Servant Leadership for Schools

After reviewing what amounted to the first 50 years of leadership literature, Fiedler and House (1988) concluded that the two major categories of leader behavior are task-accomplishment and interpersonal relationships. This is consistent with earlier research establishing leadership behaviors as those oriented toward employee consideration and task-focused initiating structure (Fleishman, 1953), and more recent scholarship indicating that the three salient components of effective leadership are those focused on people, tasks, and organizational change (Yukl & Mahsud, 2010). A variety of theories have emerged in the leadership literature (Dinh et al., 2014), but few of them encompass these three foci, with most instead emphasizing the performance dimension. For instance, the predominant leadership theory in both the business and educational literature for the past twenty years has been transformational leadership (Lee, 2014; Lowe & Gardner, 2001). This approach focuses on organizational tasks and change while lacking commitment to the well-being of people within the organization or stakeholders beyond the organization (Bass, 1997; Carlson & Perrewe, 1995; Stephens et al., cited in Yukl, 1999).

In fact, a major criticism of transformational leadership theory is that it lacks a moral imperative (Huizanga, 2016; Schneider & George, 2011). While incorporating modern organizational concepts of worker autonomy, shared leadership, consensus and participative decision making, the theory emphasizes a leader’s prioritization of organizational goals, such as increasing shareholder profit for corporations, crime elimination in law enforcement, or increasing academic achievement in schools. Thus transformational leadership allows, if not encourages, the manipulation and exploitation of internal as well as external resources, including people and communities, in the service of achieving these goals. Beyond this criticism, this theory has recently been questioned for its theoretical basis and methodological validity (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013). These issues, combined with a recognized need for leadership to be more concerned with the good of the broader society (Nohria & Khurana, 2010), has led leadership scholars to search for alternative paradigms that might better meet the needs of modern society as it seeks to ameliorate the causes and consequences of globalization, social injustice, environmental degradation, and poverty.

It has become abundantly clear that injustice—in the form of differential opportunity for males and females and systems of racially biased exclusion from power and resources—is entrenched in the structure and policies of our society. Additionally, these historical and unjust dynamics are commonly reflected in the goals and processes of our organizations, including private business, public education, and governmental entities. A commitment to social justice, therefore, requires a willingness to do things differently in how one conceptualizes the mission of an organization, how processes are crafted with an eye to consequences, and how administrators relate to employees, those served by the organization, and the larger community. I submit that servant leadership (SL) is the only widely explicated leadership style that holds leaders to a social justice perspective of equity, inclusion, empowerment, and community health, while including all the progressive structures that have made transformational leadership popular and effective.

Although the concept of servant leadership is ancient, having been expressed by every major religion since 570 B.C.E., the term servant-leader as a specific leadership style is credited to Robert Greenleaf, a retired AT&T executive (Frick, 2013; Spears, 2005). Greenleaf articulated his conception of servant-leaders and servant-institutions in a series of essays: The Servant as Leader (1970), Institution as Servant (Greenleaf, 1976) and Servant-Leadership (1977).

Greenleaf conceptualized servant-leadership as a virtue-based philosophy and style of leadership in which leaders focus on relationships and persuasion rather than command and control. Greenleaf centered the moral authority, rather than the positional authority, of the individual as the only legitimate justification for leadership (Lanctot & Irving, 2007; McMahone, 2012; Page & Wong, 2000; Poon, 2006):

Since the publication of Greenleaf’s essays servant-leadership has been practiced in innovative and successful corporate settings including Southwest Airlines, Marriott International, and Starbucks.

The servant-leader seeks what will bring about the highest good for the people in the community, and pursues that good in the face of obstacles, not for personal reward, but for the growth and well-being of the members of the community:

Servant-leaders take a holistic approach to work and see themselves as stewards of the people and the resources entrusted to them (Van Dierendonck, 2011).

Servant-leaders concern themselves with organizational performance metrics, not just for the sake of success, but also because a failing organization cannot serve. Having risen from pole digger to director of management development in what was, at the time, the largest corporation in the world, Robert Greenleaf had an abiding interest in how things get done in organizations. His philosophy of leadership stresses that anyone in the organization can be a servant leader. Such leadership is based on an individual’s foundation of character, emphasizing the virtues of integrity, humility, and courage (Van Dierendonck & Nuijten, 2011) and involves behaviors such as empowering, empathic healing, putting others first, and retaining a focus on the good of the community (Liden et al., 2008) even at the expense of self-interest. Servant-leaders build the organization by building others, by remaining attuned to needs and changes in their environments, and by humbly recognizing that the best and most serving answers have not yet been discovered (Greenleaf, 1977; Liden et al., 2014; Van Dierendonck, 2011).

