need a good level of foresight to help nurture their teams. This can be difficult, especially during times of change, but seeing the path ahead and trying to mitigate risks before they arise can provide a great deal of support to employees.

Effective servant leadership sees managers reflect on both past successes and failures to see what led to those outcomes. By using foresight, servant leaders should be able to manage risk, push for innovation and change, and make well-informed decisions that best support the entire team.

Awareness

Servant leaders cannot expect to guide their employees to success without any sense of awareness. Foresight and awareness might seem like the same thing on the surface. However, foresight looks to the future, and awareness speaks more to what is happening around us in the moment. Servant leadership theory is tied intrinsically to the concept that management is there to serve their employees, and this can only happen when they are aware of the situations around them.

Awareness of the well-being of leaders themselves and employees, of the emotions of everyone in the office, and external influences such as life at home can benefit everyone. It is a key part of the delivery and receiving of constructive feedback, leading to overall organisational success.

Learning and Development

At the heart of servant leadership theory is the belief that this style of leadership should uplift those under them. The best way to do so is support via learning and development.

Learning and development consistently rank as one of the most important issues for employers, with research showing that 89% of employers believe that employees will have to continuously learn throughout their job to keep up with changes and new skills in their respective industry. Learning and development initiatives should be fully supported by managers so employees know that they are supported no matter the direction they think their career needs to move.

Why should leaders determine their leadership style?

Surely leaders can just focus on fulfilling their tasks and obligations? Why do they need to learn how a servant leadership style might benefit them, or how other forms of traditional leadership might inform their own output?

It is quite simple; by understanding the nuances in our own behaviour, we are better positioned to help others achieve their best too. The lines can sometimes blur between multiple leadership styles, so looking for correlations between our behaviour and the accepted characteristics of each one can sometimes be beneficial.

For example, servant leadership can sometimes be spoken of as being similar to transformational leadership. In fact, there are some subtle differences between them.

Transformational leaders act as a change agent, challenging the status quo and pushing their team towards performance and innovation. They hold authority and influence over their team and direct them towards a shared vision.

Servant leaders share power with their team, with the ultimate goal of creating a collaborative and people-first culture. They are the supporters and uplifters while giving the team the guidance, resources, and motivation they need to perform.

Both can result in some truly great partnerships and amazing leaps forward for the company, but they are quite different approaches in execution. Future leaders should understand their own characters and what approach best works for them so that one day they can serve their workers in the manner truest to their natures.

You have to serve yourself before you can serve others

Servant leadership can be a nurturing way to lead a team, but a moral approach to leadership can lead to the right positive outcomes on both a group and individual level. Leaders need to establish what behaviours serve their own temperament and behaviours so they can then identify their strengths and weaknesses. Orientating yourself to the needs of those around you can then help to deliver more meaningful and impactful leadership results overall.

Our Personal Impact Leadership Programme helps to boost self-awareness and positive behaviours in leaders. By working with managers to develop positive qualities and establish themselves as moral leaders within their teams, we aim to create psychologically safe workspaces where everyone feels well-supported.

Contact us today to find out more about how we can help your managers develop their leadership styles and skills, whether they best act as servant leaders or any of the other styles of leadership.