A servant leader shares power, puts the needs of the employees first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible.
[5] Before the modern popularity of the concept of "leadership",[6] the autocratic enlightened absolutist King Frederick II ("the Great") of Prussia (r. 1740–1786) famously portrayed himself as "the first servant of the state".
[citation needed] Larry Spears, CEO of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, stated in an interview: "Greenleaf credited his reading of Hesse's 1932 book, Journey to the East, as the personal source of inspiration in his coining the term, 'servant-leader' in his 1970 essay, The Servant as Leader.
Eventually, the served are driven to possess the traits of a servant leader as well, continuing the spread of the leadership style.
[3] Greenleaf believed the betterment of others to be the true intention of a servant leader: "I serve" in opposition of the traditional "I lead" mentality.
[17] Despite several conceptual papers on the topic of servant leadership, there is no consensus on empirical research for the servant-leadership construct until a state-of-the-art review published in 2020 by Nathan Eva, Mulyadi Robin, Sen Sendjaya, Dirk van Dierendonck, and Robert C Liden[12] in the Leadership Quarterly.
James Sipe and Don Frick, in their book The Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership, state that servant-leaders are individuals of character, those who put people first, are skilled communicators, are compassionate collaborators, use foresight, are systems thinkers, and exercise moral authority.
Similarly, researcher Akuchie explored the religious and spiritual articulations of the servant leadership construct.
Akuchie examined a single Bible passage related to servant leadership and suggested that the application of this lesson is for daily life.
"[12] The authors proposed three key elements that captures the essence of servant leadership and set it apart from other leadership styles – namely the motive (the underlying personal motivation for taking up a leadership responsibility, requiring a strong sense of self, character, and psychological maturity), the mode (that they lead by prioritizing subordinates' needs above the organization's bottom line), and the mindset (that servant leaders are stewards who reorient their followers' focus towards others).
The altruistic-nurturing personality type, as measured by the Strength Deployment Inventory show a strong positive correlation with servant leadership at 0.708.
[21] In one such critique, Sendjaya and Sarros used the same Bible account as Akuchie, and made the claim that Jesus Christ, not Greenleaf, introduced the notion of servant leadership to everyday human endeavor.
They argued that this leadership principle was so important to Christianity that it was captured by all four Gospel writers (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John).
The researchers argued that servant leaders have a particular view of themselves as stewards who are entrusted to develop and empower followers to reach their fullest potential.
[24] Researchers Farling, Stone, and Winston noted the lack of empirical evidence for servant leadership.
[25][26] A 2021 paper published in the Journal of Management History explained why servant leadership poses a number of risks and limitations, particularly with regard to ethical issues and dilemmas.
[1] Likewise, servant leadership has a direct effect on employer brand perception, which in turn reduces employee job turnover.
[2] This leads to turnover intention reduction in that the employees "... take pride in what they do and enjoy the company of people they work with".
[2] Because of this, employees begin to act as servant leaders themselves, and portray great commitment to the organizations where they see these behaviors and how they affect others around them.
[1] Servant leadership being practiced is said to decrease emotional exhaustion, which is the leading cause of employee burnout.
[28] Servant leadership lessens the feeling of being "drained of inner resources", so employees experience an increase in work-to-family positive spillover (WFPS).
[29] Likewise, servant leaders managing the work environment and things such as "rewards, deadlines, work allocation and performance evaluations"[29] has a positive effect on the well-being and satisfaction of employees because the practices of a servant leader deals with these aspects in a way that benefits the employees in every way possible.
According to previous research, servant leadership seems to have an effect on the emotional health of the employees because the servant leaders' reliance on "one-on-one communication to understand the abilities, needs, desires, goals, and potential of those individuals"[33] aids in the employees' ability to express themselves in the workplace.
However, servant leaders' being forgiving, and more importantly understanding, leads to employees being able to learn from their mistakes, hence their personal growth and changed behavior within the organization.