Servant-leadership has emerged as the most promising and validated stakeholder-focused model of leadership. Initial studies of its effects on employee motivation and organizational performance have been quite promising (e.g., Liden et al., 2008; Liden et al., 2014; Peterson et al., 2012). Although other “positive” theories of leadership have been proposed, such as ethical leadership (Brown et al., 2005) and authentic leadership (Walumbwa, 2009), only servant-leadership features a holistic emphasis on performance, people, and the good of our broader society (Lemoine, 2015). Servant-leadership can be understood as a form of leadership which prioritizes the minimization of harm and the maximization of gains to stakeholders, internal and external.

Although its performance-emphasis is outweighed by its prioritization of employee and stakeholder concern, both servant-leadership and its broader stakeholder focus have nonetheless been repeatedly demonstrated to be more strongly related to performance—and even profitability—than more goal-focused alternatives (de Luque et al., 2008; Liden et al., 2008).

Servant-leadership, with its explicit moral imperative, and commitment to stakeholder development, and the good of the broader society is the leadership philosophy most consistent with the conceptual framework of school based character and virtue development advocated at the Center for Character and Citizenship in which the work described here is being done. Servant-leadership is also consistent with the research literature on best practices of effective school principals (Leithwood et al., 2005). This research found that principals have a powerful but indirect impact on student achievement and well-being as it is mediated through the principal’s influence on teachers and school climate (Clifford et al., 2012). Servant-leadership, school leadership and business management research findings reflect a consensus that the best leaders “create vision and value congruence across the individual, empowered team, and organization levels and, ultimately, foster higher levels of both organizational commitment and productivity” (Fry et al., 2007 p. 4).

While the concept is ancient, and the business term servant-leadership is more than 40 years old, serious academic scholarship and empirical investigation on SL is relatively new. As researchers have sought to develop and validate measures of SL they have variously parsed the specific foundational virtues, and operationalized and measured them in varying configurations and models. The servant-leadership model articulated here is adapted from Van Dierendonck and Patterson’s (2015) model of SL that proposes a leader’s sense of compassionate love encourages virtuous attitudes of humility, gratitude, forgiveness and courage that, in turn, motivate leadership practices of empowerment, stewardship and future-mindedness/foresight. These attitudes and behaviors promote follower’s personal well-being, sense of community, professional productivity, and organizational commitment. Our theory of change posits that SL virtues and their constituent practices can be cultivated through explicit professional development. This includes reflection and practice experiences that will engage and motivate pre- and in-service school leaders to form the intention to practice servant-leadership.

Greenleaf’s description of the path to servant-leadership is reflected in the path to the principalship. School principals typically begin their careers as teachers (Department for Professional Employees, 2019), and people generally choose a career in teaching for moral reasons (Fray & Gore, 2018). A recent systematic review of empirical studies investigating why people choose teaching found 70 studies published between the years 2007 and 2016. Looking across these studies the researchers found that altruism and intrinsic motivations were the most commonly identified factors influencing an individual’s decision to become a teacher (Fray & Gore, 2018). Altruism as a motivator included several factors: service to others, the desire to help and support students, and to make a difference by contributing to society. Intrinsic motivations include a passion for teaching and interest in the subject matter, intellectual stimulation or participation in something interesting, personal development, as well as a desire to work with children or young people. Many teachers felt called to teach and made their decisions to teach while still in their youth (Fray & Gore, 2018).

