J Bus Ethics (2015) 128:119–131
DOI 10.1007/s10551-014-2085-z
Compassionate Love as a Cornerstone of Servant Leadership:
An Integration of Previous Theorizing and Research
Dirk van Dierendonck • Kathleen Patterson
Received: 2 December 2012 / Accepted: 29 January 2014 / Published online: 13 February 2014
 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract Servant leadership is increasingly gaining
interest inside and outside academia. This article builds and
extends current theorizing by describing the process that
introduces compassionate love as a practical translation for
the need to serve, which was positioned by Greenleaf
(Servant leadership: a journey into the nature of legitimate
power and greatness, Paulist Press, New York, 1977) as the
core of servant leadership. This article takes a virtues
perspective and shows how servant leadership may
encourage a more meaningful and optimal human func-
tioning with a strong sense of community to current-day
organizations. In essence, we propose that a leader’s pro-
pensity for compassionate love will encourage a virtuous
attitude in terms of humility, gratitude, forgiveness and
altruism. This virtuous attitude will give rise to servant
leadership behavior in terms of empowerment, authentic-
ity, stewardship and providing direction.
Keywords Servant leadership
Compassionate love

Virtues
Meaningfulness
Humility
Servant leadership theory has received increased attention
in the current leadership field (van Dierendonck 2011)
being noted by top writers and implemented in top orga-
nizations (Northouse 2013). This growth and attention in
D. van Dierendonck (&)
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University,
Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 PA Rotterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: DvanDierendonck@rsm.nl
K. Patterson
School of Business and Leadership, Regent University, 1333
Regent University Drive, Ste. 102, Virginia Beach, VA 23464,
USA
e-mail: kathpat@regent.edu
the literature on servant leadership behaviors states that
leadership must primarily focus on followers while meet-
ing the needs of others (Patterson 2003), this motivation is
based on what Greenleaf calls the conscious choice to lead,
yet it is guided by the choice to be servant first (Greenleaf
1977). The emphasis in servant leadership theory is on
leaders whose primary aim is to serve their followers while
developing employees to their fullest potential in different
areas such as task effectiveness, community stewardship,
self-motivation, and also the development of their leader-
ship capabilities. According to Farling et al. (1999), servant
leaders provide vision, gain credibility and trust from fol-
lowers and influence others by focusing on bringing out the
best in their followers. They rely on one-on-one commu-
nication to understand the abilities, needs, desires, goals
and potential of those individuals. With knowledge of each
follower’s unique characteristics and interests, leaders then
assist followers in achieving their potential (Liden et al.
2008). Barbuto and Wheeler (2006) described servant
leadership as including an altruistic calling, which is the
motivation of leaders to put others’ needs and interests
ahead of their own, and organizational stewardship, which
is orienting others toward benefiting and serving the
community. Greenleaf (1977) emphasized the importance
of really caring for persons, organizations and the society
in general.
In this article, we deepen this caring perspective by
introducing compassionate love as an antecedent for ser-
vant leadership. We build on earlier work by Patterson
(2003, 2010) on the importance of love as foundational for
servant leadership, link it to Van Dierendonck’s (2011)
recent review article that described six characteristics that
together exemplify servant leadership behavior and inte-
grate their work with recent insight from the field of
compassionate love (e.g., Sprecher and Fehr 2005).
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Fig. 1 Compassionate love and
servant leadership, conceptual
model
Additionally, an update will be provided of empirical
evidence that increasingly is coming available supporting
the key propositions in this paper. This way, we aim to
provide an integrated synthesis to the question of many
scholars and practitioners who seek to understand the
importance for serving others in leadership. Our model (see
Fig. 1) brings together key theorizing and recent empirical
findings from different authors into one overall framework.
Servant Leadership
Most current thinking on servant leadership starts with the
writings of Robert Greenleaf who laid down the base for
servant-leadership theory in the 1970s (Greenleaf 1977).
Servant leadership is positioned as an approach to leader-
ship that is beneficial for the organization by awakening,
engaging and developing employees as well as emphasiz-
ing the importance of listening to, appreciating, valuing
and empowering people (Bass and Riggio 2006). The last
few years, this people-centered leadership theory has
gained momentum within academia and organizations,
with evidence showing that companies with leaders who
empower people, have more satisfied, more committed and
better performing employees (Liden et al. 2000).
One of the current challenges of servant leadership
theory is that the definition of servant leadership as given
by Greenleaf focuses mainly on the motivation to strive for
a leadership position and on the outcomes of servant
leadership, leaving a mystery of what happens in-between
the impetus to serve and the outcomes of serving. Until the
end of the last century, little attention was paid to the actual
behavior of servant leaders. Starting with the work of Laub
(1999), a stronger focus on servant leadership behavior has
given rise to several different theories and measurement
instruments focusing on a wide range of behaviors. Van
Dierendonck’s (2011) review article sought to bring more
clarity in this field by combining these conceptual models
with the empirical evidence gained from seven different
measures of servant leadership. He argued that six key
characteristics of servant leader behavior can be distin-
guished that underlie the majority of the measures currently
in use (including his own: Van Dierendonck and Nuijten
2011): empowerment, stewardship, authenticity, providing
direction, humility and interpersonal acceptance. Although
Van Dierendonck (2011) defined them together as
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D. van Dierendonck, K. Patterson
exemplifying servant leadership behavior in the broadest
sense, he also acknowledged that not all characteristics
may be central and that there may be an order in which to
place them. We would like to build on his work by bringing
some differentiation within these six key characteristics.
