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Virtue ethics and servant leadership

In recent years, servant leadership has become an increasingly popular approach in the corporate world. Companies such as Whole Foods Market, The Container Store, and Southwest Airlines have adopted its principles. Fortune Magazine dedicates an issue each year to "The 100 Best Companies to Work For in America," and many of those in the top ten utilize the practices of servant leadership.

On one level, then, servant leadership is a successful management technique, a method for empowering employees and enhancing corporate productivity. At its heart, however, servant leadership strives to be much more. For its founder, Robert K. Greenleaf, and many of its current practitioners, servant leadership is "a long-term, transformational approach to life and work-in essence, a way of being-that has the potential for creating positive change within our society." 1

Here at Emory, the Ethics and Servant Leadership (EASL) Program seeks to translate servant leadership into the context of higher education. Through both curricular and co-curricular offerings, EASL works towards its mission to "ignite the moral imagination of twenty-first century leaders by educating them to serve to common good." EASL focuses on the larger vision of servant leadership described above, aiming to expose students to a way of life, a process of human development and vocational formation which involves an orientation toward service and an attentiveness to ethical principles.

As the title of our program suggests, we endeavor to make explicit the sometimes-implicit connection between ethics and servant leadership. Linking servant leadership and ethics is not a radical departure from Robert Greenleaf's original vision. In fact, Greenleaf originally named the center he founded the Center for Applied Ethics, renamed after his death as the Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership. While various ethical theories inform and instruct the work of servant leadership, virtue ethics in particular suggests itself as a fitting partner in the conversation between servant leadership and ethics. Can a link be made between virtue ethics and servant leadership? Here, our purpose is to explore that question, beginning with a closer look at each subject.

Virtue ethics
Virtue ethics has strong foundations in the work of Aristotle. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle asserts that human beings, by nature, move towards a certain end or telos. The proper telos of human life is eudaimonia, loosely translated as happiness or prosperity, but suggesting more than those concepts convey. The idea of full human flourishing perhaps comes closest to expressing the meaning of eudaimonia. In order to achieve eudaimonia, one must practice the virtues, and without them one cannot reach that telos. For Aristotle, the virtues included such concepts as friendship, magnanimity, and phronesis, the proper exercise of judgment in particular cases.

Over time, other philosophers and traditions have put forth their own theories of the virtues. As Alasdair MacIntyre points out, Homer, Sophocles, Aristotle, the New Testament, and medieval thinkers all offer different opinions on what constitutes the virtues.2 Contemporary virtue ethicists are no more in agreement on the nature of the virtues than their predecessors. Nevertheless, there are some general foci in virtue ethics which help define it.

In contrast to deontological and utilitarian approaches, virtue ethics focuses not on adherence to moral law or optimizing well being, but on the "rationality of virtue itself." So then, the reason not to perform an action is found in the quality of the action itself: one does not lie, not because of obligation or consequences, but because lying is dishonest.3 Virtue ethics also differs from deontology and utilitarianism in that it puts primary emphasis not on moral acts, but on moral agents. This difference does not mean that individual actions are insignificant or immune to ethical scrutiny, but it does mean that singular acts are viewed within the larger context of a human life.

Finally, while they may disagree on its particularities, many theories of virtue ethics understand the concept of a virtue as secondary to some larger concept or end, such as Aristotle's concept of human flourishing as the telos of human life. Practice in the virtues helps move humans toward that end, and without them the telos is unattainable. For some, human flourishing has both an individual and a communal component, expressing a conviction that the good of the one is tied up in the good of the whole. Such a perspective is shared by the concept of servant leadership.

Servant leadership
Robert Greenleaf (1904-1990), a manager and consultant at AT&T, coined the term servant-leadership in 1970 in an essay entitled The Servant as Leader. Inspired by Herman Hesse's novel Journey to the East, Greenleaf began to explore the concept that a great leader must first be one who serves. Over the next twenty years, Greenleaf wrote a number of essays and delivered several public lectures on the subject, attending to such specific topics as the teacher, the institution, and the trustee as servant. In recent years, others have expanded on Greenleaf's work, focusing primarily on its implications for business management.