In a systematic review of the research on servant-leadership, Lemoine et al. (2015) have identified over 100 high-quality peer-reviewed articles published studying the antecedents and impacts of SL. These studies empirically demonstrate strong relationships between SL virtues (i.e., love, humility, foresight, forgiveness and courage) and related behaviors and positive outcomes for leaders, followers/employees, and organizations. The findings revealed that Servant-leaders scored higher on measures of trust, empathy, integrity, competence and agreeableness. The followers of servant-leaders reported higher commitment to their leader, higher self-efficacy, higher customer orientations, higher inside and outside of role behaviors, higher job satisfaction, more organizational citizenship behaviors, higher creative behaviors, less job stress, less turnover intention, and less burnout (Babakus et al., 2011; Parris, & Peachey, 2013; Van Dierendonck, 2012). These studies also found strong relationships between servant-leadership and higher organizational commitment, organizational trust, performance expectations, team interdependence, team psychological safety, and perceptions of procedural justice (Lemoine et al., 2015). More recent studies have demonstrated a relationship between SL and positive personal and family outcomes for employees. Tang et al. (2016) found servant-leader employees experienced less emotional exhaustion and work-to-family conflict and higher levels of personal learning and work-to-family positive spillover. Hayden (2011) and more recently Lemoine (2015) both found support for a central claim of servant-leadership—that servant-leadership reproduces itself in followers. This process by which a virtuous leader must self-cultivate virtue in his or her own self and then model it to family and the world is consonant with the great wisdom traditions in the world. For example, a paragon of Zen Buddhism wrote the following advice 2,500 years ago:

Servant-leadership is commonly recognized to be a virtue-based model, but different scholars have conceptualized differently the virtues most centrally involved. In our model, SL requires facility with: noble purpose, humility, courage, forgiveness, gratitude, empowering others, foresight, and stewardship. While each of these virtues is significant in itself, it is more important to remember the ways in which these psychological capacities and dispositions work together to form a well-integrated character. For example, to exemplify noble-purpose you need the courage to pursue lofty goals; and to exemplify gratitude you need the humility to recognize the myriad benefits you have received from others. In the following section I briefly describe each of the virtues in our servant leadership model and the role that virtue plays in the life of a school leader.

Noble Purpose: A person’s sense of purpose refers to the long-term motivating goals about which someone is passionate and to which they are committed (Steger & Dik, 2010). A sense of purpose is “personal, internalized and self-imposed, and cannot be mandated by others” (Shaw, 2012, p. 27) although others can help one discover and articulate their own sense of purpose. Knowing and pursuing one’s purpose is thought to be a psychosocial resource that energizes people and helps them overcome life’s challenges and adversity. Recent research indicates that people with a strong sense of purpose are happier as well as being physically and mentally healthier (Bronk, 2014). A noble purpose extends this idea of a highly motivating intention to accomplish something meaningful by requiring that the goal not only be valuable to oneself but that it also benefits others. A noble purpose drives a person to make a positive difference in the world (Damon, 2008 p.28). Having a personal purpose that serves the needs of others is at the heart of servant leadership. In his influential essay, The Servant as Leader, Robert Greenleaf (1970, p.1) addresses purpose in leadership, stating “The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.” Greenleaf describes the purpose of servant-leaders to be the ethical stewardship of the organization and all its stakeholders, including the interests of the larger community. This was the thesis of his second ground breaking essay The Institution as Servant (1976).

Clearly, Greenleaf saw the leadership of institutions as a moral endeavor. This is certainly true of school leadership, which most people agree carries with it a moral imperative to create great schools. As Fullan (2003) tells us,

In Moral Leadership: Getting to the Heart of School Improvement, Thomas J. Sergiovanni (1992) describes schools as

A school leader’s noble purpose is central to their professional commitment and intricately woven into their personal values and sense of self, their goals, and their holistic identity. It is critical that educational leaders take the time to clearly articulate and regularly reflect on how the work they do fulfills their personal sense of purpose and their vision for the school. Articulating your purpose starts with knowing yourself. Many authors and researchers have devised clever sounding strategies and interventions that can be used to lead one’s self through aspects of the purpose discovery process, including: Your User's Manual (Silver, 2018), your racial autobiography (Gooden, & O’Doherty, 2015), Start With Why? (Sinek, 2009), living for your eulogy values (Brooks, 2014), and the purpose retreat (Leider, 2015). Some components of the purpose discovery process we use for educational leader development involve (1) identifying the people you most admire and why, (2) examining your sociopolitical and racial identity; (3) identifying the key events in your past that brought you to where you are, (4) identifying your core values and narrowing them down to the three to five that are most meaningful to you, and (5) identifying your signature strengths (Niemiec & McGrath, 2019). These are helpful, even fun, techniques to get one started although it is important to remember that knowing one’s self and cultivating one’s noble purpose is an ongoing endeavor that requires periodic reflection. In fact, Baruti K. Kafele (2015), school principal and author, recommends that school principals start everyday asking themselves if their purpose is driving all that they say and do. He recommends this because purpose serves as the constant reminder of what you are about as a school leader and will enable leaders to stay focused on the school vision as opposed to spending their time reacting to crises and putting out fires.

