“Servant-leadership is now part of the vocabulary of enlightened leadership. Bob Greenleaf, along with other notables such as McGregor, Drucker, and Follett, has created a new thought-world of leadership that contains such virtues as growth, responsibility, and love.”
Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor, Marshall School of Business,
University of Southern California; On Leadership
“I truly believe that servant-leadership has never been more applicable to the world of leadership than it is today.”
Ken Blanchard, The Heart of Leadership
“We are each indebted to Greenleaf for bringing spirit and values into the workplace. His ideas will have enduring value for every generation of leaders.”
Peter Block, Stewardship
“Anyone can be a servant-leader. Any one of us can take initiative; it doesn’t require that we be appointed a leader; but it does require that we operate from moral authority. The spirit of servant-leadership is the spirit of moral authority.”
Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
“The servant-leader is servant first. Becoming a servant-leader begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.”
Robert K. Greenleaf, The Servant as Leader
“With its deeper resonances in our spiritual traditions, Greenleaf reminds us that the essence of leadership is service, and therefore the welfare of people. Anchored in this way, we can distinguish between the tools of influence, persuasion, and power from the orienting values defining leadership to which these tools are applied.”
Ronald Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers
“The most difficult step, Greenleaf has written that any developing servant-leader must take, is to begin the personal journey toward wholeness and self-discovery.”
Joseph Jaworski, Synchronicity
“Robert K. Greenleaf’s work has struck a resonant chord in the minds and hearts of scholars and practitioners alike. His message lives through others, the true legacy of a servant-leader.”
Jim Kouzes, The Leadership Challenge
“Robert Greenleaf takes us beyond cynicism and cheap tricks and simplified techniques into the heart of the matter, into the spiritual lives of those who lead.”
Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach
“Servant-leadership is more than a concept. As far as I’m concerned, it is a fact. I would simply define it by saying that any great leader, by which I also mean an ethical leader of any group, will see herself or himself primarily as a servant of that group and will act accordingly.”
M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled
“No one in the past 30 years has had a more profound impact on thinking about leadership than Robert Greenleaf. If we sought an objective measure of the quality of leadership available to society, there would be none better than the number of people reading and studying his writings.”
Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline
“Servant-leadership offers hope and wisdom for a new era in human development, and for the creation of better, more caring institutions.”
Larry C. Spears, President & CEO, The Spears Center for Servant-Leadership
editor/contributing author, Insights on Leadership
“I believe that Greenleaf knew so much when he said the criterion of successful servant-leadership is that those we serve are healthier and wiser and freer and more autonomous, and perhaps they even loved our leadership so much that they also want to serve others.”
Margaret Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science
“Despite all the buzz about modern leadership techniques, no one knows better than Greenleaf what really matters.”
Working Woman Magazine