Robert K. Greenleaf

Robert Kiefner Greenleaf (1904–1990) was an American business executive and leadership consultant, and the founder of the modern servant leadership movement and the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.

Greenleaf was born in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1904. After graduating from Carleton College in Minnesota, he went to work for AT&T, then the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. For the next 40 years he researched management, development, and education. He became suspicious that the power-centered authoritarian leadership style so prominent in U.S. institutions was not working, and in 1964, he took an early retirement to found the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership (initially called the Center for Applied Ethics).

Philosophy According to his essay "Essentials of Servant Leadership", Greenleaf's philosophy had its roots from reading a work of fiction in 1958:

A conceptual framework that is helpful for understanding servant-leadership is found in the "Ten Characteristics of the Servant-Leader" described by Larry Spears (1998). Spears distills Greenleaf's (1977/2002) instrumental means into ten characteristics: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community (pp. 3–6). These characteristics are not simply traits or skills possessed by the leader; a century of research has rejected what Bass and Stogdill (1990) referred to as an "approach [that] tended to treat personality variables in an atomistic fashion, suggesting that each trait acts singly to determine the effects of leadership" (p. 87). Rather, servant-leadership is an ethical perspective on leadership that identifies key moral behaviors that leaders must continuously demonstrate in order to make progress on Greenleaf's (1977/2002) "best test". The "best test", which gives us the ethical ends for action, combined with Spears' distillation of traits that identified the means, create a powerful framework for a review of the literature that furthers the conceptual framework for servant-leadership.

Works Greenleaf was captivated by the idea of a servant being the leader. In "Essentials" he wrote "As it was, the idea lay dormant for 11 years during which I came to believe that we in this country were in a leadership crisis and that I should do what I could about it." In 1970 Greenleaf published his first essay, titled "The Servant as Leader", which introduced the term servant leadership. Later, the essay was expanded into a book in which Greenleaf elaborated on his philosophy of leadership.

Greenleaf wrote in "Essentials",

Greenleaf (2002) felt strongly that his "best test" should apply to all of our institutions. His "best test", which he knew would be hard to grade, is stated:

Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?