Servant Leadership and Effects on Healthcare Industry

Lillian A. Maldonado Tagle

South Texas College, Department of Organizational Leadership
ORGL 4342 – VF2 – Organizational Change
Dr. Patricia Blanco
November 27, 2022
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Abstract
Servant leadership was a concept that was developed over fifty years ago by Robert K.

Greenleaf. Still after his passing and decades past his leadership theories and concepts are still

having an impact on various organizations worldwide. Healthcare has faced many issues, but

studies have proven that the leadership model of servant leadership is one of the most effective,

if not the best leadership model to use, in ensuring that care and safety and also quality of the

workplace are at the highest performance level possible. Servant leadership seeks to serve others

first and ensure that they finish better than they started.

Keywords: healthcare, servant leadership, organizational change, influence, productivity

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Servant Leadership and Effects on Healthcare Industry

When a person calls themselves a leader and wants to make changes within an organization

this task can prove to be challenging and daunting. May leaders who have the title think that

people should follow them simply due to the title that they carry. But a title alone does not make

a person a leader, just as a person who stands in a car garage all night does not make them into a

car. A leader must have followers and to have followers there must be something that this person

does to earn their trust, vote of confidence and respect. According to Miao et al., (2021), servant

leadership was a term that was invented over fifty years ago to describe a people-centered

leadership style that makes attending to the needs of others and stakeholders, a greater priority

over their own needs. Miao et al., (2021), goes on to explain that if servant leaders are leading

the correct way this should cause their followers to grow as a person, get wiser and even

healthier, all due to their leadership style. The research and development and founder of Servant

Leadership as mentioned earlier was first developed by Robert Greenleaf; Greenleaf had many

dimensions to this leadership style including: vision, persuasion, caring collaborating, inspiring

followers to be servant leaders and building community (Sarkus, 2022). In his book Frick, (2004)

included this quote from Greenleaf who spent his life working with some of the worlds greatest

leaders including Eleanor Roosevelt and Don Drucker:

The forces for good and evil in the world operate through the thoughts, attitudes, and

actions of individual beings. Societies, movements, institutions are but the collection or

focus of such individual initiatives. What happens to our values, and therefore to the

quality of our civilization in the future, will result from the conception, born of

inspiration, of individuals. Perhaps only one individual will receive it. The very essence

of leadership, therefore, derives from openness to inspiration, to insight, that either

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produces the nobler ethic or guides one’s choice among alternatives. Robert K. Greenleaf

(p. 249)

Greenleaf believed that that the best way to lead was by being a servant-leader. He had many

years of experience, travels to India and teaching at universities before he coined this phrase,

interestingly the phrase servant leader was developed after he read a series of books by an author

named Hesse whose main character was the servant who later revealed himself as a great leader

of a large underground group. Greenleaf also established the Greenleaf Center for Servant

Leadership (Frick, 2004).

The concepts and theories that Greenleaf discovered are still enduring to this day since

his passing in 1990 (Frick, 2004). There have been various multiple studies done on the effects

of the servant leader and its impact on the healthcare industry. Not only does servant leadership

affect the way employees respond and the quality of their work, but it also has an impact on the

overall safety of the workplace and workplace incidents (Sarkus, 2022). According to Sarkus,

(2022) he states that servant leadership helps to build a sense of community among the

workforce which leads to an improvement in the culture and an openness in communication. He

states that according to Greenleaf, leaders are here to serve, to keep others safe, which is the

highest priority need for every individual in the organization (Sarkus 2022). In another study

done by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine they found that many

nurses were leaving the field due to not feeling valued by their employer and that any efforts to

train new nurses were in vain if they were leaving faster than they were coming in (Servant

Leadership, 2022). The study revealed that in areas were servant leadership was practiced

resulted in strong employee retention and correlated with higher retention rates for nurses and

greater job satisfaction (2022). Further studies by the Mayo Clinic found that there were many
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areas in the healthcare industry that were suffering due unsustainable goals and rising costs of

healthcare, the result of the study showed that servant leadership was the best model for

healthcare organizations (Trasek et al., 2014). This study found that servant leadership focused

on the strength of the team as a whole, helped to the develop trust amongst all stakeholders and

placed emphasis on serving the needs of the patient all leading to improved value of care for

patients (2014).

Literature Review

In the autobiography of Robert K. Greenleaf, the author Don Frick writes about the life of

Greenleaf and how he came to develop the concepts and theories of Servant Leadership. He

gives details of people, places and situations which helped to shape his mind and the evolution of

the servant leadership model (Frick, 2004). This autobiography was full on very interesting facts

about Greenleaf and even revealed that in one of the first versions of his writings on servant

leadership he quoted the speech given by Wellesley College graduate Hilary Rodham. This book

was very detailed and informative.

