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Servant Leadership

Servant Leadership: a Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power & Greatness by Robert K. Greenleaf

Who should read this book?

This book is aimed at leaders and leadership teams interested in exploring the roots of ‘servant leadership’. It’s particularly suited to readers who enjoy reflective, historical, and moral discussions, especially those with an interest in religious or historical contexts.

Why you should read this book (or not)?

If you’re expecting actionable advice, recent business case studies, or practical frameworks for implementing servant leadership in today’s organisations, this book may disappoint. Its tone is deeply philosophical, and much of the content draws from historical and religious examples. The Table of Contents offers a clue to this focus, with more pages dedicated to servant leadership in churches than in corporate environments.

For a modern business leader seeking relevance to today’s fast-paced, data-driven world, this tone might feel disconnected. Personally, I did not manage to read it back to back.

While the concept of servant leadership is both powerful and transformative, Greenleaf’s approach to presenting it feels antiquated. The book leans heavily on philosophical musings and historical anecdotes—think biblical stories, World War references, and reflections on centuries-old figures.

Unfortunately, it lacks the practical tools or contemporary business relevance that many leaders look for today. There are no clear summaries, frameworks, or research-backed insights to guide readers in applying servant leadership principles in their organisations.

For those interested in the topic, I’d recommend seeking out more contemporary works that balance philosophy with practicality, offering examples and strategies grounded in today’s organisational challenges.

Interesting extracts

“The idea of the servant as leader came out of reading Hermann Hesse’s Journey to the East. In this story we see a band of men on a mythical journey, probably also Hesse’s own journey.

The central figure of the story is Leo, who accompanies the party as the servant who does their menial chores, but who also sustains them with his spirit and his song. He is a person of extraordinary presence. All goes well until Leo disappears. Then the group falls into disarray and the journey is abandoned. They cannot make it without the servant Leo. The narrator, one of the party, after some years of wandering, finds Leo and is taken into the Order that had sponsored the journey. There he discovers that Leo, whom he had known first as servant, was in fact the titular head of the Order, its guiding spirit, a great and noble leader.”

“The servant-leader is servant first-as Leo was portrayed. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That per son is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such, it will be a later choice to serve-after leadership is established. The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

The difference ace manifests itself the care taken by in the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is this: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?”

“Everywhere there is much complaining about too few leaders. We have too few because most institutions are structured so that only a few only one at the time-can emerge. With one person at the top, the full scope of leadership is limited to that one person, no matter how large the institution. As we have become a nation of large institutions (nothing wrong with that, per se) we have progressively limited the opportunity for leaders to emerge because our conventional design provides for only one. Such an organizational design aggravates the disadvantages of bigness.”

“The prime force for achievement through service in any large institution is a senior administrative group with optimal balance between operators and conceptualizers.

The operating talent carries the institution toward its objectives, in the situation, from day to day, and resolves the issues that arise as this movement takes place. This calls for interpersonal skills, sensitivity to the environment, tenacity, experience, judgment, ethical soundness, and related attributes and abilities that the day-to-day movement requires. Operating is more administering in contrast to leading.

Conceptual talent sees the whole in the perspective of history-past and future. It states and adjusts goals, analyzes and evaluates operating performance, and foresees contingencies a long way ahead. Long-range strategic planning is embraced here, as is setting standards and relating all the parts to the whole. Leadership, in the sense of going out ahead to show the way, is more conceptual than operating. Conceptual, as used here, is not synonymous with intellectual or theoretical. Conceptualizers at their best are intensely practical. They are also effective persuaders and relationship builders.

Highly developed operating and conceptual talents are not completely exclusive. Every able leader-administrator has some of both, even though being exceptional probably in only one of the two.

Both of these talents, in balance and rightly placed, are required for sustained high-level performance in any large institution. By optimal balance between the two is meant a relationship in which both conceptualizers and operators understand, respect, and depend on one another, and in which neither dominates the other. In a large institution the council of equals with a primus inter pares serves best when it is predominantly conceptual. Whoever in the council has the greatest team-building ability should be primus, even though someone else may have a higher-sounding formal title.

A team builder is a strong person who provides the substance that holds the team together in common purpose toward the right objectives. This is accomplished by asking the right questions. If a group is confronted by the right questions long enough, it will see through to the essence and find the right way.

Both the operator and the conceptualizer are result oriented. The operator is concerned primarily with “getting it done.” The conceptualizer is primarily concerned with what “ought to be done” when, how, at what cost, in what priority, and how well. They work together as a reinforcing rather than a counteracting team.

The achievement of such optimal balance is hindered by a stubborn fact: whereas conceptualizers generally recognize the need for operators, the reverse is often not the case. A conceptualizer in a top spot is quite likely to see that strong operators are placed where needed. But an operator in a top leadership post may not, without some help, see to it that able and influential conceptualizers function as they must. Consequently, if the top post in a hierarchical administration (as opposed to a council of equals) is filled by an operator who is not sharply aware of the need for adequate conceptual influence, the institution does not have a bright long-run future, no matter how able the top person or how brilliant its current performance.

(…) Some able people, while they are young, probably can develop exceptional strength in either talent-but usually not in both. Long concentration on one of these talents diminishes the possibility that a switch can be made to the other. A substantial penalty may ensue if a person who has devoted several years, successfully, to one of these talents moves into a key spot that requires an exceptional level of the other; once established as an operator or a conceptualizer, one is apt to make any position fit one’s habitual way of working. There are exceptions, of course; and if a switch like this is to be made, those overseeing it should be sure they are dealing with an exception.

Highly developed conceptualizers who are effective in top leadership of large institutions seem to be much rarer than able operators. This may be because the number needed is substantially less, or because they do not emerge naturally out of those with long experience in operating work, or because it is harder for an operator to identify a conceptualizer and reward that special talent, or because the need for able conceptualizers is not clearly and explicitly recognized.”

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