Servant-leadership: an exploration of essence and fidelity.
Date
2012-04-16
Authors
Nagel, David A. T.
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Abstract
In 1970 Robert K. Greenleaf put forth a conceptualization of leadership aimed at re-invigorating a sense of belonging and responsibility in the disgruntled youth of those times. In his seminal work, The Servant as Leader (1991), he offers a rather revolutionary approach to leadership that focuses not only on the actions of the leader, but also on the relationship existing between leader and follower. Servant-leadership seeks to reposition leadership as a process of relationship marked by mutual influence.
The purpose of this qualitative study, by means of reflective analysis, was to explore the essence of servant-leadership according to Greenleaf’s original work and to describe how that essence is reflected within the secondary literature extant to servant-leadership. The Servant as Leader (1991) and On Becoming a Servant Leader (1996) were used to discern the essence of Greenleaf’s conceptualization, while secondary servant-leadership literature in the form of books, book chapters, and journal articles provided the context for understanding how Greenleaf’s work has been represented.
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Keywords
Leadership, Servant-leadership, Service