Becoming a servant leader means empowering others. Put such an individual in the lead or leading from the rear and a team or company can realize unparalleled success. Servant leadership reflects an approach that challenges traditional leadership practices today. Why? Because it focuses first on people and then the rest of the activities of leaders. The goal is to serve.
Now, it is not a milk toast approach to leadership as some think. Studies show it to be the most effective and successful form of leading. By focusing on the team with integrity, setting high standards, demonstrating compassion and support, servant leaders inspiring leadership quotes do help to bring out the best in their potential.
Servant leadership quotes
CEOs and senior executives can believe strongly in the power of servant leadership but still need occasional inspiration to bring their servant leader to the fore each day. Listed are the servant leader quotes to learn and inspire from.
- Robert Greenleaf, founder of modern servant leadership movement
Any number of quotes from Robert Greenleaf will rev up your servant leadership qualities and enthusiasm. You might wish to consider how an attitude of service improves one’s leadership abilities:
“The first and most important choice a leader makes is the choice to serve, without which one’s capacity to lead is severely limited.”
Thought leaders on servant leadership qualities
Since servant leadership gained momentum in business, a chorus of voices has joined with Greenleaf to champion it in books, articles, and speaking engagements. Servant leadership isn’t a theory, they argue:
- Jim George
Serving others prepares you to lead others.”
- Ken Blanchard, American business consultant, author, and speaker
Servant leadership is all about making the goals clear and then rolling your sleeves up and doing whatever it takes to help people win. In that situation, they don’t work for you; you work for them.”
- Thomas J. Peters, American writer on business management practices
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’.
- James A. Autry, former Fortune 500 executive, poet, and author of The Servant Leader
It’s not about trying to find something to help you be a more effective leader. It’s about trying to be a better person. The other will follow.
- Zig Ziglar, American salesman, author, and motivational speaker
You can have anything you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want.
Servant leadership quote from world’s high achievers
Leadership-oriented authors certainly make servant leadership sound important. But does servant leadership actually work in the company trenches? Judging by the track records of some of the tech world’s high achievers, that seems to be the case.
- Guy Kawasaki, early Apple employee involved in Macintosh computer line
The companies that are successful, they start out to make meaning, not to make money.
- Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft
As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
- Tim Cook, CEO of Apple
You have to find the intersection of doing something you’re passionate about and that, at the same time, is in the service of other people. I would argue if you don’t find that intersection, you’re not going to be very happy.
- Mahatma Gandhi, Indian lawyer, activist, pioneer of nonviolent resistance
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., American Baptist minister and civil rights activist
Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
- Booker T. Washington, American educator, author, and advisor to several U.S. Presidents
If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
- Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid activist, philanthropist and former president of South Africa
It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership.
- Winston Churchill, former UK Prime Minister
We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
Service leadership quotes from artistic luminaries
Many agree that servant leadership is worth the effort to explore and embody. Want to get really jazzed up about the journey? Simply let the artists of the world bring its meaning to life in words:
- Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet, writer, playwright, philosopher, painter, and reformer
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
- Paulo Coelho, Brazilian lyricist and novelist
A life without a cause is a life without effect.
- Lao-Tzu, ancient Chinese philosopher and writer
A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.
- Marian Wright Edelman, children’s rights and civil rights activist
Service is the very purpose of life. It is the rent we pay for living on the planet.
- Oprah Winfrey, American television host
When you choose the paradigm of service, looking at life through that paradigm, it turns everything you do from a job into a gift.
- Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist
The list of quotes is incomplete without insight from Albert Einstein, so here it is:
It is high time the ideal of success should be replaced with the ideal of service.
Servant leadership may be as old as the idea of leadership itself. As deep as the roots of servant leadership are across continents and cultures, they also ring true today. Servant leadership is also part of the toolkit for some of the world’s most effective heads of state. Not only does servant leadership contribute to a thriving business, it helps drive change the world wants and needs. Servant leadership is powerful, but one must adopt the mindset without thinking of it as a means to an end.
