What Defines a Servant Leader--Part 1
by Nathan Davidson
Here at Ripon College, we see many examples of leaders on campus. We consider group presidents to be leaders, captains of a sports team to be a leader, and even fellow students who may initiate a conversation in and out of the classroom on various issues. However, many of us realize that just because you are a leader, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the best interest of what you represent (be it a group, a team, or an organization) at heart. This applies beyond the walls of this school as well—often times we see people who lead not because they want to improve what they represent, but that they desire power or have other personal ambitions driving their actions.
It should be made clear that these people are not servant-leaders. Some of you are now probably wondering, what is a servant-leader, and how is it different from a regular leader? Simply put, as explained by Robert Greenleaf in A Life of Servant Leadership, “the servant-leader is servant first… it begins with a natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.”
What this means is that a leader is not focused on their own personal ambitions, but rather become focused on service, and the best way to support their service is to lead the group. Servant-leaders also have particular skills that regular leaders often do not fully utilize. One of these skills may be the ability to listen to others—as I say, you don’t learn by talking, you learn by listening. It is really hard to know how to solve a problem if you don’t listen to those who describe the problem!
Another of these skills that servant-leaders possess is the ability to use power ethically, usually done by persuasion. This means that a servant-leader does not try to use deception or lies to hold onto power or move the group in the direction that they desire. The only time that it may be deemed acceptable to use manipulation or coercion to reach an end is it must be to the greater benefit of others or to ensure the survival of the group. Persuasion is often one of the harder ways to reach a goal—it requires logical and convincing arguments to convince the group or select individuals to agree to something, without using coercion or manipulation.
The servant-leader also looks to reach a consensus in the group when making decisions. To reach a consensus as a group on an issue, it often requires the servant-leader to, as put by Don Frink in A Servant Leadership Primer:
(1) Deeply understand the issue under consideration and articulate it clearly and succinctly
(2) Listen
(3) “Decide when it is feasible to begin to search for consensus. This may be early or late in the discussion. . .”
(4) Decide when it is feasible to adjourn to speak privately with remaining holdouts, realizing that “[holdouts] may be of great value, but they may function best as lone workers or in groups that operate by majority rule.”
This is different from a regular leader, who may not try to reach a consensus in the group before moving forward, and thus may make a decision that is not in the best interest of the group.
Another skill that a servant-leader must possess is the ability to have some foresight. They must be able to look at the bigger picture and have a sense of how a situation will play out based on their actions. To develop a good sense of foresight, it requires a person to fully understand what is happening currently. By understanding what is currently happening, they can then draw inferences to what might happen as a consequence to their actions in the future. By having a good sense of foresight, a servant-leader can help assure that the group is successful in the long-run and that their goals are reached. A regular leader who is only focused on their personal ambitions often do not have a sense of foresight for the well-being of the group, and may cause the group to be ineffective or eventually collapse in the future.
