Servant leadership is often misunderstood. Especially by people who talk the most about it.

It’s frequently described in such fluffy, ambiguous, or sanitized terms that it either confuses or misleads. It’s framed as emotional intelligence, empathy, being “other-focused,” or just being nice.

But servant leadership isn’t soft. In practice, it’s one of the hardest forms of leadership. Hard to practice and, sometimes, hard to receive.

It takes grit. It requires difficult conversations. It demands decisiveness when the “right” answer is unknowable.

What Servant Leadership Actually Is

Servant leadership is a form of leadership that does two things:

1. It engages the motivation of others by creating alignment between the goals of the organization and the interests of the team.
2. It grows the confidence and competency of those you lead.

Most people who talk about servant leadership emphasize understanding the interests of those you lead.

That is important. But that partial understanding creates the misunderstanding.

The rest of the picture includes pursuing the interests of the organization—and the fact that neither justified confidence nor meaningful competence can develop without facing challenge, conflict, or disappointment.

You don’t build “bigger” people by coddling or enabling them. You build them by helping them overcome.

If leadership is the act of aligning and motivating the decisions and actions of others to accomplish a goal, then servant leadership is doing that in a way that genuinely benefits those being led—even when it’s uncomfortable.

Effective servant leadership is like being a coach or personal trainer—someone who takes you from where you are now to where you want to be. And who understands that discomfort is part of the process.

The Top 3 Myths of Servant Leadership

1. Emotional intelligence is enough.
   It’s not. Empathy connects to people but doesn’t build them. Awareness is only useful if it results in clarity and action.
2. Being “other-focused” is enough.
   You can care deeply about others and still fail to lead them. If your focus on feelings keeps you from pursuing goals, maintaining standards, or calling people to growth, it’s not leadership. It’s avoidance.
3. Servant leaders will be liked.
   Many won’t be—or at least not all the time by everyone. Sometimes the best service will result in disappointing someone, pushing them, holding them accountable—or removing them from the team entirely.

Servant Leadership in the Real World

Servant leadership is often framed in a way that ignores reality.

Most people don’t manage themselves well. Most people find and stick to comfort zones. Few teams self-align over the long haul. Few are comprised of people comfortable having difficult conversations.

That means real servant leadership involves confronting low follow-through, poor self-management, toxic attitudes, and weak problem-solving.

Here’s what it often looks like:

• Defining and enforcing roles and responsibilities—and not tolerating ambiguity.
• Clarifying expectations, with success metrics that are binary or measurable.
• Accountability that feels normal and valuable—not like conflict.
• Conflict engagement. Staying in the tension to bring true resolution—not avoidance or attacks.
• Challenging individuals and teams to push beyond their current level.
• Shepherding culture through both consistency and correction.

This isn’t soft. This can be hard-edged at times—even when practiced with care.

The Toughest Work Is Internal

A true servant leader must have the personal discernment and internal strength to:

• Be aware of and care about how people feel—but not let their feelings drive your leadership decisions.
• Hold others to appropriate but challenging goals and standards.
• Believe in people more than they believe in themselves—but lead them into that self-belief and competency.

Servant leadership is about managing tension well:

• Pursuing organizational goals with consideration toward individual ones.
• Creating accountability without avoidance or being overly aggressive.
• Being empathetic without being directed by the feelings (real, perceived, or anticipated) of others.
• Respecting where people are at while challenging them to where they could be.

This is very difficult to do unless you’ve done your own work. That’s why I often say, “Personal development is leadership development.” You will be a more effective servant leader when you’ve:

• Faced your own limiting beliefs.
• Made a practice of fully owning and correcting your own mistakes.
• Accepted your own limitations and blind spots.
• Made yourself uncomfortable in order to grow.
• Subjected yourself to real accountability—feedback, feedforward, correction.
• Aligned yourself to high standards when it would’ve been easier not to.
• Committed to being a learner and coachable, even if you have expertise.

That’s where the strength to lead others comes from.

A leader who is able and willing to set challenging goals, and build a team that can push beyond comfort—while treating each other well, protecting culture, addressing inevitable conflicts, growing people, and getting things done well and on time without confusion—is hard to stop.

This is the kind of leadership your people need. And it’s the kind of leadership most organizations are starved for.

Where do you need to show up tougher (and therefore more servant-hearted) today?

Take good care,
Christian