About servant leadership
More than 20 years after Greenleaf’s groundbreaking work, Stone et al. (2003) note that “academic research on servant leadership is still in its infancy.” ((Stone et al., 2003), p. 7). However, the concept of a servant leader is not a modern concept. “It was Christianity’s founder Jesus Christ who first taught the concept of servant leadership.” ((Sendjaya & Sarros, 2002), p. 58). Jesus Christ submitted his own life under the will of God (Luk 22:42), and he sacrificed his life freely out of service for others (Joh 10:30). He came to serve (Mat 20:28), although he was God’s son, and thus more powerful than any other leader in the world.
There is already quite an extensive literature out about servant leadership in the English language. A good overview can be found in the writings listed on the websites of the Greenleaf Center for servant leadership and Regent’s Servant Leadership Roundtable Proceedings.
There exists no mutually agreed definition of servant leadership, however most authors agree that the concept of servant leadership in the business world goes back to Robert K. Greenleaf’s writings. In 1970 Robert K. Greenleaf (1904–1990) published the article “The servant as leader” (Greenleaf, 1970), where he introduced a kind of leadership, called servant leadership, which revolves around the question of the growth of the followers: “Do those being served grow as persons: do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?” ((Greenleaf, 1980) p. 43).
As in the garden, in servant leadership too, the central theme is the growth of the individual parts. This particular focus on the growth of the individual – and not primarily on the growth of the organization – is a unique characteristic of servant leadership.
As I understand the concept of servant leadership, servant leaders share the following characteristics:
1. They are voluntary servants of a higher purpose beyond their own or others’ interests,
2. They are committed to serve others needs before their own,
3. They are committed to help others grow as individuals,
4. They consistently develop others into servant leaders,
5. They are committed to grow as leaders and as servants towards the servant leader Jesus Christ (or another servant leader model).
About the connection between servant leadership and gardening
The Bible passage in John 15:1-8 is one of most prominent connections between gardening and biblical servant leadership. In this paragraph, Jesus applies the garden metaphor to Christian leadership with his father as gardener. Most of the gardening analogies in this blog directly relate to the servant leaders’ focus on personal growth and on the growth of those being served.
Metaphors and analogies are powerful concepts for developing new insights into such complex domains like “organizational leadership”. Metaphors always produce a kind of one-sided perspective, and imply a particular way of thinking and of seeing. They transfer meaning from a well-understood source domain like “gardening” to a rather complex target domain like “organizational leadership”. Different metaphors of organization have different focuses. While the organization-as-machine metaphor focuses on the functioning of each part, the focus of the organization-as-garden metaphor is the healthy growth of the individual plant/person. In organization theory, it is the servant leader, who focuses on the growth of the individual, and who continuously asks himself the Greenleaf test question, “Do those being served grow as persons?” ((Greenleaf, 1980) p. 43). Based on the organization-as-garden-metaphor, ten gardening tips provide insights from gardening for the practice of servant leadership, which can be applied in private as well as in organizational communication to get the message of servant leadership across, and to illustrate the beauty and the power of servant leadership.