Robert K. Greenleaf (1904–1990) was the founder of the modern Servant leadership movement and the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.
Love without laughter can be grim and oppressive. Laughter without love can be derisive and venomous. Together they make for greatness of spirit.
Nothing much happens without a dream. For something really great to happen, it takes a really great dream.
Moral authority is another way to define servant leadership because it represents a reciprocal choice between leader and follower. If the leader is principle centered, he or she will develop moral authority. If the follower is principle centered, he or she will follow the leader. In this sense, both leaders and followers are followers. Why? They follow truth. They follow natural law. They follow principles. They follow a common, agreed-upon vision. They share values. They grow to trust one another.
The most serious failure of leadership is the failure to foresee
On an important decision one rarely has 100% of the information needed for a good decision no matter how much one spends or how long one waits. And, if one waits too long, he has a different problem and has to start all over. This is the terrible dilemma of the hesitant decision maker.
A Leader is one who ventures and takes the risks of going out ahead to show the way and whom others follow, voluntarily, because they are persuaded that the leader's path is the right one-for them, probably better than they could devise for themselves.
Purpose and laughter are the twins that must not separate. Each is empty without the other.
Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams.
The servant leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve.
Faith is the choice of the nobler hypothesis. ' Not the noblest, one never knows what that is. But the nobler, the best one can see when the choice is made.
Leadership must first and foremost meet the needs of others.
The only test of leadership is that somebody follows.
Where there is not community, trust, respect, ethical behavior are difficult for the young to learn and for the old to maintain.
Servant leadership always empathizes, always accepts the person, but sometimes refuses to accept some of the person's effort or performance as good enough.
The work exists for the person as much as the person exists for the work.
Even the frankest and bravest of subordinates do not talk with their boss the same way they talk with colleagues.
Ego can’t sleep. It micro-manages. It disempowers. It reduces our capability. It excels in control.
The quality of a society will be judged by what the least privileged in it achieves.
The servant-leader is servant first. . . It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first.