Opportunities and Tensions of Servant Leadership

Abstract

Peter Block’s humorous and perceptive aside to Larry Spears, during Block’s keynote address to the Greenleaf International Servant Leadership Conference 2005, raises three important questions and potential challenges for advocates of servant leadership, and for leaders seeking to determine whether its principles resonate with their understanding of leadership and the needs of their organizations. First, as servant leadership becomes more popular, with growing popularity potentially bringing greater chances of misunderstanding and misapplication, how can it be explained and explored in terms helpful to leaders while remaining true to its central principles? Second, how can the absence of a simple definition of servant leadership, and the intentional lack of a formulaic set of rules, be reconciled with a leader’s need to appreciate fully how the concept can be applied within their organizations? Third, it may be better for advocates to remain faithful to ‘the spirit of it rather than the substance of it’, but what principles and practices need to be understood by leaders wishing to demonstrate servant leadership’s potential contribution to the bottom-line performance of their businesses?

You’ve held on to the spirit of servant leadership, you’ve kept it vague and indefinable, which I think is a great strategic advantage. People can come every year to figure out what the hell this is, and by not answering, they’re forced to come the next year. So it’s both a clever marketing strategy and a stance in support of the spirit of it rather than the substance of it.

(Peter Block to Larry Spears, Greenleaf International Servant Leadership Conference 2005)