Compassionate Love as a Cornerstone of Servant Leadership: An Integration of Previous Theorizing and Research

Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between Humility, Action, and Hierarchical Power on Follower Engagement

“…In particular, humility seems to be essential in keeping the leader's achievements and strengths in perspective, while focusing more on others than on self-interest (Morris et al 2005;Fairholm and Fairholm 2000;Sandage and Wiens 2001), which is congruent with the tempering effect suggested by Park and Peterson (2003) and Morris et al (2005). In addition, van Dierendonck and Patterson (2015) propose that the virtuous attitude of servant leaders, based on humility, gratitude, forgiveness, and altruism, will give rise to other behaviors like empowerment, stewardship or providing direction. Owens and Hekman (2012) propose that the leader's humility can be split essentially around ''three categories: (1) acknowledging personal limits, (2) spotlighting followers' strengths and contributions, and (3) modeling teachability.''…”

“…All participants reported on how they perceived the leadership behaviors of their direct manager through items taken from the Servant Leadership Survey developed by van Dierendonck and Nuijten (2011). A 7-point Likert scale was used ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 7 (completely agree).…”

“…For Greenleaf (1977, this moral side or virtuousness was essential in forming the core motivation to serve of the servant leader, but it was not that morality should replace effective action, but instead that both should co-exist and reinforce each other. In practice, this translates into a dual mode of virtue and action which was captured, albeit not always explicitly, in some servant leadership models (e.g., Barbuto and Wheeler 2006;Dennis and Bocarnea 2005;Laub 1999;van Dierendonck and Patterson 2015;Wong and Davey 2007). Most noticeably, the model of van makes this split between these two types of behaviors more apparent, with some empirical evidence of this being shown through a second-order factor analysis in a later study (van Dierendonck and Nuijten 2011).…”

“…In practice, this translates into a dual mode of virtue and action which was captured, albeit not always explicitly, in some servant leadership models (e.g., Barbuto and Wheeler 2006;Dennis and Bocarnea 2005;Laub 1999;van Dierendonck and Patterson 2015;Wong and Davey 2007). Most noticeably, the model of van makes this split between these two types of behaviors more apparent, with some empirical evidence of this being shown through a second-order factor analysis in a later study (van Dierendonck and Nuijten 2011). This study shows one cluster with the dimensions of humility and standing-back, which could be associated with a moral side and another cluster with the dimensions of empowerment, accountability, and stewardship, which could aggregate into an action side.…”

“…Morris et al (2005) suggested that humility ''might be the operating mechanism through which servant leaders function'' and that it forms the essential marker of a leader's motivation to serve. Humility is further supported by the leader's ability of standing-back (van Dierendonck 2011), which ''is about the extent to which a leader gives priority to the interest of others first and gives them the necessary support and credits… (and) is also about retreating into the background when a task has successfully been accomplished' ' (van Dierendonck and Nuijten 2011). Standing-back could be seen as a synonymous of modesty, which is essentially a ''moderate estimation of one's merits and achievements'' (Peterson and Seligman 2004, p. 463).…”