I hear a lot of people bristle at the phrase “servant leader” because they associate “servant” with “servitude” and, at least here in the US, the lingering evils of slavery.
Service is not evil
Throughout history we have lifted up those who lived in service of others or a higher power, those who have sacrificed for the greater good: Mother Teresa; Martin Luther King, Jr; Those who made “the ultimate sacrifice” to stop Hitler; Marie Curie; Jesus of Nazareth; Purusha.
We also have the example of Maundy Thursday from the Roman Catholic Church. Maundy Thursday is the day on which the hierarchy of the Church engages in the rite of the Washing of the Feet to remind them of humility and the selfless love of Christ.
Almost every major corporation has some form of philanthropy or community service these days. When I was at American Express, we had a program called Serve2gether. USAA offers a few paid days a year to its employees to engage in volunteer work. These are acts of service.
We applaud “service” in these contexts. We don’t conjure up in our minds the more connotative denotations of “servant” or “servitude” that may elicit the wrongs of the past. Yet, when people engage in these acts of service, they are servants: ones who serve others.
Lessons in service
My first career was in foodservice: a chef.
One of the food icons I looked up to growing up was Charlie Trotter, which is what led me later in life, when I’d abandoned being a chef as a career, to pick up Lessons in Service from Charlie Trotter by Edmund Lawler.
Charlie Trotter, who was hired by the Fortune 500 to teach them about service, had a mantra: “Service not Servitude.” His philosophy is described in Lessons in Service below:
Charlie Trotter’s service philosophy springs from the simple question: “How would I like to be treated if I were the guest?” Like royalty, of course, although Trotter forgoes the regal trappings in favor of sincere, gracious, flawless service.
Trotter himself would resist being treated like a king. “I would rather provide service than be served,” he says. “I have a hard time when people are waiting on me. Too many people mistake serving for servitude where you subordinate yourself socially or economically to the person you are serving.”
He believes there’s a true nobility to service.
-Lessons in Service from Charlie Trotter by Edmund Lawler (emphasis added)
How does this apply to today’s conversations about leadership?
In today’s conversations about leadership, we often speak of a “servant leader.” In Scrum, the Scrum Master role is described as a “servant leader” of the team.
Perhaps “servant” in this context is superfluous, or maybe it’s added because we’ve lost our way in understanding that a key role of a leader is to act in service of those they lead, for without those whom they lead, the leader would be incapable of achieving anything.
Perhaps too many people hear “servant” and think “slave” or “servitude.” But these, I posit, are the wrong notions to associate with “servant” or “service.” People think of a Scrum Master as living in servitude to the team: a glorified order-taker who merely takes on the menial tasks the team doesn’t want to do (like manage status reports and track time). Some think “servant leaders” are to subordinate any desires of their own - for the team or for the organization - to serve the whims of those they lead.
But that’s not leadership either.
Great leaders are very much like great parents. I don’t know any great parent who doesn’t want their children to experience better than they did. From the moment they have children, these parents focus on the needs of their children: they live in service of their children.
Does this mean they aren’t “in charge”? Of course not! Great parents set boundaries for their children, they help them when they need it, they allow them to fail when they need to, and they let their children develop a sense of themselves, to grown into something that is unique to each child.
These great parents are, by the definition of the word I choose to employ, servants to their children.
Perhaps this discomfort we have with the word “servant” suggests we’ve forgotten that there’s a majesty to being a servant - living in service of others. Maybe we add “servant” to “leader” because we’ve somehow come to think of leaders as people who are driven by ego and in it for themselves: we need the constant reminder that great leaders are servants.
I’m sure we’ve all worked for “leaders” who are driven by ego. But these aren’t leaders, these are megalomaniacs. They degrade the word “leader.” They’re a stain on the concept of “leadership.”
Great leaders are servants: to the people they lead and to a cause greater than them. Great servants not only help those they serve with what they need, they anticipate their needs with acts of, as Trotter put it, “sincere, gracious, flawless service.”
Perhaps by embracing humility and service, leading from the role of a servant, we’ll build better products that focus on customers’ needs and build organizations that build up rather than tear down the people in them. Maybe there’s something to that.
We’d do well to all live our lives a little more in service of others - as servants - and less obsessed with ourselves: to be a little more empathetic; to put others, such as our customers, first; to be more humble. And, in the end, we may find almost paradoxically that by being more firmly grounded in humility and acting more as a servant, we will reap the benefits of that which we sow and experience personal abundance that we could never imagine.