Servant Leadership Means Leading Like Leo

Herman Hesse was a poet and novelist who wrote the influential book Journey to the East. Robert Greenleaf launched the modern day servant leadership movement after reading about the novel’s central character — a humble servant named Leo.

As noted in the Sage Encyclopedia of Business and Ethics in Society (2008), “The concept of servant leadership was developed by Robert Greenleaf, who drew from his 40 years directing management research for AT&T to create a business and leadership consulting practice centered on his ideas about leaders as servants. After retiring from AT&T in 1964, Greenleaf launched his second career with the publication of the 1970 essay, “The Servant as Leader,” in which he acknowledged Herman Hesse's Journey to the East with providing the key insight for his theory of servant leadership.

In this story, a group of men embark on a pilgrimage to the East, accompanied by their servant, the spiritual and charismatic character Leo. Deep into the journey, Leo mysteriously disappears and the men are so confused and disorganized without him that they fail to complete their journey. Years later, it is discovered that Leo was actually the head of the organization that had sponsored the pilgrimage.

The idea of The Servant as Leader came out of reading Herman Hesse’s Journey to the East. In this story we see a band of men on a mythical journey, probably Hesse’s own journey. The central figure of the story is Leo who accompanies the party as the servant who does their menial chores, but who also sustains them with his spirit and his song. He is a person of extraordinary presence. All goes well until Leo disappears. Then the group falls into disarray and the journey is abandoned. They cannot make it without the servant Leo. The narrator, one of the party, after some years of wandering finds Leo and is taken into the Order that has sponsored the journey. There he discovers that Leo, whom he had first known as servant, was in fact the titular head of the Order, its guiding spirit, a great and noble leader (Greenleaf, 1970, p. 1).”

To Greenleaf, Leo represented a paradigm shift and correction to how we traditionally view leadership. Rather than someone who sits atop the leadership pyramid, the best leaders — those who have a transformational and lasting impact — make the people around them better. They put the needs of their followers first and are committed to their growth as people, “The great leader is seen as servant first, and that simple fact is the key to his greatness” (Greenleaf, 1970, p. 2).

Are you ready to lead like Leo? You can learn more in Finding Leo and Global Servant Leadership.