Shifting styles: Why purpose-driven leadership tops the servant model
It was 2004 when I joined a team of consultants helping a retail giant reinvent its culture and standard operating procedures. Inspired by management guru Noel Tichy, the company’s senior leaders espoused the philosophy of “servant leadership.”
This was a radical change from the then-popular “command and control” model of leadership advocated by Frederck Winslow Turner and other early management consultants. The essence of the new model was not to focus on accumulating and exercising power at the top, but on maximizing employee well-being by encouraging diversity of thought, creating a culture of trust, having an unselfish mindset, and fostering leadership in others.
It was exciting to see how this leadership model increased energy, innovation, and employee engagement in the company. To this day, servant leadership remains a very influential and widely practiced approach to leadership.
BUT — some people have started to question whether this model remains as effective as it once was. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, authors Lisa Earle McLeod and Elizabeth Lotardo outlined two reasons why the model is missing the mark:
Leaders and managers are burned out. How can you be a servant when you feel you have nothing left to offer?
Leaders today have broader responsibilities, including larger teams, their own deliverables, cross-functional projects, and tons of emails. They have to be able to say “no” to requests that are unreasonable or unimportant.
The authors suggest that instead of focusing on servitude, it’s time for leaders to focus on impact, or what they call noble-purpose leadership. Here’s a comparison of how the two models might look in real life.
| Servant Leader | Purpose-Driven Leader |
|---|---|
| What kind of support do you need from me? How can I help you be successful? |
What help will you need to get to be successful? |
| How do you feel about this? Does it work for you? |
What impact will this have? How will this affect our people or our customers? |
| Who is most in need of coaching? | Where will my coaching time have the biggest impact? |
The essence of the new model is to focus on purpose and impact. That syncs very well with the findings of numerous recent research articles: Most younger employees seek purpose and meaning in their work over many other benefits.
Even the label “servant leader” feels outdated. Language changes. Real estate ads no longer talk about the “master bedroom,” preferring “primary bedroom,” for example. Let’s not ask leaders to be servants, any more than we should ask new employees or office assistants to be servile. A shared determination to drive for purpose is a better model for the current era.
