Servant Leadership in Business
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Servant Leadership
When Jack Welch, longtime CEO of General Electric (GE), speaks to MBA students,
he reminds them that “any time you are managing people, your job is not about you, it’s
about them. It starts out about you as . . . an individual in a company,” Welch says. “But
once you get a leadership job, it moves very quickly to being about them.”8 Some leaders
operate from the assumption that work exists for the development of the worker as much
as the worker exists to do the work.9 The concept of servant leadership, first described
by Robert Greenleaf in 1970, has gained renewed interest in recent years as companies
recover from ethical scandals and compete to attract and retain the best human talent.10
A servant leader transcends self-interest to serve others, the organization, and
society.11 Marilyn Carlson Nelson, former chairman and CEO of the Carlson Companies
(Radisson Hotels, TGI Fridays, Regent Seven Seas Cruises), says being a true leader
means that you “have to subordinate your own emotions, your own desires, even make
decisions on behalf of the whole that might conflict with what you would do on an individual
basis.”12 A stunning example of this occurred in the spring of 2009, when a U.S.-flagged
cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, was seized and raided by Somali pirates. Captain Richard
Phillips ordered crew members of the unarmed ship not to fight and gave himself up as
a hostage to free the ship and crew. The story of the captain’s dilemma and rescue is told
in a 2013 movie, Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks. Contrast his behavior with that
of Captain Francesco Schettino, who allegedly abandoned his ship while passengers were
still aboard after the luxury cruise liner Costa Concordia hit a rock and sank off the coast
of Italy in 2012, killing at least 30 people. Schettino has been charged with manslaughter,
shipwreck, and abandoning ship.13
In organizations, servant leaders operate on two levels: for the fulfillment of their subordinates’
goals and needs and for the realization of the larger purpose or mission of their
organization. Servant leaders give things away—power, ideas, information, recognition,
credit for accomplishments, even money. Servant leaders often work in the nonprofit world
because it offers a natural way to apply their leadership drive and skills to serve others. But
servant leaders also succeed in business. In 2013, for the second year in a row, Lenovo CEO
Yang Yuanqing shared $3.25 million of his $4.23 million bonus with hourly manufacturing
workers to recognize their role in the company’s success.14 Fred Keller has
built a $250 million plastics manufacturing company, Cascade Engineering, by continuously
asking one question: What good can we do? Keller started the business 40
years ago with six employees. Today, it has 1,000 employees in 15 business divisions.
Keller has made social responsibility a cornerstone of the business. The company
offers jobs to welfare recipients. Keller has also donated large amounts to various
philanthropic causes, both as an individual and through Cascade