The evaluation of Best Workplaces™ Switzerland shows that the role of managers has gained significantly in importance in recent years and today is one of the most important factors for a great workplace culture. The best employers in Switzerland differ particularly clearly from the Swiss average in terms of trust in the integrity and credibility of management.
Many companies feel that traditional hierarchies are increasingly failing to match the expectations of their employees. People desire guidance, trust, and the opportunity to take on responsibility. In this context, servant leadership is gaining more and more importance. This leadership approach strengthens teams, fosters personal accountability, and creates the foundation for a corporate culture in which people and organizations grow together.
Table of contents
What is servant leadership?
Anyone hearing the term servant leadership for the first time often thinks of a leader who subordinates themselves to their team's wishes. However, that is precisely not what it is about. Servant Leadership describes a leadership approach in which leadership is understood as support. Successful teams emerge where people trust one another, treat each other with respect, and pursue a common goal. A leader clears obstacles out of the way, provides orientation, and creates freedom so that team members can assume responsibility and act independently. Leadership thus shifts away from mere control and toward genuine collaboration. This often changes the corporate culture more sustainably than any structural adjustment.
This is how Robert Greenleaf's concept came to be
The term servant leadership goes back to Robert K. Greenleaf. In the early 1970s, the American management expert formulated an idea that sounded unusual at the time and is more relevant today than ever. Greenleaf asked a simple question: What happens when a leader thinks about supporting people first before leading?
Out of this consideration, a leadership model developed that continues to shape numerous companies to this day. Greenleaf was convinced that people achieve better performance when they experience trust, are allowed to take responsibility, and their personal development is taken seriously.
These thoughts fit the modern working world surprisingly well. In many companies, personal initiative, creativity, and cross-departmental collaboration have long since been the deciding factors for success. Servant Leadership creates a stable framework for this.
The core principles of servant leadership
Servant Leadership is not a clearly defined method that can be introduced with a checklist. The approach begins with a mindset and then manifests itself in the daily behavior of managers. Typical examples include:
- active listening and genuine interest in different perspectives
- traceable decisions and transparent communication
- Trust as the Foundation of Collaboration
- Consciously Delegating Responsibility to Teams
- promote individual development
- Strengthen personal initiative
- Celebrate successes together and learn from mistakes
- prioritize long-term growth over short-term individual interests
In practice, these principles unfold their effect step by step. Employees experience more room for maneuver, assume responsibility, and contribute their ideas more frequently. As a result, teams develop a stronger sense of community and work together more independently.
What role does a manager play?
Many executives still associate responsibility with control. In everyday practice, however, a different picture emerges. Teams work more independently, decisions are made collaboratively more often, and expertise is spread across many people. Anyone who wants to micromanage every little detail quickly becomes a bottleneck. Servant leadership therefore fundamentally changes the role of the leader. The leader sets clear priorities, provides direction, and supports her team in making good decisions on their own. She identifies obstacles early on, encourages communication among colleagues, and fosters a culture in which people speak openly with one another.
Authority stems less from one’s position in the hierarchy than from credibility, reliability, and consistent action. It is precisely these qualities that build trust—and trust is one of the most important prerequisites for long-term business success. When viewed side by side, the difference quickly becomes apparent:
| Feature | Traditional, hierarchical leadership | Servant Leadership |
|---|---|---|
| Initial Question | What needs to be done? | What does my team need to do a good job? |
| Direction of Authority | From top to bottom | Developed together, with management in the background |
| Role of the Manager | Make Decisions and Delegate | Clear away obstacles and provide guidance |
| Dealing with Errors | Errors are frequently sanctioned 267/td> | Mistakes are usually seen as opportunities to learn |
| Time Horizon | Focus on short-term results | Long-term trust is paramount |
Neither of the two approaches is inherently the better one, but depending on the situation, one may be more appropriate than the other, as will become clear in the section on the limits of servant leadership.
