Robert K. Greenleaf
Robert Kiefner Greenleaf was an American business executive and leadership consultant, and the founder of the modern servant leadership movement and the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.
Greenleaf was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1904. After graduating from Carleton College in Minnesota, he went to work for AT&T, then the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. For the next 40 years he researched management, development, and education. He became suspicious that the power-centered authoritarian leadership style so prominent in U.S. institutions was not working, and in 1964, he took an early retirement to found the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.
Philosophy
According to his essay, "Essentials of Servant Leadership", Greenleaf's philosophy had its roots from reading a work of fiction in 1958:A conceptual framework that is helpful for understanding servant-leadership is found in the "Ten Characteristics of the Servant-Leader" described by Larry Spears. Spears distills Greenleaf's instrumental means into ten characteristics: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. It is important to note that these characteristics are not simply traits or skills possessed by the leader; a century of research has rejected what Bass and Stogdill referred to as an "approach tended to treat personality variables in an atomistic fashion, suggesting that each trait acts singly to determine the effects of leadership". Rather, servant-leadership is an ethical perspective on leadership that identifies key moral behaviors that leaders must continuously demonstrate in order to make progress on Greenleaf's "best test". The "best test", which gives us the ethical ends for action, combined with Spears' distillation of traits that identified the means, create a powerful framework for a review of the literature that furthers the conceptual framework for servant-leadership.
Works
Greenleaf was captivated by the idea of a servant being the leader. In "Essentials" he wrote "As it was, the idea lay dormant for 11 years during which I came to believe that we in this country were in a leadership crisis and that I should do what I could about it." In 1970 Greenleaf published his first essay, titled "The Servant as Leader", which introduced the term servant leadership. Later, the essay was expanded into a book, which is perhaps one of the more influential management texts yet written. The servant leadership movement was born.Of his philosophy, Robert Greenleaf wrote in "Essentials",
Greenleaf felt strongly that his "best test" should apply to all of our institutions. His "best test", which he knew would be hard to grade, is stated:
Implementing Greenleaf's ideas in modern American institutions is anathema to many leaders and followers who desire a different paradigm that is based on coercive power and control rather than legitimate power based on mutual agreements. Greenleaf's book, however, connects the two often disparate terms servant and leader. His work addresses these two questions in particular: How can leaders serve people? What is the source of legitimate power?