Servant Leadership and Its Impact

Sen Sendjaya: The focus of the leader is not so much the leader's own personal agenda. It's also not the organizational bottom lines. But the focus is on the followers, their development, their learning, their growth, and so on.

I think that's the unique differential characteristic of servant leadership and, as my research has shown, there are many positive outcomes that the followers exhibit when they are being led by the servant leaders.

Rachel Salaman: We'll talk more about your research in a moment, but, first of all, can you fill us in on how this developed as a leadership theory?

Sen Sendjaya: It was coined, the term servant leadership, firstly in 1977 by a gentleman, Robert Greenleaf, but it wasn't studied empirically until probably one and a half decades ago. In 2002, I published an article in an academic leadership journal, one of the first in the field, and since then there have been quite a few authors jumping on the bandwagon and starting doing empirical research into this theory.

Rachel Salaman: Now, it is, as I mentioned, a slightly contradictory term, servant leadership, and there are lots of myths around what it means. What do you say to people who assume that servant leaders are weak and lacking in decisiveness and authority?

Sen Sendjaya: I'd say to them, don't judge the book by its cover, basically, I am fully aware that the coexistence of servanthood and leadership is seemingly absurd. It's oxymoronic, but I don't think it's an oxymoron. I think it's a paradox, and paradox is a simultaneous presence of contradictory elements which forms a profound understanding of something. So I think it's a leader who serves which makes it unique and I think servant leadership, therefore, does not operate out of weakness or inferiority or lack of self-respect.

I think it was Gandhi who said once that the weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong; and, similarly, serving is the attribute of the strong. The weak will always struggle to serve because they are under the tyranny of their own inordinate desire to be number one, and only those with a secure sense of self, with the strength of character, are willing and able to serve others through their leadership.

Rachel Salaman: When you explain it like that then it makes a lot of sense. But I think that the word 'servant' is problematic in this context because most people who hadn't thought it through like you've just explained wouldn't choose to be led by someone identifying as a servant.

So I was wondering, what else do you think this approach to leadership could, or indeed should, be called that would encapsulate its essence as you've just described it?

Sen Sendjaya: Well, other terms that people have used are compassionate leadership, relational leadership, value-laden leadership, other-oriented leadership. But I don't think any of these terms can capture the richness of the word 'servant.'

Rachel Salaman: In the introduction to your book, you ask, "Why do we need another book on leadership and why on servant leadership?" What's your answer to that question?

Sen Sendjaya: In the book I gave a fivefold rationale, if you like. The first one is contextual and there's this anecdotal evidence, there's empirical evidence, and there's a philosophical rationale as well as the cross cultural.

Let me just briefly explain the five reasons. Contextually, servant leadership is needed because as you know from any major newspaper, any day you pick one up, you will see a profile of leaders who are either toxic, abusive, destructive. And the damages that they have done to individuals and organizations are massive.

Against that backdrop, I think we need to have a leader who is not only effective, but also ethical. That is a contextual reason. Anecdotally, we have seen a lot of best-performing firms who are being led by servant leaders. Empirically, we have seen in the last decade an increasing amount of evidence that servant leaders do make a difference. In fact, servant leaders perform better than other styles of leadership in terms of key outcomes in organizations.

Philosophically, I think again the richness of the concept of "servanthood" will make leadership more sustainable, organizations more sustainable, in the long run. And, cross-culturally, we have seen evidence that servant leadership works in the west and also in the east.

So that, I think, gives an overall reason why we need to have this emerging approach of leadership.

Rachel Salaman: And you've done a fair bit of research on the effectiveness of this approach. What research is your book based on?

Sen Sendjaya: It was based on my PhD study, which I finished in 2005. Since then, so practically the last decade, I focused my research on servant leadership, continuing to look at its predictive validity. And the research that I've done, they were multinational industries, cross-cultural, multi-level, individual, teams and organizational level, as well as using mixed methods in qualitative and quantitative.

Rachel Salaman: Your studies produced evidence of the positive effects of servant leadership. So could you share some examples of that?

Sen Sendjaya: Yes, certainly. The studies that I've been involved in consistently show that it has positive effects on followers' trust in leaders, for example citizenship behaviors, job satisfaction, work engagement, and creativity and innovation.

