James Heskett, professor emeritus at
Harvard Business School, recently wrote a short piece titled “Why Isn’t ‘ServantLeadership’ More Prevalent?”. It was
published on May 1, 2013 in the Harvard Business School’s newsletter, WORKING
KNOWLEDGE.
Heskett’s idea of servant leadership “is an age-old concept, a term
loosely used to suggest that a leader's primary role is to serve others,
especially employees.” He shares an example
of what he sees as servant leadership from when he observed Service Master CEO
William Pollard ask a colleague to go get him some cleaning supplies so that he
could then use them to clean up a cup of coffee he had spilled. Heskett also believes that at times it
requires “near-theological values” like those espoused by Herman Miller former
CEO Max De Pree, or the Catholic Church’s pope who washes and kisses feet once
a year.
Based on
this summation of the servant leader, Heskett’s question seems to make
sense. For if all it takes to be labeled
a “servant leader” is to take responsibility for cleaning up your spilled
coffee, or to write some books about how practicing it can make your company a
profit making office furniture in the name of God and at the same time let you feel
good about how your treat your employees, or if all you need to do is get down
on your knees once a year to kiss a few feet and you get to carry the title;
then why indeed isn’t servant leadership more prevalent?
To really
understand why it is not more prevalent in our corporate capitalistic world
requires a bit more in depth understanding of Robert Greenleaf’s concept of the
servant-leader than that which is provided in Heskett’s excerpt. His excerpt from Greenleaf’s best test of
servant leadership from the essay “The Servant as Leader” states: “The best test, and difficult to administer,
is: Do those served grow as persons … (and become) more likely themselves to
become servants?”
Greenleaf’s
whole best test, reads as follows:
“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?”
Greenleaf
also amended the best test with an addition in the 1980 essay he wrote titled “Servant:
Retrospect and Prospect”, which can be found on page 43 of the book THE POWER
OF SERVANT LEADERSHIP. The amended test includes
the closing line “No one will knowingly be hurt by the action, directly or
indirectly.”
When you include looking into if those served will become
“healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous”, and “what is the effect on the
least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, not be further
deprived”, and you stipulate that in a servant leader institution that “no one
will knowingly be hurt by the action, directly or indirectly”, then the answer
to why servant leadership isn’t more prevalent becomes much more apparent.
Namely in our capitalistic corporate
controlled world the true test for all decisions is doing whatever it takes to
be profitable, and assuming that is what is best for everyone - even the least
fortunate on whom our profiteers prey. And
if couching ideas behind the curtain of terms like “servant leadership” helps
achieve that goal than it will be adopted, especially if makes the whole pill
easier to swallow. But if you can
achieve profit without the nice labels, then there is no need for the label.
For more on Greenleaf’s ideas on the true servant-leader
see his essay here.
