Servant leadership

Servant leadership is a leadership philosophy in which the goal of the leader is to serve. This is different from traditional leadership where the leader's main focus is the thriving of their company or organization.

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles Lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. ~ The Bible

You as a leader must take complete responsibility for what the subordinate does. I once said, as a sort of wisecrack, that leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

That was real leadership. No one would have questioned Mattis if he'd slept eight hours each night in a private room, to be woken each morning by an aide who ironed his uniforms and heated his MREs. But there he was, in the middle of a freezing night, out on the lines with his Marines. ~ Nathaniel Fick

Colorful, charismatic characters often fascinate people, even soldiers. But over time, effectiveness is what counts. Those who lead most successfully do so while looking out for their followers' welfare. ~ Stanley A. McChrystal

A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself. ~ William H. McRaven

There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates. ~ George S. Patton

Leading by example ensures that leaders care for their subordinates first, before themselves. Doing so allows them to understand the challenges, hardships and limitations. Their subordinates, in turn, observe and emulate the actions of their servant leaders and they begin leading by example themselves. ~ Cameron Wesson

The key to successful leadership is to earn respect- not because of rank or position, but because you are a leader of character. In the military, the president of the United States may nominate you as a commissioned officer, but he cannot command for you the loyalty and confidence of your soldiers. Those you must earn by giving loyalty to your soldiers and providing for their welfare. ~ Richard Winters

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

B

• And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles Lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
  • The Bible, Mark 10:42-45 ESV

D

• In order to be a well-rounded leader, military leaders must know how to be better followers and know how to best lead and manage followers. If there are leaders and managers, there must be followers. To best articulate the dynamics between the leader, manager and follower, let’s define what these words mean, based on their roles and the processes:
  Follower: A person who accepts guidance, command or leadership to assist in achieving goals and accomplishing tasks.
  Manager: A person charged with impersonally enabling task execution or subsets of an organization.
  Leader: Anyone who by virtue of assumed role or assigned responsibility inspires and influences people by providing purpose.
  Followership: A reciprocal process of leadership. This term refers to the capacity or willingness to follow within a team or organization.
  Management: An impersonal functioning process that controls and synchronizes internal structures, processes, procedures and systems.
  Leadership: The activity of influencing people by providing purpose, direction and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization.
  • Lieutenant Colonel Amelia Duran-Stanton, U.S. Army, and Colonel Alicia Masson, U.S. Army, Lessons in Followership: Good Leaders Aren't Always Out Front, Association of the United States Army, 18 May 2021

• In the Army’s This is My Squad initiative, its major component is found in Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston’s message: We must understand the people around us. In order to be a better follower, individuals must understand and realize the influence and power of their leaders and managers. Being a better follower means being proactive and knowing how and what leaders and managers need to lead. This means anticipating future organizational needs and ensuring you are supporting leaders’ and managers’ support or information requirements. Being a better follower is also a form of so-called servant leadership.
  Robert Greenleaf, who coined the term “servant leadership” and is the founder of the modern servant leadership movement and the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, said true leaders are chosen by their followers. Servant leadership is understanding the needs of others, up and down a chain in the organization, being available at the right level and being mentally prepared to serve all others. Servant leaders exist at all levels, but one must be able to follow first. The better a follower can anticipate a need, before it is even asked, the more successful that leader and led relationship remains.
  Being a great follower is having appropriate situational awareness of priorities and how to best support those efforts. The follower must be able to collaborate and have the ability to maintain good relationships with others up and down the leadership chain.
  • Lieutenant Colonel Amelia Duran-Stanton, U.S. Army, and Colonel Alicia Masson, U.S. Army, Lessons in Followership: Good Leaders Aren't Always Out Front, Association of the United States Army, 18 May 2021

• Military leaders are often taught how to become better leaders and managers; absent is the discussion about the importance of effective followership and how to be better followers. It is important for leaders to foster a sense of responsibility of how to be a better follower in order to improve the follower’s leadership and management skills as well. Leaders need to self-reflect on how they can improve on being a follower and how they can support their leaders and managers.
  The best followers understand how their leader makes decisions, are aware of critical challenges their leader faces and have a complete set of personal leadership skills that enable confident responses to what that leader or organization needs. A critical part of being a good follower is practicing servant leadership. When acting with the intent to serve others, natural followership emerges and further builds the organizational team at every level.
  • Lieutenant Colonel Amelia Duran-Stanton, U.S. Army, and Colonel Alicia Masson, U.S. Army, Lessons in Followership: Good Leaders Aren't Always Out Front, Association of the United States Army, 18 May 2021