As a servant leader of a school the principal’s role requires more than knowing and reflecting on their individual purpose. They must also facilitate a sense of purpose among all those in the school community. Albert Schweitzer was believed to have once said: “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

A school leader is in the privileged position to be that spark for followers. Leaders can provide formal and informal opportunities for followers to discover, articulate and make connections between their personal purpose(s) and their particular role in the school. Most importantly, school leaders must ensure that everyone can see the alignment of their individual purposes with the shared purpose, vision and mission of the school. As stated in a quote often attributed to Oliver Wendel Homes, Jr., “many people die with their music still in them.”

You can find a curated list of readings and free resources related to the self-cultivation of noble purpose, and supporting adult stakeholders such as teachers and noncertified staff through the purpose discovery and alignment process. Additionally, you can find ideas for preparing students to discover their own noble purpose at www.cultivatingvitues.org

Humility: The term humility comes from the Latin humus, meaning earth or soil. This may account for some colloquial perceptions of humility as being associated with lowness—meekness, self-abasement, and low status. However, experts from myriad fields attest that humility actually refers to the quality of being grounded in the sense of having a realistic perspective (Treasurer, 2018). Humility requires self-awareness such that one has the ability to honestly assess one’s own capabilities, achievements and talents, without ego exaggeration or self-deprecation. As Rick Warren (2012) said “Humility is not a matter of thinking less of yourself, it is a matter of thinking about yourself less” (p. 149). Historically, the quality of humility was revered. The philosopher Immanuel Kant described humility as a meta-attitude enabling a moral agent to have a proper perspective on themselves (Owens et al., 2012). The famous poet Alfred Tennyson considered humility the highest virtue, the mother of them all.

Humility requires a leader to acknowledge and value the strengths and contributions of others without feelings of jealousy or negative comparison driven by insecurity. Far from being self-abasing, humility in leaders is associated with confidence and courage. Humility is the virtue that enables leaders to avoid our all too human weakness to become arrogant, selfish and self-protective. All of these are known to be forms of weakness making one prone to a dangerous thoughtlessness (Patterson, 2003). Humility enables leaders to be good listeners by encouraging them to be open to the perspectives of others, and recognize the legitimacy of perspectives other than their own. Humility opens a person to the influence and insights of others, showing itself to be a competitive advantage (Vera & Rodriguez-Lopez, 2004). Psychologists recognize humility as a tempering force—helping guard against “excessive self-focus or inflated estimation of one’s own knowledge and abilities” (Owens et al. 2012, p. 261). Greenberg (2005) argues that humility helps maintain a balance between personal worth and a realistic recognition of ones limitations.

Lastly, humility requires teach-ability, that is, an openness to not only listen but to learn from others, and try new perspectives (Tangney, 2002; Templeton, 2011). This quality of teachability is associated with continual self-improvement (Verdorfer, 2016). Research demonstrates that “situational triggers, drivers, consequences, and contingencies of humility” confirm that humility itself can be learned (Grant, 2021). Robert Greenleaf (2003) provided the following advice to leaders:

Humility can “positively influence performance through enhanced learning, more comprehensive decision making, follower empowerment, and employee retention” (Owens et al., 2012, p. 266). Of special interest to educators—“humble leaders model how to grow to followers”—creating a culture of growth (Owens & Hekman, 2012, p. 801).

Supporting followers’ growth may involve sharing institutional power with them, which requires humility on the part of the leader to trust that their perceptions, concerns, and judgments are not the only ones worth attention. In schools, leaders demonstrate humility by actively seeking out and listening to the perspective of all stakeholders, especially those with less institutional power. Two types of humility are particularly important for school leadership—intellectual humility and cultural humility. The intellectual humility of the servant-leader requires granting that all people in the organization have legitimate “knowledge,” at times more accurate and/or relevant than your own. Further, cultural humility requires that you recognize that there are limitations to your perception and inevitably bias in your unquestioned cultural assumptions. For that reason, both intellectual humility and cultural humility are needed for educational leaders to grow beyond their limited perceptions, and overcome their biased assumptions. Actively cultivating and expressing the virtue of humility is central to servant leadership in schools (Tangney, 2002).

