Servant Leadership – A Broken Model?

The eve of this historic election is a good time to think about the nature of leadership. When I think about the topic I often think of the many times I have been in church or seminary or read in a book about the “Biblical” model of leadership being one of “servant leadership”. Generally, this concept of servant leadership is described as being a life that is lead as an illustration of Jesus’s maxim that the “last shall be first and the first shall be last” or that “whoever would keep their life must loose it,” etc…

While it is clear to me that in each and every way living our lives by these teachings is to be commended and embraced, I am not sure that these maxims have anything to do with “leadership” per se. Let me explain.

There is a difference between following Jesus’s example and leading others. There is also a difference between picking lint from one’s bellybutton and leading others, or picking one’s nose and leading others. I hope you see my point. There is a categorical difference here that is conflated in popular Christian thought illegitimately. Its that old apples and oranges thing.

Let me say it a different way. Leading by transparent example is a legitimate skill to be mastered in the effort to lead and transfer that skill to others. The point of the leadership skill, however, is the successful embodiment of an appropriate example AND the transfer of that ability to others–not the content of that example. So, to bring the example full circle, we could speak of “lint-picking leadership” and “nose-picking leadership” if those skills were important to the practice of leading Christians. But that would be silly, since it is about the same as talking about the best golfers by describing their “putting-leadership”, “swing-form leadership”,”club-selection leadership” EVEN if they have no ability to transfer these skills to others.

No, executing a skill is not the same as leadership. One can un-hypocritically embody the content of the knowledge and practices one wishes to tranfer to others, but one must also effectively transmit these abilities to others to lead. That actually says something more profound about the nature of Christian leadership than describing it as ’servant leadership.’

It strikes me that there are many other principles of leadership that can be distilled besides the ability to transfer knowledge and skills (which might more accurately describe the nature of a teacher). One other such principle might be the ability to get others to act in situations in which, left to themselves, they might otherwise do nothing–the so called ‘catalyst’ principle, etc… The interesting thing about all such principles is that (it seems to me) they must be universally applicable to all situations and endeavors..not just Christian ones.

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This post is part of a Synchroblog on Leadership. The following blogs took part in the experiment:

Jonathan Brink – Letter To The President

Adam Gonnerman – Aspiring to the Episcopate

Sally Coleman – In the world but not of it- servant leadership for the 21st Century Church

Alan Knox – Submission is given not taken

Joe Miller – Elders Lead a Healthy Family: The Future

Cobus van Wyngaard – Empowering leadership

Steve Hayes – Servant leadership

Geoff Matheson – Leadership

John Smulo – Australian Leadership Lessons

Helen Mildenhall – Leadership

Tyler Savage – Moral Leadership – Is it what we need?

Bryan Riley – Leading is to Listen and Obey

Susan Barnes – Give someone else a turn!

Liz Dyer – A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Polls…

Lionel Woods – Why Diverse Leadership is Good for America

Julie Clawson – Leadership Expectations

Ellen Haroutunian – A New Kind Of Leadership

Matt Stone – Converting Leadership

Steve Bradley – Lording or Leading?

Adam Myers – Two types of Leadership

Bethany Stedman – A Leadership Mosaic

Kathy Escobar – I’m Pretty Sure This Book Won’t Make It On The Bestseller List

Fuzzy Orthodoxy – Self Leadership

Sonja Andrews – Leadership In An Age of Cholera

Tara Hull – Leadership & Being A Single Mom

Glen Hager – Election Day Ponderings On Leadership

Tags: Leadership, Servant Leadership