Servant-Leadership at ServiceMaster: A Commitment to Love, Development, and Diversity

Abstract

In society and business, there is increased energy and focus on caring and inclusive forms of leadership. An emphasis on control and exchange has shifted to more personalized forms, including but not limited to transformational, authentic, ethical, and spiritual leadership. Servant-leadership in particular is gaining traction as a practice that potentially facilitates multiple benefits for organizations and individuals. While servant-leadership ideals and practices have resonated with religious, non-profit, and educational institutions, they have also emerged in the for-profit business sector. In management scholarship, curiosity about the model in the 1990s has evolved into an earnest examination of the framework (Eva et al., 2019; Parris & Peachey, 2013). The management origins of servant-leadership harken back to Robert Greenleaf (1977, 1998), a long-time manager at AT&T who was deeply interested in conceptualizing the work of leaders as empowering others. Beyond individual leaders, business was also to act as a “serving institution” for its members and customers (Greenleaf, 1996). The servant-leader is motivated by the desire to serve and their efforts are measured by the development and well-being of those who are served (Sendjaya & Sarros, 2002). This leader model is evident at ServiceMaster, a Fortune 500 firm differentiated by servant-leadership practices of the founder and early leaders, for whom biblical accounts of servanthood (e.g., Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and instructing them to do the same for each other, John 13:13-15) shaped the firm’s leadership praxis. In 2006, CEO Bill Pollard identified several important themes of servant-leadership germane to this paper—leadership as a means rather than an end, leadership as service rather than position or power, and leadership as an act of loving the diverse world created by God. Pollard’s speech illustrates a theologically rooted model of the servant-leader who is motivated to serve first. Such subordination is perhaps more remarkable when the person who serves is of higher status than the one being served. Leadership theory often fails to account for the leader’s identity, context, and position or power (Tilghman-Havens, 2018), assuming that all leaders share a similar baseline of perceived legitimacy. People’s implicit concepts of the prototypical leader (Northouse, 2022) are shaped by experience, personality, and cultural values (Lord & Emrich, 2001). In U.S. society, the Euro American male is consciously or unconsciously regarded as an ideal leader. In contrast, servant-like behaviors are often attributed to the female gender or members of lower status groups which has negative implications for their visibility as leaders, performance evaluations, and advancement (Bowles & McGinn, 2005). Researchers and practitioners must address possible implications of the leader prototype mismatch. Investigating this question necessitates an exploration of the costs and benefits related to adopting a servant-leadership framework. Although servant-leadership is ultimately about outcomes for those who are served, there is a substantial demand on personal leadership, and organizations should work to bolster their support of leaders to maximize positive benefits and mitigate costs. The purpose of this paper is to examine servant-leadership from a critical perspective, proposing a conceptual framework for investigating the potential costs and benefits to individuals who adopt servant-leadership in their organizations. I begin by briefly highlighting the salient benefits of servant-leadership and the current literature gap in addressing issues of identity related to gender, race, and ethnicity. I will also propose possible pathways for organizations to support servant-leaders from minority groups, extrapolated from the stories and practices of ServiceMaster, a firm that pursued servant-leadership over multiple generations.