Owens and Hekman (2012) caution that traditional leadership strengths of intelligence, resolve, and persuasion must be exhibited as well as humility, or humility may be misinterpreted as weakness and indecision. The need to establish a perception of competence first may be especially complicated for new school leaders who must deal with other cultural dynamics. This includes younger leaders of older faculty and racial/cultural minority leaders in majority racial/cultural organizations. Humility in schools, as elsewhere, requires confidence and courage of the leader, but it is an essential ingredient in virtuous leadership, and especially so in servant leadership. Leaders must have the humility to listen and understand and the courage to act.

Courage: Unlike humility, courage is understood by modern and ancient scholars, and lay people alike, as a universally desirable quality—everyone wants to be courageous (Lopez et al., 2003). While universally valued, arguments over its definition have been documented as far back as Plato and Socrates (Pury & Lopez, 2009). Aristotle thought that without courage we would never accomplish anything, believing it to be the greatest quality of the mind. This sentiment was echoed by the modern poet and novelist Maya Angelou, who said:

In this article we will describe courage as requiring three essential elements: (1) there is a willing, intentional act; (2) it involves substantial danger, difficulty, or risk to the actor; and (3) it is primarily motivated by the desire to bring about a morally worthy result (Rate, 2010, p. 62). Yet it is important for readers to recognize that a virtue like courage is not a simple thing that can easily be defined universally, across context.

Robert Greenleaf (1991) defined courage as an important characteristic that distinguishes the servant-leader from other leaders. Within the organizational context, courage is about challenging conventional models of working behaviors (Hernandez, 2008); and as such, it is essential for innovation and creativity. In an organizational sense courage includes daring to take risks and trying new approaches to old problems (Greenleaf, 1991)—not being satisfied with the status quo. Additionally, of interest to us, being ethical in an organization often requires courage to do the right thing, as ethics is not always given priority over expedience, individual interest or collective profit. As Dumbledore so cogently observed:

In schools, it takes courage for principals to address their own biases and that of teachers, for example, in race-based disparities in discipline (Treasure, 2018). Having difficult and personally uncomfortable conversations take courage, and if the conversation is about something negative, like the teacher’s cultural insensitivity in relation to students and/or their parents, the conversation may try a leader’s self-control as well (Treasure, 2009). Because servant-leadership requires considering everyone’s interest, including the broader society beyond the organization, courage will be needed to stay true to the school’s broad mission in the face of narrower self-interest. In her book Everyday Courage for School Leaders, Cathy Lassiter (2017, p. 13) describes courage as having four domains.

1. Moral courage: standing up and acting when injustices occur, human rights are violated, or when persons are treated unjustly.

2. Intellectual courage: challenging old assumptions and understandings and acting on new learnings, understandings, and insights gleaned from experience and/or educational research.

3. Disciplined courage: remaining steadfast, strategic, and deliberate for the greater good in the face of inevitable setbacks and failures.

4. Empathetic courage: acknowledging personal bias, intentionally moving away from it in our practice, and seeking to vicariously experience the trials and triumphs of others.

Principals practicing the servant-leadership mandate to challenge the status quo can expect to run into situations that require them to operate fairly frequently in one or more of Lassiter’s courage domains. The internal psychological characteristics that enable courageous behavior include inner convictions or values, duty, selflessness, integrity, humor, valor, loyalty, and independence (Hannah et al., 2007; Putnam, 2004). While courage is not a well-researched virtue, there are a small number of studies that indicate that engaging in courageous acts increases the likelihood of engaging in subsequent courageous acts (Costa, 2015), in keeping with Aristotle’s conception of developing character habits. Additionally, several studies indicate that seeing oneself as a courageous person, even retroactively labeling actions taken in the past as courageous, leads to positive beliefs about oneself that make courageous acts more likely in the future (Boyd & Ross 1994; Finfgeld, 1999; Hannah et al., 2007). Worline and Streen (2004) found that observers of courageous acts in the workplace feel inspired to engage in their own acts of courage. Given that the students are watching (Sizer & Sizer, 1999) it is a school leader’s duty to model courage and promote a school culture that supports courageous acts by all stakeholders.

