Servant Versus Servile Leadership

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Thomas E. Poulin
October 21, 2024

Servant leadership is favored for the value it might bring to public agencies. Proficient servant leadership provides the vision, resources and support needed for enabled and empowered teams to achieve service excellence. This can contribute to high-performing teams that independently establish high standards, with team members challenging each other, holding one another accountable for collective success. This might be the outcome—if the leader does not become servile.

The Traditional Leader

Traditional views of leadership have imagined a bold, decisive individual standing at the forefront. They independently created the vision, set the direction, led by example, and motivated others to follow them. Typically, this has been illustrated as an organizational pyramid with the followers represented by the pyramid’s broad base and the senior leadership as the apex. This image suggests the workers are striving to elevate leadership.

The Servant Leader

Servant leadership turns the pyramid upside down, with the servant leader at the bottom, supporting the employees and raising them so they might achieve greater heights. Servant leaders do this through empathy, listening and developing a shared collective vision. Servant leaders enable their followers by providing them with the training, guidance and resources necessary to achieve success, and by empowering teams, unleashing them to engage actively and independently. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet during World War 2, once explained “Leadership consists of picking good men and helping them do their best.”

Servant leaders are not absent from the workplace. They monitor and oversee activities, providing support and guidance as necessary. Most importantly, they do not burden the team with unnecessary rules, policies or oversight that hinder the work, applying only those necessary to provide “guard rails” to keep the team on track. Servant leaders do not abrogate their responsibility or accountability as leaders, but they do not “lead” in the traditional sense.

The Servile Leader

Servility differs from serving. While servant leaders work for the team, the servile leader focuses primarily on making the team happy. Why is this a critical difference? Because the servant leader works for a team seeking to achieve the agency’s mission. The servile leader does what they can to keep the team happy even if the team is not moving effectively and efficiently towards the achievement of any organizational goals or objectives. In a worst-case scenario, a servile leader might be content to make the team happy even if the agency fails to achieve its desired outcomes. Servant leaders serve their teams as the teams fulfill the agency’s mission. Servile leaders serve their teams—full stop.

The rationale a servile leader might put forward to support this leadership style is a belief that happy employees will always be more productive. Certainly, happy employees are less likely to contribute to conflict and tension in the workplace, but the research on the relationship between happiness and productivity is ambiguous. Motivated, mission-driven employees are likely to be happy with their work and achieve at high levels, but this is more likely associated with the satisfaction arising from challenging work and an environment supportive of success. The joy in the work is the work itself. The reality is some happy employees are underperforming or incompetent.

Regardless of performance shortfalls, some servile leaders insist that keeping their team happy is their primary role. It might be instructive for them to engage in a simple thought experiment. They would imagine being a servile leader of an underperforming or failing team. They would imagine being called before appointed or elected officials to answer for their team’s inability to meet or exceed agency expectations. Finally, they might imagine how these officials might react to a servile leader’s response that while the team failed to deliver services to expectations and have failed in their mission, their team members were happy and that is the most important outcome. It would be difficult to imagine any public sector leader arriving at any conclusion except the servile leader has been an utter failure. They might determine that traditional leadership, even authoritarian leadership, might be preferred to servile leaders because traditional leaders focus on accomplishing the mission.

Conclusions

It would be incorrect to state that employee satisfaction, if not happiness, is unimportant. Public sector leaders should strive to create a safe, healthy, productive work environment, making the workplace a welcoming, inclusive setting. They should provide teams with the emotional, social and professional support needed to excel. The work should be challenging, and leadership should enable and empower employees to achieve their personal best. However, this must be done in a manner that recognizes the primary importance of achieving the agency’s mission.

Creating happy teams unable or unwilling to achieve the organizational mission is ultimately a mission failure. Proficient servant leadership can ensure public service delivery is effective, efficient and responsive to the needs and expectations of the community. Servile leadership is unlikely to be successful by any of these three metrics, and those in leadership positions should monitor themselves and others to ensure they remain mission-focused.

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Author: Thomas E. Poulin, PhD, SHRM-CP, IPMA-CP, is a training and development consultant and part-time public administration faculty at Columbia Southern University. He served in local government and non-profits for more than 30 years and has taught public administration and related topics for nearly 20. He may be reached at [email protected]. 

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