Leadership That Serves

Abstract

Leadership theories have proliferated in the last several decades, as has the desire for ethical leadership. Servant Leadership was initially proposed as an ethical use of power in leadership, arguing that serving should be the motivation and leadership the enactment. After being largely ignored by the academic world for several decades, only recently has research interest in Servant Leadership increased. In contrast, the vocabulary of Servant Leadership was incorporated into Christian writings on leadership, to the point where the term is so ubiquitous that it is nearly synonymous with Christian leadership. Both the academic and theological discourses neglect the reality that cultures vary in their view of the ethical use of power. This variation was initially mapped by social psychologist Geert Hofstede, whose Power Distance (PD) rankings of national cultures was seminal and has generated research to this day. This project is a preliminary investigation into the possibility that Christian leaders’ use of power may vary by culture.The project employs a qualitative phenomenological methodology, involving semi-structured interviews with fifteen clergy from three different PD backgrounds: Philippines (PD ranking 94), Hong Kong (68), and Euro-Canadian (39). Significant differences in how leadership was conceptualized were found between the different PD v groups. Higher PD clergy more easily held a self-understanding of themselves as leaders and as having power than did lower PD clergy. While all the groups were motivated by a desire to serve, the higher PD clergy were more easily able to identify the leadership dimension within Servant Leadership. The results suggest that the understanding and enactment of Christian leadership varies by culture, meaning that both the theological and academic discourses on Servant Leadership should be more attentive to variation by culture. Further, it would be wise for churches and ministries to engage in a culturally-aware discernment process to articulate and map Christian leadership in their settings.