Читать книгу Agile 2 - Adrian Lander - Страница 39

The term servant leader was coined by Robert Greenleaf in an essay in 1970.¹⁶ He describes a servant leader as someone who becomes a leader by showing that they have the interests of the team at heart instead of their own and also by demonstrating competence.

Something that is often misunderstood about servant leadership is the idea that a servant leader is really just someone who facilitates or assists a team. In fact, Greenleaf clearly says in his essay that a servant leader leads and that the team follows but follows by choice.

A servant leader sometimes makes decisions that are not the choice of the team, but the team trusts the leader. In the book The Servant, James Hunter writes, “The leader should never settle for mediocrity or second best—people have a need to be pushed to be the best they can be. It may not be what they want, but the leader should always be more concerned with needs than with wants.”¹⁷

There is a dilemma with servant leadership, in that the interests of the team might not be aligned with the interests of the organization; and so if the leader's authority rests upon the support of the team, then the leader might not be able to make choices that favor the organization at the expense of the team—at least, not too often.

An example is when it is time for pay raises to be considered. If one's leadership is based on popularity, then one will be incentivized to give everyone the maximum possible pay increase to maintain their support. Servant leadership therefore has an implicit assumption that the team is composed of rational, fair-minded people who are able to see and appreciate the big picture of the organization as a whole.