What Servant Leadership Means in Everyday Life
What Servant Leadership concretely means is rarely shown in big announcements. One recognizes it rather in small, everyday situations. A team leader who genuinely listens in a conversation instead of already having her own answer in mind. A department head who openly explains a difficult decision and allows questions before implementing it. Such moments seem unspectacular, but frequently shape how secure people feel in the team. And whoever feels secure is more likely to dare to contribute their own idea or address a mistake early on.
Larry C. Spears, the long-time director of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership, has identified ten characteristics from Greenleaf’s writings that servant leaders often share. In day-to-day leadership, the following characteristics in particular emerge time and again:
- Listening: put aside one's own response and genuinely want to understand what a team member means.
- Empathy understand the situation of an employee, even if one would assess it differently oneself.
- Persuasion instead of order: Winning people over with arguments for a certain path rather than through pressure or formal authority.
- Farsight: anticipate potential consequences of a decision before they occur and prepare the team for them in advance.
- Stewardship understanding one's own role as a trusteeship for the team and organization, not as a personal privilege.
- Commitment to human development: purposefully allocating time and budget to enable employees to grow beyond their current roles.
The third point is striking: powers of persuasion replace part of traditional authority here. Instead of simply ordering a task, a servant leader usually explains the "why" and leaves room for independent approaches. For many team members, this is the moment when sheer fulfillment of duty turns into genuine personal initiative.
Servant Leadership and agile teams
Servant leadership is particularly visible in agile teams. Anyone who has ever worked with Scrum knows the role of the Scrum Master, and for a long time this was considered a prime example of servant leadership. Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, the inventors of Scrum, literally described the Scrum Master as a „servant-leader“ of the team in the 2017 guide. In the revised 2020 version, they removed this term and have since spoken of „true leaders who serve,“ meaning genuine leaders who serve. Why this turnaround? In practice, a “servant leader“ was often misunderstood as if the person were only there to organize meetings and get coffee. Dave West, CEO of Scrum.org, hit the nail on the head regarding the correction: it is about people who lead first and serve in the process. Servant leadership therefore does not mean making oneself small. It requires backbone, clear communication, and the ability to create an environment in which a team can self-organize.
The Advantages of Servant Leadership
The benefits of servant leadership are now quite well documented in research. A frequently cited research review by Nathan Eva and colleagues, published in 2019 in the academic journal „The Leadership Quarterly,“ summarizes numerous studies and consistently describes positive correlations with job satisfaction, engagement, and organizational commitment. A more recent systematic review from 2026 paints a similar picture: 23 out of 30 studies examined showed a clear correlation between servant leadership and employee engagement. Such figures do not replace personal experience, but they do provide a solid orientation.
Why is that? When people notice that their superiors take their needs seriously and foster their strengths, trust generally grows, and with trust comes an increased willingness to assume responsibility. This is precisely where many companies have a major lever.
The decline in high commitment carries more weight here than the slight drop in quiet quitting because, for the first time since the survey began in 2001, it has fallen into the single-digit range. Where trust in leadership is lacking, much potential remains untapped, and teams often just go through the motions. The same report makes the consequences quite tangible: highly committed employees were absent on average a good five days a year, while among those who have mentally checked out, it was almost twice as many. A servant leadership culture addresses this exact point and, when well implemented, can noticeably increase employee satisfaction and team creativity.
Where servant leadership reaches its limits
As convincing as the approach is, it is not entirely without downsides, and that is part of an honest assessment. Two limitations show up particularly often in practice:
- Time factor: Building trust and developing people is difficult to accelerate.
- Personal strain: Anyone who constantly puts the needs of others before their own runs the risk of exhausting themselves.
Especially during an acute crisis, when quick decisions are crucial, the servant leadership style reaches its limits. In such situations, clear directives are sometimes more helpful than lengthy deliberations, simply because there isn’t enough time for listening and building consensus.
The second point is less obvious, but no less important. A study with the apt title „A blessing and a curse“ points out that leaders can exhaust themselves if they overlook their own burden in the process. Serving does not mean self-abandonment. Anyone who wants to be there for others in the long run must also keep an eye on their own energy. And this approach cannot be mandated by instruction: A culture of open communication and learning from mistakes is the prerequisite for servant leadership to take root at all. Such disadvantages can easily be planned for once you know them.
