One of the most common misconceptions about servant leadership is that it cedes too much power to workers/employees.

The misconception evolves from a view of leadership as a top-down, hiearchical view of leadership, e.g. only the leader has the answers. Only the leader should have the power.

In reality, the old top down structure constricts the effectiveness of the organization.

I remember vividly when a new leader came upon the scene at one university. Prior to his arrival, faculty and other employees regularly gathered at the student union coffeeshop. Many conflicts, issues and problems were worked out during these informal meetings. On Saturday, it was not uncommon to see faculty on campus either at events or working in their offices.

When the new leader came on the scene, he immediately made it known that only he had the authority and the power to carry out policy. He systematically began dismantling all political structures by removing existing heads of committees and departments. Rather than find ways to utilize existing structures, he made it known that anyone who crossed him would suffer the consequences.

In a very brief period of time, faculty presence diminished, the informal social networks disintegrated and the informal communication structures moved underground. Noteworthy were the closed doors to faculty offices, mid-level administrative offices.

The truth of the matter is that it is a weak leader who must constantly operate from a power position.

As quoted in a paper entitled Servant-Leadership and the Best Companies to Work for In America, in the book Focus on Leadership, edited by Larry Spears, Nancy Ruschman quotes Jim Blanchard when he was CEO of Synovus:

Great leaders are responsible for creating work environments in which people care about each other, share pride in a common goal, and celebrate the successes of all. For this atmosphere to flourish, we have to realize that, though we can’t change everyone around us we can change ourselves, and make a difference.

Another way to put it is that the power of the organization comes from the power of the individual.

The second myth of servant leadership is that it won’t work in organizations because people cannot be trusted.
A corollary to this myth is that the organizational “leader” must hold workers accountable because they do not hold themselves accountable. In reality, when leadership fails, it is because the leader does not hold trust as a value.

In a book entitled, Focus on Leadership, Leadership for the 21st century, edited by Larry Spears, the former Executive Director of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, Max Depree writes in his article, Servant Leadership: Three Things Necessary, that good servant leaders work to build mutual trust. He cites a note written by an industrial designer which said “Your trust is the grace that enables me to be creative.”

Understanding the importance of trust is better understood by contrasting trust with its absence in the workplace and elsewhere.

In one institution, the President was famous for circulating the hallways. Ostensibly, he circulated because he wanted to be a “hands-on” manager, to know his workers and to solicit input.

When performance evaluations came due, it became clear what was his real purpose. Each employee who was not present for even one time when the President was passing through was marked down on “initiative” or “meets responsibilities.” In the opening meeting of the following year, the President emphasized the importance of being accessible to the customer, which meant to him that employees should always be at their desks. In reality, most contacts with customers occurred in the field, not in the office.

This approach stemmed from a basic view of humanity that humans can’t be trusted. Workers must be constantly monitored lest they not follow rules. Absence from their desks meant they were avoiding work in this leader’s eyes.

The end result was that more and more employees found reasons to be in the field. Some workers even arranged to have colleagues arrange to open their office, turn on their computer in their cubicle when they weren’t present. When no customers were present, office doors were closed. Lack of trust evolved into a toxic work environment whereby workers communicated less and less, did their best to avoid the President except to appear visible only when they were required to do so.

Contrast that to the statement “Your trust is the grace that enables me to be creative.”

Contrast the lack of trust to an adminstrative assistant who once worked for me who went out of her way to communicate to me the rare occasions when she commited an error. What I tried to do was to make sure that when errors occurred and they will in any organization, that we pulled together to fix those errors. It wasn’t long before she would report the error but nearly always reported that it had already been fixed. She also had no hesitation in identifying my errors-and then doing her utmost to help me correct them!

We all know or have worked in situations where a leader has trusted, has modeled trust, has avoided the punishment mode for redressing mistakes. What results is greater creativity, greater initiative, a tendency for mutual support to arise throughout the enterprise.

In the book, Learning to Serve, Serving to Learn, it is the “grace of sense, white light, still and moving. . ,” a line from T.S. Eliot which, in some ways, describes the very high level of trust to which servant leaders must aspire. It is this level of trust, once achieved, which allows the philosophy of servant leadership to have a powerful impact on the health of organizations and the persons working within it. To the extent that servant leaders foster such trust is the extent to which their colleagues will become strong servant leaders themselves. To the extent trust is negated by oppressive or deceptive leadership practices is the extent to which organizations can be harmed by lack of trust.