In general, servant leadership "emphasizes increased service to others, a holistic approach to work, promoting a sense of community, and the sharing of power in decision making."4 As mentioned earlier, formation as a servant leader is a life-long process. It is more than the accumulation of a set of techniques or skills; it is an orientation to a way of life, a shaping of one's character through the practice of certain habits. According to Greenleaf, the best test of servant leadership is: "do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will he benefit, or, at least, will he not be further deprived?"5

More specifically, Larry Spears summarizes Greenleaf's work as identifying ten characteristics of servant leaders: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. A brief description of each follows:

Listening: Communication and decision-making skills of a leader have to be coupled with a commitment to listen deeply to others. Listening also encompasses getting in touch with one's own inner voice and seeking to understand what one's body, spirit, and mind are communicating.

Empathy: People need to be accepted and recognized for their special and unique spirits. A servant leader strives to understand and empathize with others.

Healing: Servant leaders recognize that they have an opportunity to "help make whole" the broken spirits of those with whom they come in contact.

Awareness: General awareness (particularly self-awareness) is essential. It aids one in understanding issues of ethics and values. According to Greenleaf: "Awareness is not a giver of solace-it's just the opposite. It is a disturber and an awakener. Able leaders are usually sharply awake and reasonably disturbed. They are not seekers of solace. They have their own inner serenity."

Persuasion: Servant leaders use persuasion rather than positional authority in making decisions within an organization. Convincing, rather than coercing others, is the goal.

Conceptualization: Servant leaders nurture the ability to "dream great dreams" and are able to think beyond day-to-day realities in problem solving.

Foresight: a quality rooted in the intuitive mind. Servant leaders understand the lessons of the past, the realities of the present, and the likely consequence of a decision for the future.

Stewardship: Servant leaders hold institutions in trust for the greater good of society.

Commitment to the growth of people: Servant leaders nurture the personal, professional, and spiritual growth of those around them.

Building community: Servant leaders recognize the importance of community, especially within large institutions, and strive to help foster community development.6

Virtue ethics & servant leadership
Given these brief descriptions of virtue ethics and servant leadership, we return to our original question: how then might these two relate to each other? As mentioned above, many theorists, both historical and contemporary, have offered their conception of virtue ethics. While each perspective might make its own unique contribution to this discussion, the works of Alasdair MacIntyre and Iris Murdoch are particularly helpful in beginning a dialogue between virtue ethics and servant leadership.

In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre narrates the history of virtue ethics, with special attention to the works of Homer, Aristotle, the New Testament, and medieval philosophers, along with consideration of more modern figures such as Jane Austen and Benjamin Franklin. He notes that each person's interpretation of the virtues is grounded in a certain social context, shaped by the norms and mores of the existing social realities. In that sense, one might consider Robert Greenleaf's ideas on servant leadership yet another commentary on the virtues, his reflection on the qualities necessary to respond appropriately to the realities of his time in order to produce a better society.

Writing in 1970, Greenleaf observed that "a fresh and critical look is being taken at the issues of power and authority and…A new moral principle is emerging which holds that the only authority deserving one's allegiance is that which is freely and knowingly granted by the led to the leader in response to, and in proportion to, the clearly evident servant stature of the leader."7 It was in response to this context that Greenleaf proposed the model of the servant as leader, which grew into the larger concept of servant leadership. Greenleaf understood the proper telos of human life to be the creation of a better society, a concept not entirely distant from that of full human flourishing, at least in the communal sense. Although Greenleaf did not explicitly name them as virtues, he believed the practices of servant leadership would help shape individuals who could lead society toward that end. So, while servant leadership is certainly not a theory of virtue ethics, it shares some points in common with that tradition.

After reviewing the various interpretations of virtue ethics, MacIntyre arrives at this question: "are we or are we not able to disentangle from these rival and various claims a unitary core concept of the virtues of which we can give a more compelling account than any of the other accounts so far?"8 He concludes that the answer is yes, a core concept of virtue may be discerned which provides unity to the tradition.

