Servant Leadership Beyond Servant and Leader: A Buddhist Perspective on the Theory and Practice of Servant Leadership

Abstract

In the pursuit of physical and spiritual needs, human beings gather in a community and organize under certain leadership structures. Leadership allows unorganized individual efforts to communicate and collaborate, mustering individual efforts to respond collectively to the powerful challenges and uncertainties of the natural environmental. The chapter first reviews some defining qualities of servant leadership, and it then analyzes some of the benefits and challenges of applying servant leadership. An important attempt in this chapter is to explore how servant leadership could be implemented and sustained from a Buddhist perspective. Even though many studies have discussed Buddhist perspectives and the potential contributions to leadership in general (Kemavuthanon and Duberley 2009; Nolan 2013; Pasini and Wang 2013; Swierczek and Jousse 2014; Wijebandara 2016), this chapter elaborates on how insights from the Mahāyāna Buddhism could inspire the realization of servant leadership ideals, such as awareness, compassion, and care, particularly in the social entrepreneurship which demands deep emotional and intellectual strengths. In conclusion, the chapter offers an enhanced and sustainable model of servant leadership, ‘Interdependent Leadership’, based on Buddhist philosophies, teachings, and practices. It aims to help transcend servant leadership beyond any fixation on the leader and follower identities.