E

• Character in many ways is everything in leadership. It is made up of many things, but I would say character is really integrity. When you delegate something to a subordinate, for example, it is absolutely your responsibility, and he must understand this. You as a leader must take complete responsibility for what the subordinate does. I once said, as a sort of wisecrack, that leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower, as quoted in Nineteen Stars : a Study in Military Character and Leadership (1971) by Edgar F. Puryear Jr., p. 289

F

• Farther down the line, in the middle of a gravelly flat near the runway's end, I approached another fighting hole, careful to come from the rear and listen for the verbal challenge. It was an assault rocket team, and there should have been two Marines awake. In the moonlight, I saw three heads silhouetted against the sky. I slid down into the hole with a rustle of cascading dirt. General Mattis leaned against a wall of sandbags, talking with a sergeant and a lance corporal. That was real leadership. No one would have questioned Mattis if he'd slept eight hours each night in a private room, to be woken each morning by an aide who ironed his uniforms and heated his MREs. But there he was, in the middle of a freezing night, out on the lines with his Marines.
  • Nathaniel Fick, One Bullet Away : The Making of a Marine Officer (2005), Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, hardcover, p. 118

G

• Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?
  • Robert K. Greenleaf, "The Servant as Leader". Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance (2007), p. 79–85

M

• All leaders are human. They get tired, angry, and jealous and carry the same range of emotions and frailties common to mankind. Most leaders periodically display them. The leaders I most admired were totally human but constantly strove to be the best humans they could be. Leaders make mistakes, and they are often costly. The first reflex is normally to deny the failure to themselves; the second is to hide it from others, because most leaders covet a reputation for infallibility. But it's a fool's dream and inherently dishonest. There are few secrets to leadership. It is mostly just hard work. More than anything else it requires self-discipline. Colorful, charismatic characters often fascinate people, even soldiers. But over time, effectiveness is what counts. Those who lead most successfully do so while looking out for their followers' welfare.
  • General Stanley A. McChrystal, U.S. Army, Retired, My Share of the Task (2013), New York: Portfolio, hardcover, p. 393-394

• A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself.
  • Admiral William H. McRaven, U.S. Navy, Retired, in an open letter to then-U.S. President Donald Trump, published in "Revoke my security clearance, too, Mr. President" The Washington Post (16 August 2018)

O

• From the outside looking in, it may feel like something in the Army has changed. The recruiting campaigns of ‘Belonging’ and ‘Your Army Needs You’ have appeared to some critics as a fundamental shift in the way that the Army conducts its business. In conjunction, internally, Defence released its new Diversity & Inclusion Strategy. But do either of these events signify a change in the Army and is there a better way to create a culture that is inclusive, and which generates diversity?
  Army culture is shaped by our leadership and the Army Leadership Doctrine (ALD) speaks of the need to support and empower our employees while, ‘being inclusive and harnessing diversity.’ The transformational/transactional spectrum of leadership styles discussed in the ALD is widely accepted, but it does also have its critics. Recently RMAS Officer Cadets fed back that they felt that some of their officers lacked emotional intelligence and students on the Intermediate Command and Staff Course Land (ICSC(L)) were moved to argue that there needs to be more emphasis on followers and followership during leadership training.
  What this means, therefore, is that while the ALD asserts that transformational leadership produces excellent performance, followers would say otherwise. Is there a more relevant model that leaders can follow which will improve leadership behaviours? Has the ALD overlooked a critical concept?
  • Major Jennifer O'Connor, British Army, Retired, Where has ‘Serve to Lead’ gone?, The Centre for Army Leadership: Leadership Insight, No. 12, February 2019, p. 1-2

