Mark 10:43-45 "… whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

If you search the internet for articles about servant leadership, you will find something like the following excerpt every time:

“the phrase ‘servant leadership’ was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, an essay that he first published in 1970…”

Robert Greenleaf worked for AT&T for many years researching management, development and education. He became the founder of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership and the modern servant leadership movement. He is credited with awakening the servant leadership theory in modern corporate America.

Christians are of course aware of this concept through our understanding of the life of Christ. Whether or not we have heard of Robert Greenleaf doesn’t matter. We know leading first as a servant is the way to greatness because Jesus tells us so. He was the ultimate servant leader and the opening verse to this article shows His teachings on the matter. His very journey illustrates its truth.

Yet this principle of life somehow died across the millennia. By the time Greenleaf started his analysis and publications in the early 70’s, the American marketplace had become rife with power hungry and arrogant executives and managers. They were leading by sheer coercion and intimidation.

Greenleaf was inspired to write his now-famous essay after reading another work of fiction by author Herman Hesse called Journey to the East. It’s the story of a group of men on a mythical journey.

The central figure of the story is Leo who escorts the party as a servant, doing their menial chores. Interestingly, he also sustains them with his energetic spirit and singing. He is a person of unusual presence. All goes well on the journey until Leo vanishes. The group, as a result, falls into disorder, and their wonderful journey is abandoned. They simply can’t make it without the servant Leo. The narrator of the story and party member, after some years of searching, finds Leo and is taken into the Order that had sponsored the journey. There he discovers that Leo, whom he had only known as a servant, was in fact the ostensible head of the Order, its great and noble leader.

As inspiring as this story is, when we consider the principles of servant leadership in our own career setting, enthusiasm tends to wane. Even as we imagine Jesus kneeling before his disciples and washing their feet, it becomes difficult to translate His actions into our own roles at work. After all, how do we become servants to those who either report to us or those we work with?

Philippians 2:3-7 with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, and being made in the likeness of men.

We are called to consider others better than ourselves. It is based completely on our perspective, what is in our mind. This is the most important and foundational step – a willingness, like Christ, to see ourselves as lesser than others, to put others’ interest ahead of our own.

In this mindset, we find the following practical characteristics, those highlighted by Greenleaf and found all across the scriptures:

1. Listening
2. Empathy
3. Healing
4. Awareness
5. Persuasion
6. Conceptualization
7. Foresight
8. Stewardship
9. Commitment to the growth of people
10. Building community

Shawn Sommerkamp is a motivational speaker and Executive Coach with 20+ years of Fortune 100 leadership experience. He founded Motivationeer™ to coach Christian professionals how to use their career to glorify God and support local church growth.