Everybody wins: servant-leadership

Abstract

If you’ve had a management course, you’ve been exposed to management history and trends over time. Early managers thought that workers were there for the organization. It was assumed that workers didn’t want to work, so you had to keep after them like children and make sure they came to work on time (and dock their pay if they didn’t), work as told without deviating from the routine or process, and go home. They were told they didn’t have to think because managers and executives provided the ideas and innovations. Their lives outside of the organization didn’t matter. Over time, and with pioneers like Greenleaf, this perception changed so that managers became interested in having workers contribute their ideas. They realized that not only did workers have lives outside of the organization, but that those lives imbued the worker with knowledge that the organization could use. Management came to know that individual workers might need different schedules to do their best work, or that workers might actually like their work and gained self-esteem from a job well done.