• Servant leadership could negate the need for ineffective D&I statements on noticeboards. Why? Because as Robert K Greenleaf argued in 1971, leaders need to focus on followers and so servant leadership ‘begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.’ Despite refinement over the last four decades, servant leadership retains its focus on followers rather than on an organisation’s objectives. The RMAS motto, ‘Serve to Lead’ predates Greenleaf’s model and servant leadership is already an essential part of RMAS ethos which has influenced generations of junior officers, but the spotlight has shifted to other models.
  The ALD endorsed model of transformational leadership does not dismiss the importance of followers as it requires leaders to inspire them to achieve greatness beyond their own imagination. Even so, transformational leadership diametrically opposes servant leadership due to its concentration on objectives and rests heavily on the use of charisma to influence the followers. If leadership is, ‘just plain you’ then it can be difficult to achieve a transformational style if you do not exude charisma and yet emulating an unnatural style will lack authenticity and, therefore, credibility. Servant leadership is an important and viable alternative that all leaders should master.
  • Major Jennifer O'Connor, British Army, Retired, Where has ‘Serve to Lead’ gone?, The Centre for Army Leadership: Leadership Insight, No. 12, February 2019, p. 2

• If the Army really is a ‘people organisation’, we must create an ethos that puts those that we serve, the people, at the centre of all that we do. Every day leaders execute their responsibilities in a manner conducive to servant leadership – ensuring that junior ranks eat first, leaving the Christmas R&R slot to those more deserving, checking that leave is being taken, providing access to resettlement - and yet the ALD ignores this model. The consequence is that while servant leadership behaviours are deeply rooted in many, the emphasis on the transformational leader model can lead to confusion. Indeed, I am often surprised when an Officer Cadet tells me that he or she is developing their transformational leadership style but then struggles to articulate what their primary role as a troop or platoon commander will be. I strongly believe that the ALD’s omission of a Serve to Lead approach has skewed our training to the point where Officer Cadet’s do not instinctively recognise that their priority will be to look after their troops - transformational leadership should come later. Servant leadership has the potential to reinvigorate the Army spirit of ‘service’ in support of the Defence People Strategic Objective number five which aims to ‘develop a more inclusive culture within defence and a more diverse workforce at all levels.’ Creating an inclusive environment is recognised as the first stage in building diversity and demands that the needs of each member of the workforce are considered in place of a blanket policy of conformity. That, I believe, is the essence of ’Serve to Lead’.
  • Major Jennifer O'Connor, British Army, Retired, Where has ‘Serve to Lead’ gone?, The Centre for Army Leadership: Leadership Insight, No. 12, February 2019, p. 2-3

• Serve to Lead requires the commander to place the followers at the centre of his or her actions but it does not however mean that a commander relinquishes the right to make decisions and provide direction. Servant leaders follow a leadership style rather than a management style. Choosing to Serve to Lead can be a time-consuming way of leading, but it just may be a style that comes more naturally to you and will, as a result, promote better results and related organisational benefits. Listening to followers, considering their needs, placing them at the centre of activity are all principles that were hammered into me as a troop commander and yet they appear to have no useful place in the ALD. This is a mistake, for in following Serve to Lead principles we create an inclusive environment that means that there will be no need for separate D&I strategies, action plans and objectives.
  • Major Jennifer O'Connor, British Army, Retired, Where has ‘Serve to Lead’ gone?, The Centre for Army Leadership: Leadership Insight, No. 12, February 2019, p. 4

P

• There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.
  • General George S. Patton, U.S. Army, War As I Knew It (1947); also quoted in Patton's One-Minute Messages: Tactical Leadership Skills for Business Management (1995) by Charles M. Province, p. 88

S

• Serve To Lead
  • Motto of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

V

• I could not have felt more strongly about this subject. One day an aide, Buddy Masters, came to me. "General," he said, "I'm worried about your eyesight which is getting worse. You read all day here in the office and then you take a couple of hundred Purple Heart certificates home, sign them at night and read some more. I have found a way to ease this." "How?" "The other day over at the Navy I saw a new machine bought for the Secretary. It writes his signature automatically, and it only costs a few hundred dollars." "Save the money," I told him. "If those boys can get wounded, I can find time to sign my name on their Purple Hearts."
  • General Alexander Vandegrift, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired, Once a Marine: The Memoirs of General A.A. Vandegrift, U.S.M.C. (1964), New York: W.W. Norton & Company, first edition, hardcover, p. 272