Let me just elaborate on creativity and innovation. Servant leaders, when they voluntarily subordinate their aspirations for the greater good of the team, they exemplify many of the team characteristics, such that servant leaders therefore are seen as prototypical leaders. So team members who derive their identity from a close-knit leader's followers' relationships are more willing to experiment with new ideas. They are more ready to make mistakes early. Why? Because there's a strong sense of psychological safety embedded in such relationships and therefore servant leaders create more creative teams in the end.

That's what my study shows. Other research done by scholars shows that servant leadership is a better predictor than transformational leadership, for example in the areas of followers' commitment, intention to stay, as well as team and firm performance.

Rachel Salaman: Are there any situations when this style of leadership is not appropriate and not helpful?

Sen Sendjaya: If I try to answer it from my research perspective, I think we haven't seen any research studies that say it's not appropriate for a certain industry or a certain firm. All of the studies that I'm familiar with, they all suggest that this particular approach is relevant to any organization, in any industry, in any country.

Rachel Salaman: It has been suggested that in some organizations where hierarchies and decision making is quite rigid, that servant leaders can find themselves left out of the loop because they don't have that decisive, more authoritarian style of leadership. Have you ever seen that?

Sen Sendjaya: One of my studies that looked at the link between servant leadership and employee job satisfaction actually examined the boundary conditions, what we call boundary conditions in research. In particular, we look at leadership, decision making process, and organizational structure – the hierarchy that you were talking about.

What we find in studies is that, when servant leaders operate under a formalized structure, their effects on employee job satisfaction are augmented. So the more hierarchical, the more formalized, the structure is, the more likely followers will look up to their leaders and, therefore, they will be more satisfied in their work.

Rachel Salaman: Isn't servant leadership about employees not exactly looking up to leaders, but more working alongside them?

Sen Sendjaya: When I said "looking up," it's really role modeling. They're looking at the fact that servant leaders exist not to be the boss, but to be people who are empowering them to be the best that they can be.

Rachel Salaman: So, in your book you talk about the servant leadership behavior scale. Could you tell us what that is and why it was developed?

Sen Sendjaya: The literature suggests that adequate measurement is required to make theoretical progress possible. So, if we want to advance a theory, we always need to have a reliable and valued measure. And that's why, in my PhD, I actually developed this servant leadership behavior scale.

The purpose of that scale is to examine the extent to which someone exhibits servant leadership behavior. So, if we want to tell whether someone is actually a servant leader, we just ask him or her to fill out this scale. And the scale has since been used to inform leadership recruitment, promotion decisions, or used as a framework to develop leaders.

Rachel Salaman: Let's talk a bit more now about what it actually looks like in practice to be a servant leader, and, in your book, you say that it's a holistic approach to leadership that engages both leaders and followers through six dimensions. The first of these is voluntary subordination. Now, that doesn't sound like leadership so could you explain?

Sen Sendjaya: The operative word "voluntary" suggests that the leaders subordinate themselves because they want to, not because they have to. So that actually means that the decision to serve others stems from a willing heart. It suggests a conscious choice, it's a deliberate choice.

The second word "subordination" is something that people are very reluctant to accept. I think every cell in our bodies actually screams against that idea of subordinating ourselves to others. I always have people responding to that with very negative reactions but, if you think about it, the power that leaders have is always a powerful narcotic and, by definition, leaders have powers. They have the ambition to be ahead of people, they have accumulated more experience, knowledge, expertise, authority, influence, and so on than others. So these are sources of power. And in its naked form, power often manifests itself as power over other people, not power with other people, and history is riddled with cases of leaders preoccupied with power – they got powers, they wield power, they maintain power at all costs. As they say, first the leaders managed their power and then they are being managed by the power itself.

Voluntary subordination is about leaders choosing to use the power for others, not over others. That is the whole idea of voluntary subordination. So they abandon themselves to the benefit of others.

Rachel Salaman: Now, you say that authenticity is essential to servant leadership; authentic self is the second dimension you explore in your book. Could you talk about the five values of authenticity that you've identified here, which are humility, integrity, accountability, security, and vulnerability?

Sen Sendjaya: Yes. I think servant leaders manifest an authentic self when they are humble, integrated, accountable, secure, and vulnerable. I can spend the whole day describing and explaining these five attributes! In fact, when I do executive training, I think I spend one full day on these five values.

But humility is essentially the willingness to see ourselves accurately, so it's not being inferior but it's also not being superior. We actually understand what our strengths and weaknesses are and being able to operate out of that full awareness of who we are, that's being humble. And also, another strength of humility is to be able to identify and affirm followers' strengths and talents rather than feeling threatened by their superior intelligence and talents.