In order to arrive at a core conception of the virtues, MacIntyre asserts that there are at least three stages in its (the core conception's) development, each of which requires an account of certain ideas: a practice, a narrative order of a single human life, and a moral tradition.9 Of particular interest for our purposes is MacIntyre's notion of a "practice," the arena in which virtues are exhibited. As he defines it, a practice is:

"any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which good internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended."10

For MacIntyre, a practice is much more than the performance of a set of technical skills. While a practice has attached to it both external and internal goods or rewards, any activity performed only for the external goods gained is not a practice. Practices are essential for the access they grant to internal goods, goods which are difficult to define but which only result from engaging in a particular practice. MacIntyre uses the example of the young chess player: when offered candy to play chess, her attachment to the external goods (candy) distracts her from discovering the internal goods of chess. If her sole motivation is to acquire candy, she has no reason not to cheat. However, over time her engagement with the game of chess may begin to reveal the internal goods therein-analytical skill, strategic thinking, etc. Then, her motivation to cheat diminishes, for her focus is to enjoy the internal goods of chess, not simply to acquire candy.11

Similarly, adherence to the model of servant leadership might produce certain external goods: one's employees might perform better, and so the company might enjoy a larger profit. However, the goal of servant leadership is not a higher profit margin or even increased productivity, but personal growth for those served. Those who approach servant leadership as an "instruction book" for corporate success miss the mark Greenleaf intended. However, when pursued for their internal goods (which are always goods for the entire community, never just the individual)12, the characteristics of the servant leader outlined earlier might rightly be considered practices.

If internal goods are those which should be sought, what helps us orient ourselves toward their discovery? According to MacIntyre, the answer is the virtues. However, they do more than direct us toward the internal goods of practices, they guide us in our lifelong pursuit of the good for ourselves and our communities:

"The virtues therefore are to be understood as those dispositions which will not only sustain practices and enable us to achieve the good internal to practices, but which will also sustain us in the relevant kind of quest for the good, by enabling us to overcome the harms, dangers, temptations and distractions which we encounter, and which will furnish us with increasing self-knowledge and increasing knowledge of the good." 13

In these terms, then, servant leadership has certain similarities to the virtues. As stated earlier, servant leadership is correctly interpreted as a way of being, or disposition, that directs individuals in the quest for the creation of a better society. Servant leaders are able to sustain the practices of listening, healing, awareness, etc., through an orientation toward leading through service to others. And the exercise of servant leadership is a life-long process, not a temporary execution of techniques. Each of its actions and practices are part of shaping the "narrative order of a single human life" to which MacIntyre refers.14

In the Ethics and Servant Leadership Program, our aim is to encourage students to adopt such a disposition. Our goal is not primarily to transfer a set of skills that will enable students to be more effective in their leadership, but to invite students into a lifelong exploration of a way of being that focuses on service to others. Similarly, we encourage students to place individual ethical decisions within the larger context of their personal development and formation, asking not only "what should I do?" but also "who do I want to be?" Our attempt is to place the questions of vocational choice, ethical action, and the practice of leadership into the larger realm of what a colleague has named "the ethics of shaping a life," a life whose telos is service to the common good. In this way, virtue ethics seems the appropriate partner for our work in servant leadership.

While servant leadership offers a great deal to our students, it also presents a particular challenge to our work at Emory. While Greenleaf's intention was not to place servant leadership within a particular religious tradition, it cannot be ignored that the Christian tradition has shaped the understanding of servant leadership, and that many of its proponents interpret adherence to its principles as an embodiment of their individual religious commitments. Indeed, the figure of Jesus Christ—who listens, heals, and washes the feet of others, and who proclaims that those who desire to be the greatest must be the servants of all-is often cited as a powerful exemplar of a servant-leader.

This connection between servant leadership and the Christian tradition poses a challenge for its translation in a multicultural, religiously pluralistic community like Emory. The students drawn to the Ethics and Servant Leadership Program are by no means exclusively or even predominantly Christian. So then, while acknowledging the heritage that servant leadership receives from Christianity, it is essential that the principles of servant leadership be articulated in broader terms. Here, the work of Iris Murdoch is helpful.

