The Power Of Servant Leadership

I recently read “The Power Of Servant Leadership” by R.K. Greenleaf. While considering what leadership style to use when, it occurred to me that Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership Model is the perfect environment to allow a leader to engage many or all leadership theories or styles on a situational basis. Servant leadership places an emphasis on the needs of the follower and how the leader can meet those needs in a way that will insure goal achievement. I can see how this would give the leader license to be both transformational or transactional depending on the particular circumstance at hand. This model is based on the idea of a leader having the duty to serve his/her followers. Servant leadership was created as an attempt to link previous paradoxes concerning leadership. Task accomplishment is a focus, yet it is also recognized that leaders should be aware of the social implication associated with task accomplishment. Leadership effectiveness is another concern but follower enhancement, is equally weighted in Greenleaf’s model. The servant leadership model goes a step beyond the transformational leadership models. Servant leadership stresses ethical practice, whereas, only certain transformational theorists suggested that ethical behavior is a necessary component of transformational leadership. For instance, as Yukl points out, J.M. Burns transformational leadership had to be ethical, however, for B.M. Bass leadership had no ethical requirement.

Greenleaf, R.K. (1998),The Power of Servant Leadership, San Francisco: Berret-
Koehler Publishers, Inc.,

Yukl, G. (1998), Leadership in Organisations, 4th Edition, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., (pp. 327)