One of the stories that Kevin Eikenberry tells in his book, Vantagepoints on Learning and Life is in the chapter “Secret Samaritans.” As you might recall in the days of public telephones, nearly everyone checked the coin return tray to see if there had been any money left by a previous user.
In a study which describe “The Good Samaritan Effect,” researchers placed coins randomly in selected return trays in public telephones. Then, timing the accident carefully, they had a woman drop her books at the exact moment the callers were hanging up and leaving the telephone. They found that those people who had earlier discovered coins in the return tray were FOUR time more likely to help the woman pick up her books.

The point? When we receive good fortune, we tend to pass it on. Kevin suggests that acts of kindness should not be just random and intermittent but that we can increase the power of the “Good Samaritan Effect” by systematically performing acts which provide good fortune for others.

Think of the power that this can have in the work place!  Think of the impact that this approach to servant leadership could have on the well being of workers, not to mention the productivity of the enterprise!

When people speak of servant leadership, they often tend to forget that certain connotations to the word “servant” may be a barrier to a full understanding of the concept.  As the idea of servant leadership spreads, so do several myths.

There are seven myths that have arisen and have become a barrier to its implementation:

1. A servant leader is a weak leader who “follows” the dictates and ideas of others.

2. Servant leadership will not work because people can’t be trusted.

3. Servant leadership will not be effective because it allows too much power to employees.

4. Goals in organizations which espouse servant leadership are not well defined.

5.  People must be coerced to perform.

6.  People are inherently selfish.

7.  Servant leadership does not contribute to the financial health of an organization.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be addressing each of these myths and suggesting specific individual authors or books who can shed further light on why these myths are not true.

In this segment, I will briefly address the first myth-that a servant leader is a weak leader who only follows the ideas of others. 

Several basic principles illustrate why this myth is not only untrue but represents a complete misunderstanding of the concept and practices of servant leadership.

First, servant leadership is founded on the basic principle that an effective servant leader is focused on organization goals that are based on well defined values.   The values define the product, frame the working environment, reflect a basic respect for workers and are the result of the collective wisdom of the company.  This principle is in direct contradiction of leaders who seek power first or who seek leadership for the purpose of acquiring power.  In Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals,  he describes a process of humiliation-a “freezing’ of the opposition to top down leadership.  And then, opposition can be ridiculed and destroyed to preserve the power of the powerseekers.  In a strange way, this book should be required reading for all aspiring servant leaders who wish to understand coercive, oppressive, top-down leadership.  A leader who does not foster positive values but relies on coercion, in reality, reflects a weak leadership style-spending their life in fear of the loss of power, reveling in the disruption of the lives of others.

Second, a servant leader must have the strength of character to withstand the ambiguity which comes with allowing substantive input from workers or colleagues.  Openness is an absolute requirement for the servant leader.  The weak leader simply imposes his or her will, seeking destruction or humiliation of all opposition to preserve and protect his or her power.  To the weak leader, opposing opinion doesn’t matter, only that his or her will is carried out.

In the Learning to Serve, Serving to Learn  book, an incident is described where a college president forces a mid-level administrator to place expensive ficus trees in a dark hallway of a recently remodeled building.  Even though the mid-level administrator tries to explain that the trees will die without light, the president orders them placed in the hallway anyway.  As the months passed by, the dead leaves of the ficus trees lay on the carpet, a testimony to the effect of oppressive, coercive leadership on the spirit of the organization.

Third, the servant leader must have the ability to foster inner peace both within their own soul and the soul of the workers in the organization.   In any organization, both internal conflicts and external pressures often create potential chaos.  If the servant leader relies on the principles of coercive leadership, those pressures only increase.  On the front cover of Learning to Serve, Serving to Learn, there is the image of a jar of peaches.  In the book, a story is told about that jar of peaches which reflects a life of servant leadership of the mother-in-law of the author.  But the jar also is a metaphor of what could happen if the correct boiling temperature and time is not understood-the correct time to take the jar from a boiling canner in order to allow it to cool, to become a finely preserved jar of peaches.  The coercive leader keeps the jar boiling until the organizational spirit disintegrates, the frustration often overflowing as fed-up workers close their doors, cease communication and only do what appears to appease the coercive leader.  A jar of peaches, overboiled, may actually look quite similar to the finely preserved jar, until, after time, the peaches spoil.

These are three reasons why the myth that servant leadership is weak is not true: 1.)  A servant leader must be a strong leader with strong character who fosters positive values underlying organizational goals;  2) A servant leadership with strong character supports his or workers and believes that workers want to be productive and doesn’t rely on the easy route of humilation and coercion; 3) A servant leader must have strong character to foster inner peace in his or her own soul and those of the organization’s workers.