Servant Leadership: Obstacles and Opportunity

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the enactment of Servant Leadership (SL) is how the servant is perceived in a given culture. In most western countries the great majority of households do not have servants due to economic restrictions. In many developing countries, servants are still feasible for the middle and upper middle socio-economic classes. For the most part the servants in developing countries are exploited as they receive small economic remuneration for 10-14 hour days. In both western and developing countries leaders that are concerned with gaining and keeping power worry that the SL model will cause them to abdicate their influence. They are weary of voluntarily giving up societal status by adopting SL theory. However, a more thorough understanding of SL will help leaders realize they will actually increase power using that model and such understanding may increase SL enactment.

The idea of connecting the words servant and leader is very hard for many to understand. In high power distance countries (Hofstede, 1980; House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004) it is accepted that a very few people, and in many cases, just one leader has all the authority and power. It is the accepted norm that the leader or leaders dominate the majority. The servant could never dream of attaining such a position. There are precious few rags to riches stories in developing countries. So, who would ever want to give up their position of power in order to be a servant?

Marinho (2005) provides some introductory reflections on servant leadership in the Brazilian context. Marinho notes that while the Brazilian corporate environment recognizes that the principles of servant-leadership have “an incontestable appeal” (p. 115), at the same time, the term servant is not terribly attractive to people from the Brazilian culture due to associated religious and historical factors.There are two possible answers to encouraging SL enactment, a) change the values of a culture toward viewing servanthood as a positive leadership model based on altruistic motives, or b) show cultures that are results orientated (Livermore, 2009) that applying Greenleaf’s (1977) theory that the servant leader is servant first and leader second actually increases effectiveness. The major hindrance to option a) is that even in an age of global connectedness cultures do not change rapidly (House, et al., 2004). It is unrealistic to think that any one individual or organization is able to motivate a cultural shift to SL and up to now organizations have not cooperated in a coordinated effort to promote SL.

In Christian communities it should be possible to change attitudes towards SL as the case is strong that Jesus modeled SL (Mark 10:32-45). Yet, not all faith based organizations are strong examples of SL (McIntosh, 2007). Inside and outside of faith based organizations pragmatism will usually rule the day.

More studies showing the effectiveness of SL are needed but a good place to start is a current issue that is very much discussed in leadership, empowerment. Our next post will explore empowerment as a servant leadership practice. Until then, consider how you or appointed leaders in your organization empower others? How does serving the needs of others improve your organization or community's ability to realize its vision or goals?

- submitted by Tim McIntosh

Hofstede, G. (1980). Cultures consequences: International differences in work-related values.   Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
House, R. J., Hanges, P. J., Javidan, M., Dorfman, P. W., & Gupta, V. (2004). Culture,   leadership and organizations: The GLOBE study of 62 societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Livermore, D.A. (2006). Serving with eyes wide open: Doing short term missions with cultural intelligence. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academics.
Marinho, R. (2005). Servant-leadership in a changing culture: Reflections on the Brazilian context. The International Journal of Servant-Leadership, 1(1), 115-122.
McIntosh, T. A. (2007). How Peruvians define and practice leadership (Regent University, Virginia). Proquest Dissertations and Abstracts International, DAI-A, 68 (11). (Publication No. AAT 3292258)