11 Servant Leadership Misconceptions That Could Be Hurting You Right Now

Servant leadership has to be one of the most misunderstood concepts within the world of leadership.

And that’s sad, because it’s important.

People often dismiss servant leadership because they don’t understand it or what it truly means.

What are these misconceptions?

Let’s look at a few.

Servant Leadership is an optional “style”

Sometimes, servant leadership is presented as a “style” of leadership that you can choose to be or that you might discover to be “your style.” I’ve seen it listed along with “styles” such as autocratic, diplomatic, etc., as well as people asking, “Do you like to lead from the front, side, or behind?” with behind being the “servant leadership.”

But servant leadership isn’t a “style” that you follow; it’s just what you do as a leader. Let me explain.

As a leader, you are either serving yourself and your own interests, or you are serving your organization and the mission and your team to get there. No matter what, you are serving something.

If you are serving yourself, then you aren’t going to be effective because you are about you.

But if you are serving your team and the mission, then you are doing the work to help your team accomplish the mission, which makes you effective.

Patrick Lencioni, in his book The Motive, says:

“At the most fundamental level, there are only two motives that drive people to become a leader. First, they want to serve others, to do whatever is necessary to bring about something good for the people they lead. They understand that sacrifice and suffering are inevitable in this pursuit and that serving others is the only valid motivation for leadership… The second basic reason why people choose to be a leader—the all-too-common but invalid one—is that they want to be rewarded. They see leadership as the prize for years of hard work and are drawn by its trappings: attention, status, power, money…. When leaders are motivated by personal reward, they will avoid the unpleasant situations and activities that leadership requires. They will calculate the personal economics of uncomfortable and tedious responsibilities—responsibilities that only a leader can do—and try to avoid them. This inevitably leaves the people in their charge without direction, guidance, and protection, which eventually hurts those people and the organization as a whole.”

Jocko Willink says something similar in his book Leadership Strategies and Tactics: “The moment you put your own interests above the team and above the mission is the moment you fail as a leader.”

In the book A Class With Drucker, Peter Drucker is quoted as saying, “This should be the basis of all leadership. The leader cannot act in his own interests. It must be in the interests of the customer and the worker. This is the great weakness of American management today.”

In fact, he called it the prime principle.

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As I hope you see, serving isn’t an option you choose—it’s just what you do as a leader.

But one reason people pull back from the idea of serving is because of some of the other misconceptions about servant leadership, such as the next one.

Servant leadership is about relationships, not results

That is only halfway true.

Servant leadership is about relationships AND results. It’s not one or the other. They serve their team to get results.

They know that by caring for people and helping them to do their work, they get better results.

It’s not either/or, it’s BOTH.

Tsedal Neeley, in her book Remote Work Revolution, when talking about successful leaders, said that they saw that:

“Success was not about them. Leadership, for the most successful executives, was about setting other people up for success. These leaders defined success as creating the conditions their team needed to thrive.”

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Leadership is built on influence. It’s hard to build influence and lead when you don’t care about people or have any kind of relationship with them. Your effectiveness will be limited.

When you build relationships and care, you build influence, which increases your ability to lead.

And, because you are about serving, you help your team accomplish the mission. As we will discuss in the next misconception, you do the hard work because you serve.

Servant leaders don’t hold people accountable

If your job is to help your team accomplish the mission, then you WILL hold people accountable and help them succeed, because you are doing what it takes to make the mission happen.

It’s those who don’t serve who are more likely not to hold people accountable because it’s uncomfortable.

(By holding people accountable, I don’t mean the pointless, mind-numbing bureaucracy meant to track people to “make sure” they are doing it the way you want it done. But you do set high expectations and hold people to those expectations. If they don’t meet them, you try to find out why and help them meet them.)

If you are about yourself or see your position as a reward or perk, then you are likely to avoid the hard stuff, such as holding people to the expectations, because you don’t want to do it.

Servant leaders, because they are serving the organization and the mission and their team, they DO hold people accountable because they are about serving and doing what it takes to accomplish the mission.

Servant leaders do the HARD work that those who don’t serve don’t do.

In fact, Lencioni says:

“The primary motive for most young people, and too many older ones, is the rewards that leadership brings with it. Things like notoriety, status, and power. But people who are motivated by these things won’t embrace the demands of leadership when they see little or no connection between doing their duties and receiving those rewards. They’ll pick and choose how they spend their time and energy based on what they are going to get, rather than what they need to give to the people they’re supposed to be leading.”

Serving means doing the hard work, not being weak, as we will see in the next misconception.

Servant leaders are weak, pushovers, and subservient

Unfortunately, when people hear the word “servant” they sometimes think “subservient,” and when they think of subservient, they think of leaders who are weak and are pushovers. They may think the employees or others run over them and the “leaders” give in to whatever they want for the sake of the relationship and “service.”

But that’s not the case.

Having a servant mindset doesn’t make you weak; it makes you strong. It takes a strong person to serve others and put other interests over one’s own agenda.

It takes a strong person to be willing to do the hard work, even when it’s uncomfortable.

It takes a strong person to not just be all about themselves and the perks they can get.

Servant leaders aren’t weak, they are strong.

You can’t lead and serve at the same time

This misconception really shows a misunderstanding of leadership.

Leadership is the process of guiding people through influence toward the accomplishment of a goal (vision, direction, etc.).