Integrity, the second value of authenticity, is really the consistency between our words and our deeds. So, if you like, think about what kind of person do most people think we are? What are my bosses or employees thinking about who I am? And then compare that with how are we thinking about who we really are. If there is a huge gap then that means we do not have integrity. That is basically what integrity is.

The third one is accountability. Accountability, security and vulnerability are all tightly connected. Accountability is often misunderstood. It does not mean we provide total access and full authority for everyone to probe into the leaders' lives, professionally and personally, but accountability, as far as I understand it, is about opening one's life to a few carefully selected, trusted, loyal confidantes who speak the truth. We give them the right to examine, to question, to give counsel to us. In Jack Welch, the famous former CEO of GE's term, he called it "eyeballs to eyeballs." So we give them a hunting license, basically, to ask us difficult questions.

And I think accountability requires vulnerability – you just have to be willing to be open and only leaders who have a secure sense of self are willing to do that. In most cases, leaders are always surrounded by yes men and yes women or they are surrounded by alienated followers who make it their mission to point out every single negative area in the leader's life. One leadership scholar put it well: pity the leader who is caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers. I thought that was a brilliant line! So a lot of leaders actually prefer to be surrounded by dishonest followers who praise them, rather than indifferent followers who criticize them, but, given enough time, both of these followers will render leaders ineffective.

But rather than being surrounded by unloving critics or uncritical lovers, servant leaders I think should help these followers to be critical lovers who are willing and able to tell them the hot truth in a loving manner.

So I think that's the whole idea of accountability, vulnerability and security.

Rachel Salaman: So, if a leader needs to act like they have all or some of those values because they don't come naturally to him or her, is that leader still authentic in your view?

Sen Sendjaya: Well, this is not about faking these values, but sincerely trying to embody these values. As we all know, it's easier to act ourselves into a new way of thinking than it is to think ourselves into a new way of acting. So it's not so much acting it as in faking these values, but what I meant was to sincerely try and struggle to be able to embody these values in daily life.

Rachel Salaman: Now, you say that another dimension of servant leadership is the covenantal relationship. Could you tell us about that?

Sen Sendjaya: I got the idea from the former CEO of Herman Miller, Max De Pree. In 1989 he wrote a book called "Leadership is an Art." He contrasted the notion of contractual and covenantal.

Contractual relationships are built on the basis of expectations, subjectives, compensation, benefits, timetables, constraints, and so on. This is where we get the idea of psychological contract. In contrast, covenantal relationships rest on mutual intimacy among people, shared commitment to values and ideas, and if we have this mutual intimacy and shared commitment to certain values then our work will be much more meaningful and fulfilling.

Obviously we need a psychological contract in organizations, but they are insufficient to attract and retain the best people in organizations. I think the best employees work like volunteers and they are motivated by intangible things found in covenantal relationships.

Rachel Salaman: So what are some ways to create a covenantal relationship if you're a leader?

Sen Sendjaya: We need to make sure our followers know our values. We need to make sure that there is a mutual trust, it goes both ways, and also leaders have to show concern for the welfare of the followers. They have to understand that the vision that they are marching into is a shared vision. It's not a leader-defined or top-down vision, but the followers can see themselves in that vision.

There's a strong tie as a result of those things between the leaders and followers.

Rachel Salaman: Moving onto the fourth dimension now, which is responsible morality. It's an interesting choice of words. Could you explain why you called it that?

Sen Sendjaya: What I mean by responsible morality is that leaders are able to engage followers in a moral dialog to ensure that both the ends they seek and the means they employ are morally legitimized, thoughtfully reasoned, and ethically justified.

So the followers in this process are being helped to think about all these dilemmas from an ethical perspective.

Rachel Salaman: You note in the book that the association between servant leadership and what you call transcendental spirituality is often contested. What's your view of that connection and why?

Sen Sendjaya: A lot of people do not like the idea that servant leadership is connected to spirituality/religiosity and, in my book, I try to distinguish the two – that spirituality is not the same as religiosity – but I also add in the book that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are all spiritual beings, in other words.

So servant leaders are fully aware that people are not human resources. That is an awful term to be used and still being used. In fact, courses in universities use "human resources management," but employees are not human resources, they are human beings. They are much more than the sum of their outputs. They are holistic individuals with an intellectual side, a physical side, emotional side, moral side, and spiritual side.

Each of these sides needs to be acknowledged and given equal attention, and I think transcendental spirituality is a dimension of servant leadership that acknowledges all of them.