What Types of Companies Are Suited for Servant Leadership?
Is this leadership style a good fit for your company? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but a few patterns tend to emerge time and again:
| Usually fits well | Rather difficult environment |
| Software development and IT | Starkly hierarchical administrative structures |
| Consulting firms and agencies | Strict regulatory or safety-critical requirements |
| Creative teams | Pure assembly line or routine processes |
| Companies in the change process | Environments with very 550, acute time pressure |
The common denominator of the left column: people work there independently and on a knowledge basis, and trust and open communication pay off particularly in such phases. In the right column, on the other hand, tight guidelines, control, or the rhythm of a machine usually determine what needs to be done, leaving little room for independent decisions.
At the same time, nobody has to completely discard their previous leadership style. In practice, experienced leaders mix approaches depending on the situation. For a safety-critical task or under high time pressure, a clear, directive instruction can be just right, whereas in calm day-to-day business, a servant, supportive style often pays off in the long run. Context is decisive. Anyone who knows their employees well and honestly assesses what kind of leadership a situation currently requires will usually make the better decisions in the end.
How Great Place To Work Switzerland accompanies you
With our scientifically backed Employee surveys Let's make visible how leadership is actually experienced in your company. We highlight where trust already shapes daily work and where leaders can support their teams even more effectively. In doing so, we examine the results with nuance – by team, leadership level, and topics such as communication, recognition, or participation in decision-making.
On this basis, we work with you to develop specific measures that fit your organization. You will benefit from the following advantages, among others:
- You receive well-founded results that create a reliable basis for strategic and operational decisions.
- You recognize which leadership topics particularly influence your corporate culture and where targeted action is needed.
- With our comprehensive benchmark, you can realistically classify your results in comparison to other organizations.
- Our experienced consultants support your managers in purposefully developing their skills and anchoring changes sustainably in their daily work.
- We support you from analysis to implementation so that insights turn into concrete measures.
- employee survey, culture development, Consulting and Certification form an alliance with us and create a holistic development process.
Our goal is to work with you to strengthen a corporate culture in which trust grows, collaboration succeeds, and people can unlock their potential. Because precisely these factors create the foundation for engaged employees, high employee retention, and long-term corporate success.
FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
Where does the concept of servant leadership come from?
The term servant leadership goes back to the American management consultant Robert K. Greenleaf. With his essay „The Servant as Leader“ in the early 1970s, he coined a leadership approach that continues to influence many modern leadership models to this day.
At the center of his idea was a simple question: How does collaboration change when leaders measure their success by how well their teams develop? This consideration still forms the basis of servant leadership today and continues to gain relevance in light of a changing working world.
How does servant leadership differ from traditional leadership?
The biggest difference is in the understanding of leadership. Traditional leadership is often based on clear hierarchies and strong control of employees by superiors. Servant Leadership shifts the focus more toward the people on the team.
The leader remains responsible for goals and decisions. At the same time, they create the conditions that enable employees to contribute their skills, take on responsibility, and act independently. As a result, leadership is evolving more into a supportive role without losing clarity or commitment.
Does servant leadership also work in hierarchical companies?
Yes. The leadership approach does not depend on the organizational structure. Even companies with clear hierarchies can develop a leadership culture based on trust, openness, and collaboration.
What matters less is the organization chart than daily leadership behavior. Anyone who communicates transparently, delegates responsibility sensibly, and actively supports their teams can successfully implement the core ideas of servant leadership regardless of company size or industry.
What are the disadvantages and limitations of servant leadership?
Servant Leadership does not unfold its impact overnight. Leaders and teams need time to anchor new roles and responsibilities in their daily work. Especially at the beginning, many participants find it difficult to break ingrained habits.
Additionally, the leadership approach does not cover every situation equally well. In crises or when decisions must be made immediately, clear leadership and unambiguous responsibilities are often required. Therefore, many companies view servant leadership as a long-term mindset that can be flexibly adapted to different situations.
