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.

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