Unlike many of her fellow virtue ethicists, Iris Murdoch denies that human life has a telos or end toward which it is naturally directed:

"There are properly many patterns and purposes within life, but there is no general and as it were externally guaranteed pattern or purpose of the kind for which philosophers and theologians used to search. We are what we seem to be, transient moral creatures subject to necessity and chance. This is to say that there is, in my view, no God in the traditional sense of that term; and the traditional sense is perhaps the only sense."15

Having thus dispensed with the concept of God, Murdoch searches instead for a central concept which might direct human beings toward right conduct. Since Murdoch considers selfishness to be the natural condition of human beings, she seeks techniques which help reorient our inherently selfish energy. She finds her answer in Simone Weil's notion of prayer as attention. While Weil considered prayer the "orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God,"16 Murdoch asserts that the essential component of prayer is not the particular object of our attention (God), but the ability to see beyond ourselves, to focus our attention outward. This ability, according to Murdoch, is love, the supreme principle among the virtues.

While servant leadership may be closely connected with Christianity and its notions of God, Murdoch's concept of love as the reorientation of our selfish energy outward is also compatible with the principles of servant leadership. In fact, many of the characteristics of servant leadership described earlier depend on such a selfless focus of attention: deep listening, empathy, healing, and stewardship. Since the central concept of servant leadership is service to others-motivated not by the desire for external goods but for internal goods available to the entire community-the orientation of one's energy outward is a necessary condition.

In addition, for those who do understand servant leadership as an embodiment of their Christian commitments, Murdoch's comments present an important caveat. For many, obedience to Christian teachings brings with it a reward, one that is eternal but perhaps still in MacIntyre's language external. The pursuit of one's personal salvation is still a self-oriented act, and Murdoch reminds us that "the only genuine way to be good is to be good 'for nothing.'"17

Conclusion
Can a link be made between virtue ethics and servant leadership? I believe the answer is yes. The fit is not a perfect one, to be sure. Other theories of virtue ethics might be brought into conversation with servant leadership and produce different results. However, as examined here, servant leadership and virtue ethics seem to share some important principles. First, both embrace the concept of the telos of human life as human flourishing, with special attention paid in servant leadership to the flourishing of others. Secondly, both understand the pursuit of their ideals/virtues as a lifelong project which transforms both the individual and the communities around her/him. Thirdly, for both, particular acts find their meaning in the overall context of a human life. And finally for both, love-the focus of attention away from oneself and toward others-is a guiding principle.

So, then, it seems fitting that in developing the Ethics and Servant Leadership Program, we attend more to the cultivation of habits than the acquiring of particular skills or techniques. It is appropriate to help students explore a broader concept of vocation, focusing on who they want to be as well as on what they want to do. And it seems imperative that-while we provide tools for making discrete ethical decisions-we help them locate those decisions within the larger narrative of a single human life. Toward those ends, virtue ethics can help us understand the work of servant leadership within a larger theoretical context and provide rich resources of language, tradition and literature to assist the ongoing development of the Ethics and Servant Leadership Program.

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1 Larry Spears, ed., Insights on Leadership (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1998), p. 3.
2 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 181.
3 Roger Crisp and Michael Slote, eds.,Virtue Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press , 1997), p. 3.
4 Spears, p. 3.
5 Robert Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader (Indianapolis: The Robert Greenleaf Center, 1970), p. 7.
6 Spears, pp. 4-6, as summarized by Melissa Snarr and Mary Sue Brookshire for EASL documents.
7 Greenleaf, pp. 3-4.
8 MacIntyre, p. 186.
9 Ibid., p. 187.
10 Ibid., p. 187.
11 Ibid., p. 188.
12 Ibid., p. 190.
13 Ibid., p. 219.
14 Ibid., p. 187.
15 Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (New York: Routledge, 1970), p. 79.
16 Simone Weil, Waiting for God (New York: Harper and Row, 1951), p. 105.
17 Murdoch, p. 71

[ Posted by Mary Sue Brookshire at April 1, 2001 08:32 PM | More Opinion articles ]

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