Forgiveness involves the ability to forgive others when you feel offended by something they have said or done, or been hurt by decisions or possibly even mistakes they made (Verdoold & Van Dierendonck, 2010). Forgiveness has been documented to be an element for easing tensions among social animals, such as primates, including humans (de Waal, 1989; de Waal & Sherblom, 2018). Forgiveness is one of the interpersonal moral virtues, an integral part of the ability to build lasting relationships, professionally and personally. Given that almost all interactions between people provide the possibility—intentionally or unintentionally—for offense to be taken and/or harm to be done, the ability to forgive is essential to building and keeping healthy relationships. As young children on the playground most of us experienced the need to repair the hurt feelings or physical injuries that we have caused our playmates or that they have caused us. Our parents teach us the process for getting past these transgressions—a process in which the offending child indicates they are sorry and the hurt child forgives them.

In Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification(Worline & Streen, 2004) forgiveness is reported to be facilitated, even enabled, by one’s capacity to empathize. Drawing attention to the connection between thought and feeling in a situation, the authors conclude “People who experience empathic affect for their transgressors and who adopt the cognitive perspective of their transgressors tend to forgive specific transgressors more readily than do people who do not experience empathy or engage in perspective-taking” (p. 435). The strength and history of the relationship is also important: “partners are more willing to forgive one another for transgressions if their relationship is characterized by high satisfaction, commitment, and closeness” (p. 435).

Forgiveness usually involves the psychological conditions that facilitate embodying forgiveness (McCullough, 2008). First, the ways a victim perceives a transgressor as worthy of care. Second, a victim’s perception of the value of the relationship, that is, whether the relationship is worth working for. Third, and last, the extent to which the victim perceives they can feel safe in the relationship going forward once this issue is resolved. These predict people’s likelihood of engaging in forgiveness. A person’s empathy level predicts forgiveness among friends as well as among coworkers (Bateson et al., 2002). Expressing remorse in asking forgiveness and voicing sincere sympathy for the suffering caused helps rebuild trust and relationship safety (Nadler & Liviaton, 2006).

Research has demonstrated that individuals who rank high on measures of forgiveness tend to have better physical and psychological health. They report higher life satisfaction and fewer physical maladies (Bono & McCullough, 2006). They have fewer maladaptive habits, such as cognitive rumination and emotion suppression, and possess healthier coping strategies leading to less tobacco, alcohol, and drug use (Kendler et al., 2003). Forgiving-individuals are better at maintaining relationships with partners, have stronger social supports, and experience more relational closeness and commitment (Karremans & Van Lange, 2004; McCullough et al., 2009; Karremans et al. 2005).

Interpersonal forgiveness is easiest when the wrongdoer expresses a desire to repair the relationship, acknowledges their offense or mistake, expresses remorse, and takes responsibility for ameliorating the negative impact of their actions such as paying restitution. However, the ability to forgive may be most important when this type of satisfactory resolution is unlikely. It is important to know that forgiveness and its benefits do not have to include talking to the transgressor, nor restitution, foregoing the imposition of social or legal consequences, nor maintaining a relationship with the transgressor. This is called intrapersonal forgiveness and involves the person hurt or offended by someone else’s action making the decision to engage in the internal process of letting go of negative feelings and of any intention to seek vengeance against the perceived wrongdoer. This requires acknowledging to oneself the negative feelings that the offensive act generated—feelings of fear, anxiety, anger, neglect, shame, hurt, betrayal, et cetera. It is also important to remember that forgiveness is a process—a process that takes time and intention as well as having a repertoire of techniques to facilitate forgiving.

Educational leaders need to be mindful that forgiveness is essential for maintaining an atmosphere of trust—a process for letting go of blame may be necessary to keep a school running effectively. In addition to establishing a forgiving climate, school leaders need to model self-forgiveness. No educators can do everything right all the time, and leaders must model strategies for forgiving their own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others. For servant-leaders it is important to create a culture where people feel accepted, are free to take some productive chances, even make mistakes, and know that they will not be rejected (Ferch, 2005).

Leaders can enable this type of virtuous interaction by initiating and supporting organizational structures, systems and resources such as restorative practices that are aligned with forgiveness (Madsen et al., 2009). Restorative justice and other reconciliation oriented approaches focus on the positive benefits of being able to let go and move on. Research identifies many school-based benefits, including repairing relations, instilling trust in the school community’s ability to deal with problems without breaking down, and the lessening of ongoing peer violence among students (Sherman et al., 2005). Other kinds of practices that can provide healing opportunities for self and others need to be identified (Ferch & Spears, 2011).