W

• In the fall of 1989 at Fort Campbell, Ky., I was a patrol leader returning from a night reconnaissance patrol when I went to the platoon command post to submit my patrol report. When I arrived, my platoon sergeant, Sgt. 1st Class Larry Johnson, was manning the radios, both the company network and the fires network, and was the only person awake at the position. He motioned me down, placed a finger to his lips (for me to be quiet) and asked for the report. I gave him the report and he said that he would let the platoon leader know what I reported when he woke up later.
  “Sgt. Johnson, have you had any rest yet?” I asked. “Nah, I’ll wake the platoon leader in a little while and rack out then,” he said. “They (the platoon leader, radio operator, fire support specialist and medic) need the sleep more than I do. Besides, I’m used to this.”
  He smiled and waved me off to also get some sleep. As I walked back to my position off the perimeter, I thought about how our grizzled platoon sergeant was always taking care of us and hoped, when it was my turn, I would do so as well.
  • First Sergeant Cameron Wesson, U.S. Army, Retired, THE NCO: Army Leader, Servant Leader, Army University Press, 24 March 2017

• Each and every noncommissioned officer who sustains the Army of this nation has taken an oath. With the swearing of that oath, you enter into a sacred agreement to support the nation. They support the nation, your leaders and your subordinates through your service. This is reconfirmed in the Soldiers’ Creed, which says, “I will serve the people of the United States and live the Army Values.” Through these acts you have chosen to become first a servant, and through time-in-service and increases in responsibility, an NCO and a servant leader.
  Servant leadership is one of many approaches to leader development. The term servant leadership has been in use since Dr. Robert Greenleaf wrote the essay, “The Servant as Leader,” in 1970, which focuses on the areas of ethics and ethical leadership. The idea of the servant leader can be traced back even further—more than 2000 years—to China. This can be documented in early Chinese writings: “The sage has no invariable mind of his own; he makes the mind of the people his mind,” Lao Tzu wrote in Tao Te Ching.
  • First Sergeant Cameron Wesson, U.S. Army, Retired, THE NCO: Army Leader, Servant Leader, Army University Press, 24 March 2017

• Within the Army, servant leaders are observed practicing servant leadership every day. While the mission and job come first, the Soldiers are taken care of always. This includes all Soldiers, both subordinate and senior. Army leaders eat only after their Soldiers eat and are expected to share the hardships of their subordinates. Leading by example ensures that leaders care for their subordinates first, before themselves. Doing so allows them to understand the challenges, hardships and limitations. Their subordinates, in turn, observe and emulate the actions of their servant leaders and they begin leading by example themselves.
  • First Sergeant Cameron Wesson, U.S. Army, Retired, THE NCO: Army Leader, Servant Leader, Army University Press, 24 March 2017

• Proof of servant leadership principles are exemplified in the words of the NCO Creed. The creed states: “I will not use my grade or position to attain pleasure, profit or personal safety.… Officers of my unit will have maximum time to accomplish their duties; they will not have to accomplish mine…. I know my Soldiers, and I will always place their needs above my own.” In fact, the whole NCO Creed, along with the Soldiers’ Creed, is a testament to servant leadership.
  Servant leadership and the servant leader are powerful sources of inspiration in our Army today, and examples can be seen throughout time. Servant leaders, having chosen to be servants first, have in them the capacity for caring and providing for others—subordinate or senior. The servant leader feels a responsibility to do this and does not serve seeking reward. The servant leader cares for all and attempts to bring them to a level that inspires them to also become servant leaders.
  Observations and experiences from my 30 years of service (27 years as a leader) have shown me that good leaders, are good followers, or servants, first. Along the way, they perfected the skills of the Army profession and learned to care for Soldiers. Eventually, they embrace the philosophy of servant leadership themselves and became servant leaders.
  • First Sergeant Cameron Wesson, U.S. Army, Retired, THE NCO: Army Leader, Servant Leader, Army University Press, 24 March 2017

• Never, ever give up regardless of the adversity. If you are a leader, a fellow who other fellows look to, you have to keep going. How will you know if you have succeeded? True satisfaction comes from getting the job done. The key to successful leadership is to earn respect- not because of rank or position, but because you are a leader of character. In the military, the president of the United States may nominate you as a commissioned officer, but he cannot command for you the loyalty and confidence of your soldiers. Those you must earn by giving loyalty to your soldiers and providing for their welfare. Properly led and treated right, your lowest-ranking soldier is capable of extraordinary acts of valor. Ribbons, medals, and accolades, then, are poor substitutes to the ability to look yourself in the mirror every night and know that you did your best.
  • Richard Winters, Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters (2006), hardcover, p. 290