Become a manager who inspires, influences, and motivates. If you are a manager and don’t know about servant-leadership, you should. Servant-leadership is a practical philosophy that supports people who choose to serve first, and then lead as a way of expanding service to individuals and the institutions they serve. Servant-leaders may or may not hold formal leadership positions. Servant-leadership encourages collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power and empowerment. Robert Greenleaf, the man who coined the phrase, described servant-leadership in this way.

“The servant-leader is servant first. . . The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant– first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: 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, will they not be further deprived?”

Taken from Servant As Leader, published by Robert Greenleaf in 1970.