What is Servant Leadership?
by Bennett Sims
Servant Leadership is a Way of Life. It aims to co-create with God a just, non-violent and sustainable habitat for all that lives. Servant Leaders exist less for themselves than for others. They work for the transformation of human systems and for a finer world.
Servant Leaders use Power for collaboration not for control, for cooperation not for conquest. Their use of Power forges a robust dynamic that brings loyalty and productivity to the interaction of leaders and the led.
Servant Leadership reflects the Paradox of Compassion and Command that defines the character of God. In the work of leading others, Servant Leaders strive for the balance of Velvet and Steel as revealed in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth.
Servant Leadership seeks alignment with the primal human view that the cosmos is Ensouled and responds to Love as the abiding Power in all relationships. This perception translates into a contemporary relationship with the earth that sees humanity as in the earth, not on it. Thus humans are Creation' s ensoulment become visible and responsible, making the soul of education in Servant Leadership an education of the Soul.
Servant Leadership functions from trust in Love as the energy to overcome the Fear that distorts leadership into the struggle for domination, vengeance and control.
Repressive power in any system eventuates in violence --from such milder forms as passivity, quitting the company or, in the case of children, running from home --to the fiercer forms of violence as smoldering non-compliance, strikes, mutiny, armed rebellion or the horrors of genocide. In a world become too small for violence, power has no acceptable moral purpose except for empowerment to participate in power --in freedom and dignity.
Where freedom is the context of any form of human organization members at all levels are harnessed to a loftier goal than competitive personal gain. The high purpose in servant-led systems --families, schools, businesses and nations --is the inclusion of all its members in proportional responsibility for decision-making and the success of the system. Organizations so aimed will be enlargers of life for their people.
We believe that there is nothing optional about Servanthood as an approach to life. It represents the way the world must go if humanity is to pass successfully through the sea-change of planetary evolution that marks our time.
