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Andreas

Servant leadership book review in 2 minutes

Updated: Jul 4

Servant Leadership in Action: How You Can Achieve Great Relationships and Results by Ken Blanchard and Renee Broadwell 2018



Servant leaderhship is an interesting book I got due to the constant confusion of what exactly servant leadership actually is.


In a nutshell, the book is pretty much a collection of 42 essays from 42 different leaders from a wide range of industries and walks of life. Each story wants to give a perspectives on servant leadership and what it looks like to implement it. There are good examples about leadership in general, and I think it was a nice read while commuting, with a lot of short chapters.



Key Take aways


  • Servant leaders serve others and not themselves

  • They are visionary community builders and persuasive in nature.

  • The idea of servant leadership is to place others first and not yourself.

  • They follow an altruistic ideology and want to make the world a place better for others.

  • They pursue a path that empowers employees and their personal and professional growth.


The essential aspects of servant leadership are defined as having

  1. a purposeful direction, which is the leadership component.

  2. a careful implementation, which is the servant part of leadership


What a servant leader looks for is having a meaningful vision where others are included. This puts more importance on the employees, as they are the foundation of your business, the bottom of the pyramid where everything stands upon.


  • They have to listen - Paying attention to what people say and what not.

  • They need to have empathy - Caring about others, accepting others as people and not as tools.

  • Heal others - they motivate others to face their broken spirits and to keep going on

  • Being aware - self aware and being aware of the surroundings.

  • Show foresight - learn lessons and look ahead

  • Conceptualise work - they need to manage details but also know the bigger picture

  • Being the stewards - Preserving value for the ones coming after you

  • Commit to growing people - let them develop professionally and personally.

  • Show pesuasion - being able to persuade others to achieve their goal.



The key takeway really is to think altruistically and put others first, wanting to elevate them and helping them. This is a trend I see on twitter as well, with more and more people sharing knowledge and helping each other, which creates a positive community of togetherness and looking after each other.



All of this is packed into a lot of stories from various successful people.

It is engaging and inspiring with many examples, but it is also almost a motivational speakers book using a spiritual approach to leadership.


With this, it is strongly influenced with christian stories (the servant leadership is pretty much based on christian values) and feels more about like a book about success, than exploring leadership and servitude in detail.



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