Quotes On Servant Leadership

The concept of servant leadership starts by being a servant first. A servant leader must first learn to serve before taking on a leadership position. Servant leaders must focus on the wellbeing and individual growth of the followers. People will not follow a leader until he/she shows genuine interest in them.

Feel free to use these quotes for a leadership team or a personal mission statement. If you have an inspirational quote you would like to share feel free to add it by leaving a comment. Here's a collection of motivational quotes about servant leadership.

“Good leaders must first become good servants.”
--Robert Greenleaf

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
--John Quincy Adams

"True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not to enrich the leader."
--John C. Maxwell

"Servant-leadership is more than a concept, it is a fact. Any great leader, by which I also mean an ethical leader of any group, will see herself or himself as a servant of that group and will act accordingly."
--M. Scott Peck

"Whatever our career may be, true leadership means to receive power from God and to use it under Gods rule to serve people in Gods way."
--Leighton Ford

"We are here to add what we can to, not get what we can from life."
--Sir William Osler

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
--Lao Tzu

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.”
--Max De Pree

"A Godly Leader finds strength by realizing his weakness, finds authority by being under authority, finds direction by laying down his own plans, finds vision by seeing the needs of others, finds credibility by being an example, finds loyalty by expressing compassion, finds honor by being faithful, finds greatness by being a servant."
--Roy Lessin

"We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead."
--William Arthur Ward

"The purpose of life is not to win. The purpose of life is to grow and to share. When you come to look back on all that you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought into other people's lives than you will from the times that you outdid and defeated them."
--Rabbi Harold Kushner

"Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it."
--Marian Anderson

"There is no more noble occupation in the world than to assist another human being to help someone succeed."
--Alan Loy McGinnis

"My research debunks the myth that many people seem to have . . . that you become a leader by fighting your way to the top. Rather, you become a leader by helping others to the top. Helping your employees is as important, and many times more so, than trying to get the most work out of them."
--William Cohen

"The most valuable "currency" of any organization is the initiative and creativity of its members. Every leader has the solemn moral responsibility to develop these to the maximum in all his people. This is the leader's highest priority."
--W. Edwards Deming

"People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care."
--John C. Maxwell

“The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say 'I'. And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say 'I'. They don't think 'I'. They think 'we'; they think 'team'. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but 'we' gets the credit.... This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.”
--Peter F. Drucker

"The goal of many leaders is to get people to think more highly of the leader. The goal of a great leader is to help people to think more highly of themselves."
--J. Carla Nortcutt

"Being a leader who serves is very different from being a servant leader."
--Isabel O. Lopez

"Few people are successful unless other people want them to be."
--Charlie Brown

"If leadership serves only the leader, it will fail. Ego satisfaction, financial gain, and status can all be valuable tools for a leader, but if they become the only motivations, they will eventually destroy a leader. Only when service for a common good is the primary purpose are you truly leading."
--Sheila Murray Bethel

"You will find yourself in service to your fellow man, your country, and your God."
--Mahatma Gandhi

"A leader lives with people to know their problems. A leader lives with God in order to solve them."
--John C. Maxwell

"The adventure of life is to learn. The purpose of life is to grow. The nature of life is to change. The challenge of life is to overcome. The essence of life is to care. The opportunity of like is to serve. The secret of life is to dare. The spice of life is to befriend. The beauty of life is to give."
--William Arthur Ward

“A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves”
--Unknown Author

"A person who is worthy of being a leader wants power not for himself, but in order to be of service."
--US Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr.

“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.”
--Jim Rohn

"Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, not a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people."
--US President George Bush

"As leaders shift their focus to customers and quality, they realize that the old authoritarian leadership style does not work anymore. To achieve quality, service, and rapid response, leaders must utilize all available talent. They must find ways to inspire, involve, and empower employees. They must create a work environment that encourages commitment, innovation, and cooperation. Instead of evaluating, leaders now coach. Instead of doing, they delegate. Instead of telling, they facilitate. No one is expected to boss anyone. Everyone is expected to participate."
--Dr. Suzanne Willis Zoglio

“Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.”
--Thomas J. Watson, Sr.

"No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others; or failing therein it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist."
--US President Calvin Coolidge

“He that cannot obey, cannot command.”
--Benjamin Franklin

"Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."
--Martin Luther King Jr.

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"A new moral principle is emerging which holds that the only authority deserving one's allegiance is that which is freely and knowingly granted by the led to the leader in response to, and in proportion to, the clearly evident servant stature of the leader. Those who choose to follow this principle will not casually accept the authority of existing institutions. Rather, they will freely respond only to Individuals who are chosen as leaders because they are proven and trusted servants. To the extent that this principle prevails in the future, the only truly viable institutions will be those that are predominantly servant-led."
--Robert K. Greenleaf

"Leadership is getting people to help you when they are not obligated to do so."
--John C. Maxwell

"Life is a place of service. Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness."
--Leo Tolstoy

“Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish.”
--Sam Walton

"No leader can possibly have all the answers . . . . The actual solutions about how best to meet the challenges of the moment have to be made by the people closest to the action. . . .The leader has to find the way to empower those frontline people, to challenge them, to provide them with the resources they need, and then to hold them accountable. As they struggle with . . . this challenge, the leader becomes their coach, teacher, and facilitator. Change how you define leadership, and you change how you run a company."
--Steve Miller

“To lead the people, walk behind them.”
--Lao Tzu

“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
--Bill Gates

“Leaders don't inflict pain - they share pain.”
--Max Depree

“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.”
--John Maxwell

“People are more inclined to be drawn in if their leader has a compelling vision. Great leaders help people get in touch with their own aspirations and then will help them forge those aspirations into a personal vision.”
--John Kotter

"Servant-leadership is all about making the goals clear and then rolling your sleeves up and doing whatever it takes to help people win. In that situation, they don't work for you, you work for them."
--Ken Blanchard

"As you wait upon the Lord, you learn to see things from His perspective, move at His pace, and function under His directives. Waiting times are growing times and learning times. As you quiet your heart, you enter His peace: as you sense your weakness, you receive His strength: as you lay down your will, you hear His calling. When you mount up, you are being lifted by the wind of His Spirit . . . When you move ahead, you are sensitive to His timing. When you act, you give as yourself only to the things He has asked you to do.
--Roy Lessin

Source:

Thinkexist.com

wisdomquotes.com

www.twu.ca/academics/graduate/leadership/servant-leadership/quotes.html

http://www.twu.ca/academics/graduate/leadership/servant-leadership/quotes.html