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Our world is facing a leadership crisis. We live in an age where the trustworthiness of authority figures and institutions is at an all-time low. Ethical leadership often feels hard to come by, and thanks to the fleeting cultural moment created by social media and constant connectedness, short-term and self-interested thinking rules the day.
We need servant leaders at the top of org charts and institutions. We would all be well-served by leaders who are more interested in giving themselves for the good of others rather than seeking their own interests.
What does this even look like today? Let’s explore some basic characteristics of servant leadership.
At a foundational level, the term “servant leadership” refers to a leadership style focused on prioritizing the needs of others, empowering and uplifting teams, and fostering a culture of compassion and growth.
The ultimate example of servant leadership is Jesus Christ. He is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. Despite being the rightful King of all creation and the Son of God, he served others and treated others as more important than himself.
Jesus demonstrated perfect humility and empathy, washing his disciples’ feet and treating them as brothers, not subservient people. He empowered his followers and showed us the perfect picture of sacrificial love on the cross.
But even beyond the ultimate example we have in Christ, we can find modern guidance on what it means to be a servant leader. In his groundbreaking essay The Servant as Leader, Robert Greenleaf writes:
The servant-leader is servant first... Becoming a servant-leader 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.
But what are some other characteristics of servant leadership? Let’s explore 10 important servant leadership qualities.
To put it simply, to be humble is to consider others more important than yourself. For Christians, humility has another kind of God-ward flavor—it is recognizing who we are in light of who God is. Humility is not self-loathing or -hatred, but a proper prioritization of the self with regard to God and other people.
Humility is one of the most important principles of servant leadership because to serve and lead others effectively requires humility. Servant leaders are humble because they lead with others’ interests ahead of their own. A servant leader is more interested in equipping and developing her team to thrive and succeed than she is in figuring out how to maximize her bonus or her own gain of another sort. Humility is crucial to the servant leader maintaining the posture of putting others’ priorities before his own.
Stewardship is taking what one has been given and using it with wisdom and care to make the most of it. Steward is a good word to describe a leader and is best understood not as the owner of whatever he stewards, but as the caretaker of it. Christians steward the gifts and talents that God has given her to glorify him in her life. To be a good steward of finances is to save, invest, and spend money in wisdom and not frivolity.
Stewardship plays a role in servant leadership because to be an effective servant leader, one must steward his teammates and their talents well, as well as handle budgetary matters and other forms of resources with wisdom and acuity.
The parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30 gives a good picture of what it means to steward the resources one is given well or poorly. The servant leader should heed this counsel and caution.
It is important for a servant leader to be self-aware because without self-awareness the leader can be tripped up by quirks or tendencies that may hinder his ability to lead well. Everyone has idiosyncrasies and weaknesses that may impact our ability to lead others well, and that’s okay. It’s just important that we are aware of our weaknesses and possible pitfalls and not blind to them.
What does it look like for a servant leader to be self-aware? Perhaps the simplest way for a leader to be self-aware is for her to have wise counsel and friends around her who have complete freedom and permission to make the leader aware of any weaknesses and quirks that may impact her ability to lead.
None of us are perfect, and to be self-aware requires humility and courage to come face-to-face with our shortcomings. The self-aware leader is more effective than the leader blind to his weaknesses.
One of the criteria of most effective leadership is showing empathy, compassion, and understanding to others. Empathy requires humility, patience, and understanding. When leaders empathize with others, they have compassion, putting themselves in the shoes of people who are hurting or otherwise in a difficult spot.
Without empathy, leaders can seem cold-hearted and disconnected from the people they lead. Leaders who lead without empathy can negatively impact the culture of their organization and make it difficult for talented people to stick around.
One of the essential leadership skills for servant leaders must be team building, both in the quantitative and the qualitative sense. It is important for servant leaders to have as many people on the team as is appropriate so that no one is over- or underworked, as that can lead to burnout or poor stewardship, respectively.
While each servant leader style is unique, they must be qualitative team builders, developing their team and pouring into them so that they can be the best versions of themselves (more on this in the next point). Leaders who neglect to build up their team will reap what they sow, and it won’t be for the good of anyone.
People development is an incredibly important part of what it means to be a servant leader. Leaders who do not invest in their teams are not leading their teams well. Leaders should be cultivating leaders among their direct reports, not simply consuming the fruit of their labor and getting as much production out of them as possible.
Developing team members can take a lot of forms, but at the very least, leaders should provide funds and time for continuing education or training, push their teammates to take on challenging projects that will stretch their skills, and regularly ask how the leader can better support the development of the team.
Servant leaders are not doormats who just give in to the will and whimsy of the team—that’s not leadership. Leaders, even those who want to be characterized by humility and kindness, often need to influence their team members to come along with new initiatives, refreshed vision, and other such projects. As the Benjamin Franklin quote above says, leaders do well when they realize that influencing others is through action rather than just mere talk.
What does this look like? Say your team has new values in place that the leaders hope will characterize the manner in which the team serves its clients—-the best way for leaders to influence their teams to adopt these values in their work is to actually live them out themselves. Servant leaders influence others through leading by example.
No one likes working for a leader who is a poor listener. Servant leaders marked by humility and empathy take the time to stop talking and start listening. A lot of leaders become leaders because they are effective communicators, but it is as—if not more—important for servant leaders to practice active listening as much as effective speaking.
Servant leaders attentively listen to their direct reports in meetings so that they can ask relevant follow-up questions and value others’ input. Poor leaders “listen” while they form their response or rebuttal.
Servant leaders should hold themselves to a high standard of excellence in their work. A lot of leadership is developing and caring for others well, and that’s been covered at length in this article. But beyond that aspect of leadership, it is also important for leaders to do excellent work.
For Christians, as seen in Colossians 3, it is important to do excellent work regardless of our occupation so that the stewardship of our gifts and talents would be glory to our God. Servant leaders should regularly seek feedback from peers, partners, managers, and those they manage so that they can maintain a high bar of excellence in their work.
Of course, no explanation of effective leadership is complete without highlighting the importance of vision-casting in the life and work of the leader. Servant leaders must cast a vision and encourage others to latch onto that vision for the good of the team and the flourishing of the customer, end user, or others who may be impacted by the work. Leaders must not get so caught up in the weeds of the work that they lose sight of their responsibility to energize the team and rally them toward an ultimate goal.
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There’s a shortage of servant leaders in local churches. Rarely is there a shortage of people who want the power and authority of leadership roles—that part of the work has mass appeal—but few are those who want positions of leadership so that they might more effectively serve and uplift others more than themselves.
We need more servant leaders in church who are captured by the heart of Christ and humbled by the weight of their calling. Godly leaders do not seek personal gain or professional advancement as much as they seek the good of the other.
If you’d like more resources on this topic, check out some of the books below.
