On Culture: The Death of the Alpha Manager - the Resurgence of Servant Leadership?
More of our companies' value now lives in the intellectual capital of our employees than on the balance sheet — is this shift quietly killing the alpha manager? Command and control worked when we were managing machines and inventory, when the loudest voice in the room could still get results. Is part of a bigger reckoning happening in America: stewardship over control, decency and civility over domination, kindness over callousness?
Robert Greenleaf coined the term Servant Leader in 1970. Rather than teams serving a leader's ambitions, the leader serves the interests of his constituency. Of course, the two aren't mutually exclusive . . . hopefully the leader's ambitions are for the best performance of the organization balanced with the best interests of stakeholders. Listening, empathy, healing, development and stewardship are key factors.
I was introduced to the Servant Leadership model in 1987 when I joined Leadership Austin. As a 26-year old banker, soon to become a tech start-up executive, who wanted to become a master of the universe, I didn't immediately grasp the applicability of this model to business. I thought it was more for when wearing my community leadership hat. I knew motivating volunteers required a purpose-driven and self realization model. It wasn't until I was more seasoned that I realized the model served for-profit leadership just as well.
My father had taught me, "if you take care of the people above you and the people reporting to you, you won't have to worry about yourself." As I was coached and mentored, I learned that helping others succeed was the job of a leader, that and helping us collectively agree on our ambitions, our objectives, milestones and metrics of success.
McKinsey & Company highlights servant leadership as one of the six core essential traits for effective 21st-century leadership - and distills it as prioritizing the needs of team members, removing roadblocks, and fostering trust rather than commanding control. Jack Welch said, "Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others."
While not a fan of Welch's competitive "yank & rank" strategy, I believe his people development strategies align with servant leadership: 1) Growing Others: Welch maintained that a leader's true metric of success is not personal achievement, but elevating, mentoring, and advancing the people on their team. 2) The "Generosity Gene": He frequently described great leaders as possessing a genuine love for seeing others get promoted, receive raises, and earn bonuses without jealousy or resentment. 3) Removing Obstacles: Welch compared a leader's role to a sweeper in the game of curling—clearing bureaucracy, clutter, and unnecessary rules out of the way so employees can perform effectively. 4) Chief Meaning Officer: He believed leaders must clearly communicate where the organization is going, why it is going there, and what is in it for the employees.
Decency is the moral foundation of servant leadership, ensuring that employees are treated as human beings first and assets second. Civility is the operational framework, the practical vehicle for respect. It establishes the ground rules for how a servant leader communicates and manages conflict. It creates psychological safety. While civility is about maintaining standards, Kindness is proactive. It is the genuine desire to uplift, support, and develop others.
Are we seeing a demand for servant leadership beyond the workplace . . . rather than division and animus, or command & control, are we awakening to the value of, the efficacy of, decency, civility and kindness?
Together in curiosity & discovery,
Eugene Sepulveda
Founder & CEO, Culturati
The boss factor: Making the world a better place through workplace relationships
Tera Allas and Bill Schaninger, McKinsey, September 22, 2020 Summary: McKinsey researchers argue that improving how managers treat employees may be the single highest-leverage move a company can make, for both business performance and employees' lives outside work. Their analysis finds the manager relationship is the top driver of job satisfaction, which ranks second only to mental health in predicting overall life satisfaction — yet 75% of workers call their immediate boss the single most stressful part of their job, and Gallup estimates only one in ten people naturally has the traits of a great manager. The payoff for getting it right is measurable: business units in the top quartile of engagement post operating margins 1 to 4 points higher than bottom-quartile units. The authors explicitly invoke servant leadership as the model to aim for, distilling it to one question every manager should ask: "How do I make my team members' lives easier — physically, cognitively, and emotionally?" Their fix centers on four manager behaviors — empathy, genuine gratitude, positive regard, and self-care, since power itself tends to erode empathy over time — paired with organizational changes like screening for servant-leader traits and building employee satisfaction into how managers are evaluated and promoted. |
Here are the essential tenets of great leadership - The Jack Welch way
Rhucha Kulkarni Smriti, People Matters, January 3, 2018; updated March 6, 2019 Summary: The article argues that leadership is fundamentally about growing others, not yourself, and builds eleven tenets around that shift — anchored by Welch's own line: "Before you become a leader, success is about growing yourself; when you become a leader, success is about growing others." Welch treats generosity as a competitive advantage rather than a soft trait — "Grab the generosity gene" — and says his litmus test for senior candidates is asking how many people they promoted last year. Candor gets the same operating-principle treatment: a company with no secrets, he argues, moves faster and decides better. He's equally insistent leadership isn't dour — building an environment people are reluctant to leave on a Friday, celebrating wins as an underrated management tool, and letting people fail fast and learn are treated as central as any metric. The piece closes by crediting Welch with elevating HR to the organization's most important function, playing dual roles as "pastor" (confidant, confidence-builder) and "parent" (a quiet, firm corrective presence) — the throughline being that for Welch, developing people wasn't a program bolted onto the job. It was the job. |
Examples of Servant Leaders
Stephen R. Covey, Franklin Covey Ireland blog, February 7, 2022 Summary: Stephen R. Covey draws on his own career to argue that servant leadership is demanding, not soft — it pushes people toward accountability rather than letting them lean on a leader for approval or blame. His clearest example: an early boss who, when Covey asked for feedback on his speeches, replied "Do you want to be dependent upon me?" and never praised or criticized him, forcing Covey to develop his own judgment instead. He points to Horst Schulze at The Ritz-Carlton, whose "ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen" culture Covey says he confirmed by finding the hotel's kitchen as spotless as its lobby, and to Toro's Ken Melrose, who literally posted his personal performance goals outside his office for anyone to see and treated company resources as something to steward rather than own. A football-sideline contrast closes the case: one coach calling every offensive and defensive play himself versus one who built an empowered staff and stepped in only at pivotal moments — the latter is Covey's servant leader. The line worth lifting: "You can manage things, but you must lead people." His closing formula — "fast is slow, slow is fast" — is a direct challenge to anyone expecting servant leadership to produce quick, visible wins. Worth flagging if you cite it: outside the Schulze and Melrose details, most of the evidence is Covey's personal anecdote rather than data — this reads as a persuasive case, not a documented study. |
Opinion: Utah just voted for civility — our leaders should take the hint
Ben Wilkins, Deseret News, August 15, 2026 Summary: A Davis County small-business owner argues that Utah's June 2026 primaries show voters "rewarding leaders who lower the temperature instead of raising it" — across the political spectrum, not one party alone. His sharpest data point: Rep. Celeste Maloy beat a "far more combative challenger," Phil Lyman, by better than 2-to-1, while Ben McAdams on the left and Rep. Blake Moore on the right were rewarded for the same steadiness over outrage. He points to Gov. Spencer Cox urging Utahns to stop hating fellow Americans after Charlie Kirk's assassination, and to Sens. John Curtis and Mike Lee's bipartisan work on permitting reform and wildfire legislation, as civility functioning in practice rather than as a slogan — which he defines plainly as "the discipline of treating the people you disagree with as you would like to be treated." His conclusion: Utahns are "tired of politics as blood sport," the state's path runs "through the better angels, not the loudest voices," and civility doesn't require surrendering principle to get there. |
Want the full newsletter each week in your inbox? Sign up now to save time and stay on top of trends.
Comments