A few days ago, on February 16th, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Companies Are Replacing CEOs in Record Numbers—and They’re Getting Younger“. The article focused on the lack of leadership experience of many of the new CEOs and quoted an executive recruiter as saying:

If the CEO doesn’t get momentum both internally with operating performance and also with investors, then boards are more impatient even than they were.

At the same time, Barna reports that employee engagement is down from its peak in 2020 with the greatest declines happening among younger workers.

In a moment when boards demand momentum, markets demand optics, and employees seek connection, we would not be surprised if some of these new young CEOs saw “servant leadership” as an attractive strategy to get “momentum”.  A search of Amazon yields dozens of books about servant leadership–both the strategies and the benefits. Some are focused on modeling the leadership of Jesus while others are secular management books. Here are a few examples:

The Servant Leader: How to Build a Creative Team, Develop Great Morale, and Improve Bottom-Line Performance

Servant Leadership Made Simple: 7 Essential Steps to Master Empathetic Leadership, Inspire Growth, Strengthen Relationships, and Achieve Lasting Success

The World’s Most Powerful Leadership Principle: How to Become a Servant Leader

Servant Leadership: Discover the 10 Essential Skills To Unlock Your Team Performance And Become an Amazing Servant Leader

Servant Leadership Roadmap: Master the 12 Core Competencies of Management Success with Leadership Qualities and Interpersonal Skills

Leadership in Christian Perspective: Biblical Foundations and Contemporary Practices for Servant Leaders

Jesus on Leadership: Timeless Wisdom on Servant Leadership

Servant Leader: Transforming Your Heart, Head, Hands and Habits

A leader of faith might consider behavior that feels like Jesus “washing feet”, while a secular leader might look to master the skills that “unlock team performance” or implement the essential steps to “inspire growth” and “achieve lasting success”.

Both approaches risk missing the heart of servant leadership. In a commentary on servant leadership, the Theology of Work Project makes an important observation–servant leadership “is not so much a matter of action as attitude.”

In post #159 (Caring for People: Heart, Hype or Hustle), we warned that an organizational culture of caring for people could either be coming from a place of “heart, hype, or hustle”. We believe the same can be said of servant leadership. When assessing a servant leader, it is important to look behind the actions and words to find the real WHY.

Servant Leadership and Service in the Bible

Servant leadership is popular among faithful leaders because it is the type of leadership modelled by Jesus, and it is the kind of leadership Jesus called his followers to model:

You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Mark 10:42-45)

You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. (John 13:13-15)

As we emphasized in post #055 (Keep First Things First—Love—Loving by Serving—Nature of Work), service is at the center of God’s design for work. By our nature as creations in the image of God, we are given gifts of creativity and productivity through specific skills and physical and mental abilities. 1 Peter 4:10-11 declares that we are to use these gifts–the basis of our work and stewardship–“to serve one another”:

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace…in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.

Humans are meant to serve one another through work by applying their gifts to steward creation and promote flourishing of that creation.   We are also meant to glorify God in all we do.  When we reflect the image of God by exercising our God-given gifts through work to serve one another, we are also living out the commandments to love God and love one another.  Work is a VEHICLE for living out those commandments.

The Origin of “Servant Leadership”

Despite the Biblical foundations for servant leadership, the term “servant leader” is attributed to an essay written in 1970 that never mentioned Jesus or the Bible. The phrase was coined by a businessperson, Robert Greenleaf, in an essay titled “The Servant as Leader”. Greenleaf was a person of Christian faith.

In his essay, Greenleaf made a few observations that we believe are critical to understanding the nature of servant leadership as well as to assessing whether servant leadership represents heart, hype or hustle.

Greenleaf makes a distinction between the servant who uses leadership as an instrument for their service and the leader who uses service as an instrument for their leadership–service as an end or service as a means. Only the former is what Greenleaf considers a “servant-leader”.

The servant-leader is servant first . . .. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such it will be a later choice to serve — after leadership is established.

Greenleaf then describes the behavior of a service first leader in terms that sound very much to us like the pursuit of flourishing:

The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?

For Greenleaf—and for Jesus—servant leadership begins with identity. It is about a heart of service for the benefit of others, using leadership as a means of service rather than treating service as a tool for leadership.

The Importance of Heart

As it says in 1 Samuel 16:7:

But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart”.

At the core of faithful integrity is an alignment of organizational purpose, values and culture arising from a commitment to Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities that leads a person or organization, instinctively, to do the right things, in the right ways and for the right reasons.

Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons looks good and may produce visible good, but it misses business a better way—it misses alignment with God’s heart for our work.

Service as Heart, Hype, or Hustle

You might be wondering what we mean by heart, hype and hustle as the potential WHY’s behind a leader’s actions and words around serving other people.

Heart

Service as heart begins with a settled identity—a natural desire to serve—and a leader who receives leadership as a wider platform for that service. It is leadership that embodies the humility we highlighted in post #196 (First Things – Humility) and exhibits the Biblical EQ that was the focus of post #185 (Integrity Idea 030: Encourage “Biblical EQ”). Leadership is an instrument for recognizing Imago Dei, loving your neighbor and glorifying God.

For service to come from the heart, a faithful leader must undergo a heart change–shifting from the pursuit of business as usual to the pursuit of business a better way.  It involves a shift from seeing profit as the end toward which the business is managed to being a means (and a very necessary means) toward a bigger WHY of flourishing.

