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Servant leadership is a values-based approach to leadership that emphasizes putting the needs of others before oneself.
Servant Leadership
Robert K. Greenleaf (1977) developed the concept of servant leadership from an intuitive insight gained while reading Herman Hesse’s book, Journey to the East. In the book, a band of men undertakes a long journey. The main character is Leo, a servant, who does the menial chores for the group. Along the way, Leo sustains them with his spirit and his song. When Leo disappears, the group falls apart and abandons the journey; the group cannot function without him. Years later, the narrator finds Leo and discovers that he is in fact the head of the Order that sponsored the original journey. Leo, who is first encountered as a “servant,” is in fact a great leader.
From this story, Greenleaf drew many lessons about the role of the leader, and over time these lessons evolved into his concept of...
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References
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Ribando, S.J. (2016). Servant Leadership. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_1929-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_1929-1
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