An introduction to servant leadership and its potential for nonprofit organizations

Abstract

Most leadership styles are trying to maximize leaders’ efficiency in achieving organizational goals, using different approaches. This article makes a short introduction to the concept of servant leadership, a relatively new style of leadership that focuses on addressing followers’ needs and supporting them to achieve personal and organizational goals. Servant leaders are authentic, empower and empathize with their followers, empathize with them and show stewardship. This style developed at roughly the same time with the positive ideology and relatively close to the transformational leadership style, a style that is used mainly in organizations that go or are willing to go through a transformational change process. Although servant leadership is an important and resourceful leading style, it is not widely as used and researched as it should, both in for-profit but mostly in nonprofit organizations.