Servant leadership is a popular choice for leadership programmes, especially in organisations that care about wellbeing and values. The challenge for L&D is that it is often taught as an attitude. An attitude is hard to practise and harder to see.
Can servant leadership be taught?
Probably, but be honest about how strong the evidence is.
The most direct test we found is recent and small. Ferdik and colleagues introduced a servant leadership intervention in one jail and compared it with two others. Officers in the intervention site reported better views of their organisation’s culture and fewer symptoms of depression, anxiety and burnout. That is encouraging, and it is three sites and officers’ own reports.
The wider picture is more cautious. A 2023 review by Schowalter and Volmer found that problems preventing cause-and-effect conclusions remain very common across servant leadership research. Their own experiment found no effect of two servant leadership behaviours on follower performance.
So the evidence that servant leadership matters is mostly correlational, and the evidence that it can be trained is thin. Neither is a reason to drop it. Both are reasons to define it as behaviour and check what changes.
Why do one-off workshops struggle with servant leadership?
Because it is tested in moments the workshop never sees: the deadline when it would be quicker to do the work yourself, the decision your director hands you, the person who keeps getting it wrong.
Across leadership training generally, a meta-analysis of 335 samples found programmes were more effective with practice, feedback, sessions spaced over time and delivery on site. A one-day session on Greenleaf can inspire a manager. It can’t be there on the Thursday when serving the team means telling them something they won’t like.
What should managers practise?
One behaviour at a time, chosen from the characteristic that matters most in one working relationship.
| Characteristic | Behaviours to practise | Trust Question |
|---|---|---|
| Empowering | 17. Involve people in decisions that affect them. 4. Set and confirm clear expectations before work begins. | Do they believe I act with their interests in mind? Do they believe I’ll do what I said? |
| Humility | 10. Ask for support when needed. 19. Give credit to others for their contribution. | Do they believe I can handle what’s needed? Do they believe I act with their interests in mind? |
| Interpersonal acceptance | 14. Acknowledge how others feel before responding to the task. 15. Show openness to others’ ideas, even when you disagree. | Do they feel I really understand them? |
| Stewardship | 20. Consider how your actions may affect others before acting. | Do they believe I act with their interests in mind? |
| Providing direction | 18. Explain the reasoning behind decisions that impact others. | Do they believe I act with their interests in mind? |
Servant leadership also starts before any behaviour, with a decision about who you are there for. Trust Leader puts it this way: purpose is the anchor, the Trust Map is the application, and practice builds the evidence. “Who do I want to serve?” is one of the questions the Hub’s Purpose playlists take a leader through on the way to their Manifesto. The accidental manager: what do you stand for? explains how that works.
The behaviours don’t cover developing people over time. That needs coaching alongside them.
What does a four-week practice plan look like?
Week 1: choose. Write one line answering “who do I want to serve, and how will they know?”. Pick one person in that group whose confidence matters. Decide which characteristic is weakest in how they experience you, and choose one behaviour from the table. Name three occasions in the next fortnight where you’ll use it.
Week 2: practise. Use the behaviour on the first two occasions. Straight after each, write two lines: what you did, and what the other person did or said next.
Week 3: keep going. Use it on the third occasion and wherever else it fits with that person. Look back at your notes. Is anything in their response starting to change?
Week 4: review. Talk it through with whoever supports your development. Then ask the other person one direct question, such as “when a decision affects your work, do you feel you get a say?”. Keep the behaviour or choose the next one.
Using one behaviour at a time is Trust Leader’s approach rather than a research finding. With one change, you can tell afterwards what your part was.
How can L&D tell whether it’s working?
What the leader writes down is the most available evidence and the weakest. Self-ratings, notes and reflections are the leader’s own view.
Stronger evidence comes from other people:
- Ratings from the people the manager leads, before the programme and a few months after, on the characteristics you are developing.
- A comparison group of managers who haven’t started yet.
- A colleague or line manager watching for the specific behaviour in real meetings.
- Wellbeing or retention measures for the team, used cautiously, because many things move them.
Given how thin the training evidence is, even one second view gathered before and after will tell you more than most published studies can.
Where does the Trust Leader Hub fit?
As the practice layer between your sessions.
The Self-Assessment asks how often, over the last 30 days, a leader did each of the 20 behaviours. It is a starting point in the leader’s own view. Three Purpose playlists take a leader through the questions behind their Manifesto. Each leader then uses a Trust Map to choose one relationship and one behaviour, works through short activities from a Behaviour Playlist, has at least two days to practise at work, and records a Reflection.
All of that is the leader’s own account. The second view still comes from you. What is servant leadership, and why does trust matter to it? covers the model itself, and Trust Leader for L&D teams explains how the Hub fits around a programme.