Service as heart is captured in a quote by Ursula Burns, who started at Xerox as an intern and eventually became the CEO:

Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.

If a leader is still stuck pursuing business as usual with Profit as Purpose, or hasn’t crossed at least the Sacred/Secular Gap, their service is likely hype or hustle.

Hype

What we mean by hype is when a leader’s servant persona is about impressing or placating third parties such as investors–the external momentum called for in the quote from the WSJ article.

It is not about serving people because they are the leader’s priority and because it is the right thing to do.  It is about serving because the leader has determined that the appearance of serving people will influence third parties in a way that is good for the leader.

Servant hype is outward-facing. Service becomes a communications strategy. It exists to impress investors, signal cultural awareness, build brand equity, or manage public perception.

It might be good for the leader because it is good for the bottom line (or the stock price) in the case of business as usual. For a faithful leader, it might be good because it looks good within the faith/work community and raises their stature as a faithful leader. That is a form of faith as usual–what we call Cosmeticizing.

The Bible warns about hype in Luke 16:15:

You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

Hustle

What we mean by hustle is when a leader’s servant persona is really about hustling to attract, retain or motivate employees–the internal performance momentum called for in the quote from the WSJ article.

Like hype, it is not about serving people because they are the organization’s priority and because it is the right thing to do.  It is about serving people because the leader has determined that the actions or words are ultimately good for the leader.

Leadership remains the center, and service becomes a performance lever. Servant hustle is inward-facing, and the underlying logic is productivity and performance. It operationalizes empathy to drive engagement—measuring care in retention rates and tying compassion to productivity metrics.

It is the appearance of serving people for the purpose of manipulation and furthering a purpose that is not about them.  As we have pointed out in prior posts, business as usual and its assumptions of Scarcity and Self-Interest call for control and manipulation.  People are particularly vulnerable to workplace manipulation through hustle when work as usual has led them to view work as an Idol and Identity–their source of worth and value.

Servant hype and hustle seem to be the focus of many of the books on servant leadership. Just consider the subtitle “Master Empathetic Leadership, Inspire Growth, Strengthen Relationships, and Achieve Lasting Success“–growth and success.

We are not suggesting that the management techniques provided in these books are bad. In fact, they will almost certainly be perceived as positive both internally and externally. But they represent leadership through the technique of service not servant leadership as envisioned by Greenleaf or modeled by Jesus because they do not come from a heart of service.

But leading with faithful integrity through business a better way toward biblical flourishing requires more. It requires heart change in leaders–a bigger 1 Peter 4:10-11 WHY of glorifying God through serving one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace.

The Flourishing of Servant Leadership

It is important to come to what Greenleaf identified as the fruit of servant leadership:

Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?

That test echoes the Biblical vision of maturity—that those who are served grow toward wisdom and freedom (Ephesians 4:13-15).

One of the three bigger WHYs that we have identified for business in alignment with biblical beliefs, principles, and priorities is to Humanize People. Dr. Skip Moen writes that “To be human is to serve another.”  A leader who models true service humanizes those they lead by example. In the words of management guru John Maxwell:

People emulate what they see modeled. Positive model—positive response. Negative model—negative response. What leaders do, potential leaders around them do. What they value, their people value. The leaders’ goals become their goals. Leaders set the tone.

People are also Humanized when leaders help them build task excellence in the way that they use their gifts and talents to serve others. Effective servant leadership is not all about the soft side of relationships and caring.

In his book Connection Culture, Michael Stallard notes that servant leaders “develop task excellence and relationship excellence“.  Because work is a way to use our God-given skills to serve others in a way that glorifies God, task excellence is important. God’s work is excellent, and people live more in alignment with Imago Dei when their work is excellent.  Looking once again to Skip Moen:

We become human when we act as the Creator acts.  We earn humanity over the course of our lives.

Faithful leaders operating from the heart as servant-leaders serve by stewarding fellow travelers on that journey.

PERSONAL NOTE (from PM): This post was inspired by a Scripture@Work session on servant leadership. So often servant leadership is portrayed as a meek Jesus with a lamb on his shoulders. It is so much more.  The related Theology of Work commentary captured the essence of service from the heart–it “is not so much a matter of action as attitude.”

ESSENCE: In a moment when boards demand momentum, markets demand optics, and disengaged employees seek connection, “servant leadership” can be seen as an attractive management strategy. Servant leadership is popular among faithful leaders because it is the type of leadership modelled by Jesus, and it is the kind of leadership Jesus called his followers to model. It is also a management technique that secular proponents suggest leads to success. But the right WHY is central to leading with faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons looks good and may produce visible good, but it misses business a better way—it misses alignment with God’s heart for our work, and it misses the very heart of servant leadership.  In coining the term “servant leadership” in 1970, Robert Greenleaf made an important distinction between the servant who uses leadership as an instrument for their service and the leader who uses service as an instrument for their leadership–service as an end or service as a means. For Greenleaf—and for Jesus—servant leadership begins with identity. It is about a heart of service for the benefit of others, using leadership as a means of service rather than treating service as a tool for leadership. When assessing a servant leader, it is important to look behind the actions and words to find the real WHY. Is it driven by heart, hype or hustle? If a faithful leader is still stuck pursuing business as usual with Profit as Purpose, or hasn’t crossed at least the Sacred/Secular Gap, their service is likely hype or hustle.

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Photo Credit: Original image in The Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith’s America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
(photo cropped)