In the journal article Does Servant Leadership Promote Emotional Intelligence and

Organizational Citizenship Behavior among Employees? A Structural Analysis from Kumari et

al., (2022), revealed that servant leadership contributes to employee behavior and leaders made

employee interests a priority over their own. According to the article employees who are lead

with Servant Leadership or SL will be inspired to pass it on to others. They concluded that

servant leadership had a direct and significant impact on Organizational Citizenship Behavior or

OCB for short. They had four hypothesis that they felt each contributed to the other as seen in

Figure 1.
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Figure 1

Illustration of Conceptual Framework on Servant Leadership and Employees’ Emotional

Intelligence (EI)

Note. Each module represents how each concept relates to the other.
The question Kumari et al., (2022), were trying to answer was if a leader who was strong in

modeling the servant leadership model had a strong sense of emotional intelligence or if the

emotional intelligence (EI) grew while they modeled the servant leadership model. They noted

that employees who perform well on emotional intelligence tests perform better overall and

make considerable contributions to the workplace. In a healthcare setting this type of result if the

most sought after because of the many stake holders that are involved. Miao et al., (2021) found

that high emotional intelligence contributes to a person having a much higher grasp of Servant

Leadership and that organizations would be wise to look for leaders who have this high

emotional intelligence.
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The strongest support for the theory that servant leadership has an effect on

organizational change within the health care industry came from Trasek et al., (2014). They

stated that amongst the stakeholders in the health care system which include patients, health care

providers health care organizations, federal, state and local governments, health insurance

companies, business employers, health-care related businesses, and academia. They explain how

each stakeholder plays a part and how they each affect each other and most importantly the

patient since the goal is to be, “physically, emotionally and financially sound” (Trasek et al.,

2014). They discuss how there must be improved quality and a reduction in cost in order to

increase the value across the board. This is demonstrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Illustration of the value equation

Quality (outcome, safety, service)
Value =
Cost (resources consumed)

Note. This is the equation used to illustrate how value can be added

Trasek et al., (2014) goes on the explain that in order for these changes to make lasting

and effective change it has to start with the leadership and the style with which they are to lead.

They place the emphasis of this change squarely on the healthcare providers since they can the

highest interactions with the patient on a day-to-day basis. Trasek et al., (2014) further goes on to

emphasize that health care providers need leadership education and development, and they share

a statistic from 2006 that states “that there was a perception within healthcare that health care

leadership lagged 10 to 15 years behind leadership development in other industries”. They

discuss several leadership styles that could possibly benefit the healthcare provider but
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ultimately, they conclude that servant leadership “is best aligned with the professional and

ethical duties oh health care providers in delivering the high value care patients deserve”

Findings

All throughout the research, servant leadership shows to be a very strong leadership style

if a leader has high emotional intelligence and is able to come to the mindset that they should put

the needs of others before their own. They share various ways in which servant leadership

practices by health care providers can lead to improved patient outcomes, adherence to treatment

plans and also intrinsic motivation due to feeling respected, listened to and cared for (Trasek et

al., 2014). Trasek et al., goes on to state that “health care providers functioning as servant

leaders, can provide patients with the skills, tools, and feed-back necessary for self-

determination”. By implementing this style of leadership in the health care industry, health care

providers will be able to make significant lasting long-term change and make a difference for the

stakeholders involved within the health care system. According to Trasek et al., (2014), if leaders

can “align health care stakeholders to serve patients and each other, a more sustainable health

care system providing an improved value equation of high-quality care and lower cost is

possible”.

Conclusion and Further Research

At the end of the day, ultimately the best answer for the health care system and the many

changes that are needed to be made in order to sustain the ever-growing need for great health

care is servant leadership. By having a strong leader putting the needs of others before their own

they empower those around them to go forward and do the same to others, continuing the cycle

of servant leadership and causing growth and positive change in the organization. Servant
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Leadership exists and was brought to life by Robert Greenleaf who spent his life teaching those

who would listen that they needed to first be a servant and then aspire to lead. While the research

on servant leadership if fairly new there still exists the need to further study how this style effects

organizational change. If this style of leadership was put into practice in all industries perhaps,

we would have a more peaceful loving world.

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References 

Frick, D. (2004). Robert K. Greenleaf : A Life of Servant Leadership: Vol. 1st ed. Berrett-

Koehler Publishers.

Kumari, K., Abbas, J., Hwang, J., & Cioca, L. I. (2022). Does Servant Leadership Promote

Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Citizenship Behavior among Employees? A

Structural Analysis. Sustainability (2071-1050), 14(9), 5231. https://doi-org

.ezproxy.southtexascollege.edu/10.3390/su14095231 

Miao, C., Humphrey, R. H., & Qian, S. (2021). Emotional intelligence and servant leadership: A

meta‐analytic review. Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, 30(2), 231–

243. https://doi-org.ezproxy.southtexascollege.edu/10.1111/beer.12332 

Sarkus, D. J. (2022). Building Community Through SERVANT LEADERSHIP. Professional

Safety, 67(11), 24–29. 

“Servant Leadership” Retains Healthcare Staff: Listen to employees and value them

(2022). Hospital Employee Health, 41(7), 1. 

Trastek, V. F., Hamilton, N. W., & Niles, E. E. (2014). Leadership models in health care - a case

for servant leadership. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 89(3), 374–381. https://doi-

org.ezproxy.southtexascollege.edu/10.1016/j.mayocp.2013.10.012