Leadership isn’t a position. There are plenty of people in CEO and executive positions who don’t know how to lead.

It’s not being a bigger-than-life charismatic person. That has nothing to do with leadership.

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It’s about guiding people toward accomplishing the mission, goal.

Leadership is service, at least, effective leadership.

You cast or point to the direction you are going, and you help your people get there.

Tell me: Which government leaders do we respect? Those who are self-seeking, or those who put the country first?

What leaders do you respect that you’ve worked for? Those who are about themselves, or those who care about you and help you be your best?

Leadership and service aren’t two separate things – they go together.

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In fact, when it comes to government leaders, the authors of Why Nations Fail, when stating the premise of their book (though not in these exact words), basically said that the main differentiation of why nations either succeed or fail is if the leaders of those nations are about serving themselves or are about the betterment of their country.

Servant leaders work for their employees / they give up (or don’t have) authority

Sometimes people have the idea that servant leaders work for their employees. The employees make all the calls, and the servant is just there to be there for them.

Ken Blanchard discusses this misconception in one of his articles. He says:
“Their assumption is that it means managers should be working for their employees, who in turn would decide what to do, when to do it, where to do it, and how to do it. If that’s what servant leadership is all about, it doesn’t sound like leadership to them at all. It sounds more like inmates running the prison, or managers trying to please everyone.”

Servant leaders cast the vision/direction (or they grab on to the vision already cast within their organization), and then they lead their people there, helping them implement and accomplish the vision.

Serving others to accomplish the mission isn’t weak and it isn’t a relinquishment of authority. The leaders are still responsible for the results and work to get them.

Servant leadership is about being “nice” or pleasing everyone

Sometimes people equate servant leadership with just being “nice,” or being friendly and agreeable.

And, yes, they may be nice people or may be friendly, but that’s not what being a servant leader means.

It’s about serving your team to accomplish the mission.

Servant leaders avoid making tough decisions, always get consensus, or focus on making group decisions

Some think servant leaders avoid making tough decisions because they fear upsetting the team.

They may also assume that because they are “serving,” they always try to get everyone to agree to a decision or make a group decision that everyone is involved in.

That’s not the case either.

Remember that servant leaders serve the organization and its mission, so they do the hard work because they are serving.

They make the tough calls because it’s the right thing to do.

It’s more likely for those not serving to avoid tough decisions or get others to make them because they are more focused on themselves, on being popular, on their status, etc., so they try to avoid the tough calls that may upset people.

Serving doesn’t mean always making decisions as a group. It’s about what’s needed. There are times the leader makes the call. There are times it may be a group decision. There are times when they may get consensus, but it’s based on the situation’s need, not because of a misconception of what servant leadership is.

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Servant leadership means doing the work for others

Some people think that servant leaders “serve” by doing the work for their employees.

That, of course, is wrong.

Leaders who serve help and support their employees. They train them if needed, help guide them in decision-making and problem-solving, and provide resources the person may need to accomplish the goal, but they don’t do it for them.

The empower them, not take over for them.

Servant leadership is only useful in nonprofit or volunteer settings (or only works in certain circumstances)

Sometimes people think servant leadership is for nonprofits and volunteer settings because you are “serving” in those situations.

And yes, the leaders of those organizations need to serve as well, but for all the reasons we mentioned previously, serving is for any leader in any organization.

They may think it only works in certain situations where their view of serving fits. Again, as we’ve seen, it works in all situations.

In fact, if you aren’t serving, you aren’t being effective.

Companies with servant leaders get less results

Jim Collins in Good to Great shows why this misconception isn’t true.

He studied what makes companies great long-term. He found that the number one factor was the leader, and the best leaders were what he called Level 5 Leaders.

In fact, they considered calling them servant leaders, but because of the misconception of servant leadership, they called them level 5.

What are the main attributes of level 5 leaders? That they are humble and driven.

They care more about the success of the mission over their own personal agendas and ego. This is what Collins says:

“A key trait of Level 5 leaders: ambition first and foremost for the company and concern for its success rather than for one’s own riches and personal renown. Level 5 leaders want to see the company even more successful in the next generation, comfortable with the idea that most people won’t even know that the roots of that success trace back to their efforts… In contrast, the comparison leader, concerned more with their own reputation for personal greatness, often failed to set the company up for success in the next generation. After all, what better testament to your own personal greatness than that the place falls apart after you leave?”

Those who served built the greatest companies.

James W. Sipe and Don M. Frick in Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership also found this to be true in the studies they performed about company results. They found that companies with servant leaders outperformed others in financial results.

(Here’s a link to a summary of multiple studies on servant leadership and it’s impact)

It’s time to get past the misconceptions of serving and servant leadership

I’ll be honest, I don’t like the term servant leadership because of two reasons: the misconceptions and the fact that it makes people think that serving is an “optional” style, which again is a misconception.

I just see it as what a leader is supposed to do, at least effective ones.

I hope through this article you have a better understanding of what servant leadership, or rather, leadership is.

Serving as a leader isn’t passive. It doesn’t make you weak. In fact, to truly be an effective leader, you must serve.

I encourage you to think about why you are or want to be a leader: are you wanting to serve, or are you about serving yourself?

I hope you make the right choice.

And, if you haven’t read Patrick Lencioni’s book The Motive, I recommend you make it your next read.

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