Anyone can issue orders. Authority makes people comply, and compliance is easy to obtain and worth very little.
There’s another way to lead, and it’s considerably harder: putting yourself out there and taking care of the people you’re leading. Showing up and doing the difficult parts. Digging the trenches yourself. Leading by actually doing the work rather than describing it.
The idea has a long history — it runs through most religious traditions, and you’ll find it in the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. It also has a specific modern origin worth knowing about.
Where the term comes from
Robert K. Greenleaf coined “servant leadership” in a 1970 essay called The Servant as Leader. He’d spent a career at AT&T and was arguing something fairly radical: that the best leaders are servants first, and that leadership follows from the desire to serve rather than the desire to lead.
The valuable part isn’t the philosophy. It’s the test he proposed for whether it’s actually happening.
His question was roughly this: do the people being served grow as a result? Do they become more capable, more independent, more likely themselves to lead? And what happens to the least advantaged person in the situation — do they benefit, or at least not end up worse off?
That’s a hard test and it’s measurable, which is what makes it useful. You can look at the people who’ve worked for you over five years and ask honestly whether they’re more capable now. That answer tells you something that no amount of self-description does.
What it isn’t
The term gets misread constantly, usually into something soft and unworkable. Three corrections.
It isn’t niceness. Serving someone’s development frequently means telling them something they don’t want to hear. The manager who avoids difficult feedback to keep things pleasant isn’t serving anyone — they’re protecting their own comfort and calling it kindness.
It isn’t doing everything for people. That produces dependence, which fails Greenleaf’s test directly — the person didn’t grow, they got accustomed to you solving things. Being the answer to every question isn’t service, it’s a bottleneck.
And it isn’t self-sacrifice. A leader who depletes themselves entirely serves nobody for long. The business still has to work, decisions still have to be made, and someone who has given everything away has nothing left to lead with.
You can let someone go with a servant’s heart. What that looks like is doing it honestly, early enough that they can recover, with enough respect that they leave knowing why.
What it looks like in a small business
Concretely, because the concept floats if you let it.
Doing the unglamorous work visibly. Not performing it — actually doing it, so people see that nothing here is beneath you.
Removing obstacles rather than adding pressure. When something is going slowly, the first question is what’s in their way. Frequently it’s you, or a process you created.
Giving credit precisely and taking blame publicly. Both cost you something in the moment, which is exactly why they register.
Developing people beyond what you need from them. Teaching someone something that makes them more employable elsewhere. This feels commercially irrational and it’s the clearest signal available that you mean it.
And protecting people from things they shouldn’t have to carry. A worrying month, an unpleasant client, a decision still being made. Some information helps people; some just transfers your anxiety to people who can’t act on it.
Why it works commercially
Not the point, and worth saying anyway.
People who are genuinely developed stay longer, take more responsibility, and tell you the truth earlier — which is worth more than almost anything else in a small business. People who are merely directed do what they’re asked, leave when something better appears, and let you find out about problems at the point where they’re expensive.
And it compounds. The person you developed properly is the person who runs something for you in four years.
The test worth applying to others
Greenleaf’s question also works in reverse, when you’re deciding who to follow or hire.
Rather than being impressed by someone’s marketing, ask what happens to the people around them. Do their clients get more capable, or more dependent? Do the people who worked for them speak well of them afterwards? Does the least powerful person in their orbit do well?
That’s a far better filter than a confident sales page, and it’s usually answerable with two or three conversations.
Look for someone who has the heart to serve rather than the skill to sell. They’re not always the same person, and the difference shows up in how you’re treated once the money has changed hands.
More on evaluating who you pay for help and the leadership skills nobody rewards.
About the author
Haley Lynn Gray is the founder of Leadership Girl, of In2itive Biz Solutions, and of the Women’s Entrepreneur Network — a community of more than 77,000 women in business.
She writes here about what happens when running a business starts demanding that you lead one. More about Haley →