Rachel Salaman: Which brings us onto your final dimension, which is transforming influence. And you say this refers to the ways that leaders can help employees to be what they are capable of becoming. What do you mean by that?

Sen Sendjaya: They're not becoming mini-me versions of the leader and they're not even helped to become a better version of themselves, but rather they are empowered to be the best version of themselves. And that means every dimension of the individual self is fully explored and developed.

So if I have been working for my boss, say, for 10 years, the question then becomes, "Have I been developed relationally, rationally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and so on?" That means I have fully developed my capacity in all dimensions and I can become the best version of myself because of the boss that I have been working with.

Rachel Salaman: In this part of the book you also talk about the importance of vision. How does vision fit into the concept of servant leadership?

Sen Sendjaya: We all know in general that vision relates to leadership. In fact, without a vision you cannot lead. I think somebody said it well, if you think you are leading but you do not have a vision, then you're not leading, you're just taking a walk because no one actually will follow you.

But in the case of servant leadership, vision takes another important role, if you like. Firstly, vision fuels and guides the service, and I think this is a critical aspect. The first priority of servant leaders is to serve others, yet they do not serve merely to satisfy the individual's' needs or aspirations, let alone their personal preferences or whims. Servant leaders are not doormats for people to trample on, but servant leaders have a greater purpose. So, on the one hand, servant leaders treat followers with unqualified acceptance, but it doesn't mean that followers are being encouraged to remain where they are. Servant leaders will help them to become the best versions of themselves.

So this vision is actually helping servant leaders to help other followers to become better servant leaders than themselves.

The second thing that vision does is that this vision is a shared vision, not leader-defined or top-down vision. Many leadership visions in organizations are the visions of the CEO, a top management thing, but, in this case, I think the difference is that servant leaders help followers to see themselves and get excited about that vision and they want to be part of whatever endeavor that the leaders get them to be part of.

And, thirdly, the vision creates volunteers, because the best employees work like volunteers. That means that, if they are volunteers, they are free to leave at any time and, therefore, the leaders cannot rely strictly on financial incentives to retain them. What the servant leaders need is this exciting, larger-than-life vision.

And, finally, the vision outlasts the leader. If you look at the history of even high-performing firms, the average life expectancy of an overwhelming majority of multinational corporations is between 40 and 50 years, but if they have a big vision, bigger than the leader itself, then servant leaders will actually create lasting organizations. It's not about the leader, it's about the organization.

I think those are some of the ways that vision helps servant leaders to become uniquely equipped leaders to lead in the 21st century.

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned earlier about followers becoming servant leaders themselves and, in the book, you cover how servant leaders can be developed. How can that be done and what type of organization might be interested in that?

Sen Sendjaya: Naturally people will think of service firms. Any sort of service-oriented organizations will be interested in that, first and foremost, but I would think even in non-service firms leaders would be interested to understand and practice this particular approach to leadership, because we have now a lot of evidence that looked at how servant leadership can help followers' commitment, job satisfaction, citizenship behavior, wellbeing, and so on.

So I would say, if I'm the CEO or manager or a team leader then I would be very interested to develop myself in this area.

Rachel Salaman: We've covered a lot of ground in this conversation. What do you think are the main takeaways for leaders at all levels of an organization who would like to achieve personal and organizational excellence through servant leadership?

Sen Sendjaya: I think servant leadership is something that can be learned, but it's just like when we learned how to swim or how to ride a bike. We do not read manuals and then go to the deep end of the pool and then suddenly can master swimming. But we try to go and practice and make mistakes and make more mistakes, and then we become better and better at what we are trying to do.

And the same with servant leadership. I think it's important that we try to examine ourselves, why are we becoming leaders, and then try to understand other people's needs and aspirations, and to what extent we can be useful to them and to what extent we should sacrifice ourselves to serve other people rather than the other way round – sacrifice other people to serve ourselves.

So the takeaways are we need to treat employees not as a means to an end, but rather an end in themselves. If you are a leader, if you are an employee working for a boss I think it's important to help your boss to become servant leaders, and that's the role of the followers as well. So I think the emotional, the ethical, the spiritual sides that make up who we are have to be taken into consideration when we want to have servant leadership practice in organizations.

Rachel Salaman: Sen Sendjaya, thanks very much for joining us.

Sen Sendjaya: Thank you.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Sen's book again is "Personal and Organizational Excellence through Servant Leadership."

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.