Two students in an executive seminar, Rachel Goh and Santiago Perez, explore the basis of servant leadership in class. 

Rachel. I don’t buy it. The idea that servant leaders are more committed to their followers and organization sounds too religious for me. The fact is, people are, at the core, selfish. We act with self-interest, first and always.

Santiago. Servant leaders are manipulative, but in a good way. Take me, for example. My staff can’t get along well without me because I provide them with everything they need—from advice to tangible resources. This is a win-win situation. I support their work, and in exchange I get the results I want.

Questions 

1. Do you agree with this summation that servant leadership is (a) not possible given the selfish nature of people and (b) secretly or outwardly manipulative but harmless? Explain your answer.

Using Greenleaf’s definition of this theory (see www. greenleaf.org), discuss how servant leadership can guide executives in today’s healthcare environment.

2. Servant leadership is likely to work best in an organizational culture that supports it. That is, some cultures have a high level of trust and team orientation, while others are hierarchical or rely on command-and-control principles. What types of culture can support the practice of servant leadership?

See the following websites for a discussion on organizational culture: 

• http://managementhelp.org/org_thry/culture/ culture.htm 

• http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-isorganizational-culture-definition-characteristics.html 

• www.tnellen.com/ted/tc/schein.html

• www.thercfgroup.com/files/resources/DefiningCulture-and-Organizationa-Culture_5.pdf

3. Two excellent academic reviews of servant leadership are provided by Savage-Austin and Honeycutt and Sokoll. Review both and summarize their key conclusions.

Savage-Austin, A. R., and A. Honeycutt. 2011. “Servant Leadership: A Phenomenological Study of Practices, Experiences, Organizational Effectiveness, and Barriers.” Journal of Business and Economics Research 9 (1): 49–54. www.cluteinstitute.com/ojs/index.php/JBER/article/ viewFile/939/923. 

Sokoll, S. 2014. “Servant Leadership and Employee Commitment to a Supervisor.” International Journal of Leadership Studies 8 (2): 88–104. www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/ijls/new/vol8iss2/5-Sokoll.pdf.