by Ed Finn

Created on: May 04, 2008

Introduction

Servant Leadership, which has been widely studied (Greenleaf, 2002; Joseph & Winston, 2005; Knights & O'Leary, 2006; Russell, 2001; Russell & Stone, 2002), is a style of leadership that implies the implementation of values and ethics. It calls upon an individual to both serve and lead those around them. This dichotomy causes many people to claim such a philosophy, but few to implement it. Philosophical virtue and ethics in the business community are often open to interpretation and widely misused and/or even ignored completely. In a corporate climate that focuses on numbers and where businesses sometimes view their employees as numbers on a spreadsheet, this lack of ethics is all too visible.

This paper will examine not only the tenets of servant leadership, but also its strengths and weaknesses as an ethical construct for dealing with the workforce of today. Can servant leadership really bring people together to work for a common goal and in a unified way? Is servant leadership the ultimate form of leadership or merely smoke and mirrors? By answering these and other question about servant leadership, one can further understand the implications of such a theory and turn a critical lens on it to refine and improve upon it.

Being able to question and confront portions of a theory or the total theory is essential to productive dialogue and freedom. After all Karl Popper wrote:

All we can do is to search for the falsity content of our best theory. We do so by trying to refute our theory; that is, by trying to test it severely in the light of all our objective knowledge and all our ingenuity (Ayer & O'Grady, p. 357).

Greenleaf (2002) talks about this continual search for truth when dealing with the poem Directive by Robert Frost. He talks of the seeking and searching to find oneself. He goes even further to suggest that even though some parts are lost or dismissed, others can take their place:

Then set forth upon your journey and, if you travel far enough, filling the voids of loss with the noblest choices, you may be given the secret of the kingdom: awe and wonder before the majesty and the mystery of all creation (Greenleaf, p. 340).

While it may not be necessarily finding oneself that is the answer, the continual questioning and refining of one's beliefs is of paramount importance when it comes to both leadership and ethics. Once one stops learning and begins to believe that they have all of the answers, they have effectively marginalized themselves as

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