Robert Kiefner Greenleaf[1] (1904–1990) was 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 (initially called the Center for Applied Ethics).
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 (1998). Spears distills Greenleaf's (1977/2002) instrumental means into ten characteristics: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community (pp. 3–6). 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 (1990) referred to as an "approach [that] tended to treat personality variables in an atomistic fashion, suggesting that each trait acts singly to determine the effects of leadership" (p. 87). 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 (1977/2002) "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.
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 (2002) felt strongly that his "best test"[2] 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, is the text for anyone interested in connecting the two often disparate terms, servant and leader. His work addressed these two questions in particular: How can leaders serve people? What is the source of legitimate power?
Through the next 25 years, Greenleaf served as a consultant to such notable institutions as MIT, the American Foundation for Management Research, and Lilly Endowment, Inc. He continued writing, refining and focusing his ideas on several different areas of leadership. For example, to apply Servant Leadership to an organizational level, he wrote "The Institution as Servant". For educators, he wrote "The Leadership Crisis: A Message for College and University Faculty" and "Teacher as Servant". Other writings targeted seminaries, personal growth, religious leaders, and trustees.
In 1985, the Center for Applied Ethics changed its name to Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership. Greenleaf died in 1990, and the center continued his work. In 1996, it published two posthumous essay collections. Many colleges and universities include Servant Leadership in their curricula, and hundreds of companies embrace Greenleaf's philosophy. Greenleaf is buried in Terre Haute; the epitaph on his tombstone reads, "Potentially a good plumber; ruined by a sophisticated education."[3]