Healing relations between people within an organization in an ongoing way will require forgiveness, and the leader must model this herself, and possibly guide this healing process among colleagues (McCullough et al., 2009). When clustered together—humility, forgiveness and gratitude—represent an orientation to leadership that “includes effectively handling oneself in a nonegocentric, positive and offense-resistant manner” (Grahek et al., 2010, p. 272).

Gratitude involves a feeling of thankful appreciation for and recognition of the good things one receives or has received (Rahm & Heise, 2019). Gratitude is historically and etymologically related to thankfulness, thoughtfulness, and spiritual grace. Watkins et al. (2009) define gratitude as an emotion that comes about when a person realizes something good has happened to them (or something bad averted) and they believe that someone has brought it about. McCullough et al. (2001) argued that gratitude is a moral emotion and motivator, citing Adam Smith’s famous Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Gratitude has benefits for the individual—“grateful individuals tend to be agreeable, emotionally stable, self-confident but less narcissistic, and nonmaterialistic” when compared with their peers (Watkins, et al. 2009, p.439). There is evidence that an attitude of gratitude is related to a greater sense of well-being and happiness (e.g., Watkins et al. 2003; Emmons & McCullough, 2003; McCullough et al., 2002). Gratitude supports social relations, and stable relationships predict happiness. Additionally, gratitude enhances a person’s likelihood of engaging in prosocial behavior (Watkins et al., 2009). Further, research suggests that gratitude promotes effectively dealing with stress, and enhances personal growth (Emmons & Mishra, 2011). Gratitude requires other capacities to be embodied, such as paying better attention to transcend your usual mindset of taking things for granted. Gostick and Elton (2020) show how practices of gratitude boost employee engagement, reduce turnover, and lead to members of the organization expressing more gratitude among themselves, strengthening their bonds.

In schools we demonstrate gratitude through recognition and celebration (not rewards), letting others feel seen and known while promoting a sense of camaraderie and collective belonging. Feelings of gratitude between staff will support reciprocity and mutuality, encouraging a sense of interconnectedness (Michie, 2009).

Feelings of gratitude in teacher-student relationships can improve students’ feelings of belonging, and sense of connection to the teacher. Inculcating a school culture open to expressing gratitude provides opportunities for positive interaction among community members generally. With its panoply of positive effects, gratitude is an essential characteristic of servant-leadership (Van Dierendonck, 2011).

Empowering others characterizes servant-leaders, as they take an active interest in the growth and well-being of everyone in the organization. Greenleaf said that “serving and service … are what produce the result in personal growth in those being served” (2003, pp. 132–133). Empowerment, therefore, can be thought of as a motivational concept focused on enabling people and encouraging personal development (Conger, 2000). The servant-leader’s belief in the intrinsic value of each individual is the central issue in empowerment; it is all about recognition, acknowledgment, and the realization of each person’s ability to learn (Greenleaf, 1998).

Of special interest to educational leaders, empowering everyone in a school creates a culture of mutual care-giving, a sense that we are all in this together, and that leadership has everyone’s best interest at heart (Spreitzer, 1996). To be a leader who empowers others well requires the development of a number of supporting virtues. For example, to empower someone requires you understand their strengths and weaknesses (or, as yet underdeveloped areas). This is so that your leadership meets them where they are—building on their strengths and what they have to offer the organization, and providing mentoring and support to further develop them where they need it (Konczak et al., 2000). If an educational leader wishes to empower others, it may also require that leader to practice a little nonattachment, that is, become less attached to their own conception of process and outcome.

The virtue of foresight/future-mindedness is important for leaders, and Greenleaf instructed servant-leaders “to nurture their abilities to dream great dreams” (Spears, 2003, pp. 18–19). This is vital for the organization because someone needs to attend to the proverbial big picture, and most members are preoccupied with day-to-day concerns. Greenleaf saw foresight and future-mindedness as enabling the servant-leader “to understand the lessons from the past, the realities of the present, and the likely consequence of a decision for the future” (Spears, 2003, pp. 18–19). The ability to look at a problem or an organization from this future-oriented perspective means that a servant-leader must think beyond day-to-day operational realities and short-term goals to the future they want to create, which Greenleaf notes “is deeply rooted within the intuitive mind” (Spears, 2003, p. 19).

