A Practitioner Approach to Modeling and Teaching Servant-Leadership

Servant-leadership is increasingly being taught in colleges, universities, and elsewhere.  Approaches to teaching vary, but often involve a combination of reading, writing, modeling and practicing it.  As college professors, working primarily with graduate students, we have learned over the years that teaching servant-leadership includes a strong effort at modeling it for students.  In this essay, we share our approaches in how we structure servant-leadership courses.  Some elements include Community, Relevant Learning, Ethically-Driven, Coaching/Mentoring Focus, Humor, Growth over Product, and Mutual Respect of Intellectual Capital. The selection and structure of key learning materials is also a crucial aspect of teaching and modeling servant-leadership in courses.  The inclusion of key texts by Robert K. Greenleaf, such as Servant-Leadership, and On Becoming a Servant-Leader provide an important foundation grounding, as does Journey to the East, by Hermann Hesse (the book that inspired Robert Greenleaf in coining the term, servant-leader.  The practice of silence, as an aid to becoming a better listener, has also proven to be most helpful.  The servant-leader classroom is so much more than creating a culture of ‘let’s all get along’. Diving into the literature on the topic, building examples and assignments into the course structure and content, and then modeling the principles of the discipline helps to facilitate a culture of care.  Servant-leadership is certainly easier to talk about than to consistently do. But it’s more than worth it to try—as we open the minds and hearts of our students (and ourselves) to the lifestyle of serving.