Comparison of Servant Leadership and Authentic Leadership Styles

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Organisational Behaviour and Design

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The importance of effective leadership has increased substantially because
companies strive to generate a competitive advantage in their respective industry
which they can achieve through an effective leadership approach (Kaynak & Darling,
2013). Modern leadership approaches are focused on understanding the needs and
demands of employees so that companies can reduce employee attrition rate while
enhancing their productivity (Kaynak & Darling, 2013). In this regards, two of the
most common leadership styles include Servant Leadership and Authentic
Leadership. The objective of this essay is to compare and contrast between Servant
leadership and Authentic leadership style to evaluate the key similarities and
differences between these two leadership styles. The structure of this essay will
include an analysis of the definitions and key characteristics of both approaches
before comparing and contrasting between them. This report will analyse how these
leadership approaches affects follower job satisfaction and follower organisational
commitment a company. Lastly, this report will evaluate the example of different
contemporary business leaders in order to support the arguments.
Servant leadership approach is referred to philosophy and set of practices
which are focused on enriching people’s lives to create a more just and caring world
(Spears & Lawrence, 2016). This concept was first introduced by Robert K.
Greenleaf in 1970 which shows that it is a timeless concept. The servant leadership
approach provides that this leadership approach begins with the natural feeling that
one wants to serve, to serve first (Spears & Lawrence, 2016). The essence of this
leadership approach is that leaders who adopt this approach place the interests of
their followers first despite the fact that they contradict with the profit generation
abilities of the corporation. There are specific key characteristics of servant leaders
which make them different from other leaders such as empowerment, accountability,
enabling, humility and self-awareness, courage, empathy and healing, authenticity
and stewardship (Parris & Peachey, 2013). Studies have shown that this leadership
approach assists in increasing follower loyalty and trust in their leader which
motivates them to achieve organisational goals (Spears & Lawrence, 2016).
Authentic leadership is another popular leadership approach which is adopted
by modern leaders to maintain transparency in the operations of companies and
creating an honest relationship with followers (Shamir & Eilam-Shamir, 2018). This
leadership approach is defined as a leadership approach that emphasises on

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building leader’s legitimacy through honest relationships with followers and by
building an ethical foundation (Shamir & Eilam-Shamir, 2018). The roots of this
leadership go back to the writings of the ancient Greek philosophers that emphasis
on longstanding interest in authenticity in human behaviour. In this leadership
approach, leaders have to demonstrate traits such as honesty, transparency and
authenticity in their operations and they are typically individuals with high self-
awareness who knew about their values and actions (Rego, Sousa, Marques & e
Cunha, 2012). Followers tend to see them as genuine and legitimate leaders
because they create an open and frank relationship with others. Walumbwa’s
Dimensional Hypothesised model of authentic leadership provides four key
dimensions of an authentic leader which include self-awareness, balanced
processing, relational transparency and internalised moral perspective (Rego,
Sousa, Marques & e Cunha, 2012).
While comparing these two leadership approaches, various similarities can be
found. Both Servant and Authentic leadership style provides that the leaders must
have the ‘genuine’ desire for serving their followers by fulfilling their interests. These
approaches give importance to moral values and the decisions of leaders are guided
by qualities on passion and compassion (Hoch, Bommer, Dulebohn & Wu, 2018).
The leaders that adopt these leadership styles refuse to compromise on their
principles even in adverse conditions and they guide their actions based on their
values. Both of these leadership approaches give high importance to establishing
strong relationship with people rather than just giving them orders to take actions.
While leading the team, leaders that adopt either of these leadership approaches
rely on their personal charisma in order to get things done to make sure that their
followers trust their judgement (Ling, Liu & Wu, 2017). These leaders did not have a
desire for status or rewards, and they lead from personal conviction to benefit their
followers and the company as a whole (van Dierendonck & Patterson, 2015). The
actions of these leaders focus on building strengths of people rather than focus on
their weaknesses.
However, there are many differences between these two leadership theories
as well which affects the processes and outcomes of a company. The fundamental
difference that separate Servant and Authentic leadership approach are that servant
leaders strive for “right” whereas the authentic leaders strive to be “real” (Focht &