Bazerman (2014) argues that leaders must cultivate their power of noticing: to see latent opportunities, avoid threats, and prepare for the future. Additionally, Bazerman points out that sometimes the hardest thing to notice is what did not happen, and that we need to intentionally look for gaps, absences, and disruptions. This is perhaps especially important with regard to social justice concerns. Who is not “at the table?” Whose voice is not being heard? Educational leaderships can ask: are there opportunities for team-building that were overlooked? Were there opportunities to publicly value the work of teachers or students that was passed up? Did we remember to notice people’s contributions? Did we do things to make those contributions more likely and welcome?

Stewardship was Robert Greenleaf’s chosen term for the relationship and responsibility stakeholders should feel in holding their institutions in trust for the greater good of society. Where leadership usually implies a single leader in a hierarchy, stewardship implies a group shared activity (Goodlad, 2008; Smith, quoted in Yontz, 2012). Block (1993) relates that the conceptual framework of stewardship has a rich history:

Discussing stewardship of not-for-profit leadership, Brinkerhoff (2004) wrote that “organizations actually belong to the communities they serve, and leaders have temporary stewardship over their assets” (p. 3).

A servant-leader’s sense of stewardship ensures that the servant-leader does not accept mediocre performance, but keeps everyone focused on achieving organizational objectives within the constraints of shared organizational values. Stewardship also implies a style of power use—favoring persuasion, openness, and discourse to one-sided uses of control. This is in keeping with being a good listener, sharing power, and empowering those in your organization (Block, 1993). Stewardship also requires patience, self-discipline, courage, and thrift (Welchman, 1999).

A servant-leader must be self-aware, which, as Greenleaf noted can be frightening because you never know what you may discover about yourself (Spears, 2003, p. 17). As Greenleaf put it: “Awareness is not a giver of solace—it is just the opposite. It is a disturber and an awakener” (Spears, 2003, p. 17). At the same time, however, this awareness is required for understanding ethics and values, and being able to view most situations from a more integrated, holistic position (Spears, 2003, p. 17) and to know that you are appropriately embodying those values. Leaders should not only act as caretakers, but also as role models (Hernandez, 2008). Servant-leaders, as Stewards of an organization that is meant to outlast them, must operate on a longer timeline, continually renewing the vision and mission as well as the staff, such that the organization is prepared to continue without the Steward. “The success of a leader is best gauged by what happens after they are gone. Does the organization continue to operate with high principles and moral clarity?” (Sisodia, 2018 p. 23).

In schools, servant-leaders are committed to the long-term health of the school and its community (Varrati et al., 2009). Exploring exactly how stewardship should be embodied requires appreciating what is precious in each school—the vision, history, people, and relationships in the school (Smith, 1999; Yontz, 2012). Stewards need to safeguard their schools’ existing democratic processes, while increasing rich diversity, and the ongoing challenge of renewing community (Yontz, 2012). It may be hoped that this might address the growing problem with teacher attrition and retention concerns (Smith, 1999). Goodlad (2008) notes that school is the only societywide institution specifically charged with enculturating children into the democratic process. As Yontz concludes “Without stewards of schools safeguarding this purpose, our shared way of life is at risk” (2012, p. 60).

Greenleaf saw successful servant-leadership as socially just and self-replicating. In what has come to be called the credo of servant-leadership, Greenleaf stated:

In schools, as principals are servant-leaders to teachers, the teachers themselves feel more supported in cultivating servant-leader virtues. They, in turn, are more likely to serve other teachers and staff similarly, and embody the servant relationship with students. Engendering such a culture, in which servant-leadership is modeled at all levels, Greenleaf argues, becomes self-perpetuating.

For leaders to be virtuous leaders they must make a commitment to do so, identifying the moral domain as central to the well-being of those in their organization, central to the mission of their organization, and central to their style of leadership. I have argued here that servant-leadership is the best available model of virtuous leadership, considering as it does the moral good of workers in the organization, the mission of the organization, and the impact on the broader society, especially on those with less power and resources. Servant-leadership is more ethically comprehensive than other leadership styles in the sense that it foregrounds ethical issues and highlights the need for moral relations with everyone in the organization and everyone with whom the organization interacts. Servant-leadership is also more particular in its moral demands than most approaches, in that such leaders are expected to actively model the process of personal and professional growth and support similar growth opportunities for those they serve as leader. It is hoped that leaders in various sectors of society, including educational leadership, will make being virtuous a part of their leadership identity, and a pronounced aspect of their organizational mission.

This work was supported with funding from the Kern Family Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation (Grant #61178). The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.