The first four characteristics (empowerment, steward-
ship, authenticity and providing direction) are placed
together as exemplifying the core of servant leadership
behavior. We suggest that humility may be better con-
ceptualized as a virtuous attitude that underlies servant
leadership behavior toward followers and that two ele-
ments can be distinguished within interpersonal accep-
tance: forgiveness and compassionate love. Compassionate
love is placed in our model as underlying a servant leader’s
need to serve, and forgiveness is placed with humility as
one of four virtuous attitudes (with gratitude and altruism,
see Fig. 1). Interpersonal acceptance was originally an
element of the theoretical model underlying Van Diere-
ndonck and Nuijten’s (2011) empirical work. From the
items that were meant to represent this dimension, the
items focused on forgiveness were the only ones left in the
final scale, which showed that forgiveness deserves a place
as a separate servant leadership dimension. Of interest, the
items focused on empathy did not survive the exploratory
factor analysis and were removed from their instrument
because of cross-loadings with the other dimensions. This
may point toward empathy (which is an element of com-
passionate love) as an underlying motivational element of
servant leadership.
Recent research on servant leadership basically sup-
ported the proposed model by Van Dierendonck (2011) in
terms of its potential beneficial influence. Positive rela-
tionships have been reported with job satisfaction and work
engagement (Van Dierendonck and Nuijten 2011), trust
and team performance (Schaubroeck et al. 2011), team
potency (Hu and Liden 2011) and firm performance (Pet-
erson et al. 2012).
One of the most intriguing challenges of servant lead-
ership is the dilemma incorporated in the term servant
leadership itself: ‘‘Serving and leading become almost
exchangeable. Being a servant allows a person to lead;
being a leader implies a person serves’’ (Van Dierendonck
2011, p. 1231). How can one both lead and serve simul-
taneously is the point often pondered; interestingly
Greenleaf (1977) explains the paradoxical aspects of ser-
vant leadership with his assertion that this idea can run
Love and Servant Leadership
counter to common sense, and yet there is validity to the
essence of leading and serving. The question then arises
what underlies this motivation to serve, this willingness to
encourage the interest and personal growth of subordinates
(Ng and Koh 2010). Intriguingly, despite its importance
within servant leadership theory, scarce attention has been
given to this central aspect that may shed more light on
why certain leaders choose to become servant leaders. This
underlying motivation should be distinguished from
McClelland’s (1985) positive need for power by its focus
on the needs of employees and Chan and Drasgow’s (2001)
motivation to lead which focuses on a person’s likelihood
to take charge. Preliminary work by Ng et al. (2008)
showed that leaders with a motivation-to-serve where less
likely to also have an affective motivation-to-lead.
Inspiration for a deeper understanding of the motiva-
tional side of servant leadership can also be gained from
the limited work that relates leader personality to servant
leadership behavior. It points toward agreeableness as the
most likely Big 5 personality characteristic relevant in this
respect. Agreeableness reflects one’s predisposition to
cooperation and social harmony. Relatedly, recent work by
Xu et al. (2011) confirmed the potential role of agree-
ableness for ethical leadership, which is related to servant
leadership with its focus on caring for people, integrity,
trustworthiness and serving the good of the whole (Brown
et al. 2005). Furthermore, recent theoretical (Eisenbeiss
2012) and empirical (Mayer et al. 2012) work on ethical
leadership emphasized the central role of moral identity as
an antecedent for ethical leadership. Aquino and Reed
(2002) showed that the most important traits people iden-
tify as qualities a moral person possesses are virtues such
as caring, compassion, fairness, a helpful attitude, honesty
and kindness. These traits reflect Hart et al.’s (1998, p. 515)
definition of moral identity ‘‘as a commitment to one’s
sense of self to lines of action that promote or protect the
welfare of others,’’ which brings us to our central argument
of compassionate love as a core antecedent of servant
leadership.
Leading with Love
We propose that compassionate love may be an essential
cornerstone for servant leadership (Patterson 2010) that
helps deepen our understanding of Greenleaf’s motivation-
to-serve. Love is mysterious, a concept that in some circles
has been mystified for centuries and eluded a true con-
ceptual definition (Myers and Shurts 2002). Love can be as
mysterious as leadership itself, and yet there is something
powerful about the components of love that compel both
leader and follower. Greenleaf (1977) stated that love is
indefinable, yet it has manifestations that are infinite. A
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complex concept, love is constrained by multiple defini-
tions and an assortment of typologies, making it essential
for researchers to clarify its meaning for the chosen context
(Myers and Shurts 2002). Compassionate love has been
defined by Sprecher and Fehr (2005, p. 630) as: ‘‘an atti-
tude toward other(s), either close others or strangers or all
of humanity; containing feelings, cognitions, and behaviors
that are focused on caring, concern, tenderness, and an
orientation toward supporting, helping, and understanding
the other(s), particularly when the other(s) is (are) per-
ceived to be suffering or in need.’’ The need for this love as
echoed by Winston (2002) is that it causes the leader to
consider ‘‘good deeds’’ toward the follower, as this is the
‘‘right thing’’ to do; Winston provides the distinction
between doing such good deeds (to benefit the follower) as
opposed to doing good to be ‘‘seen’’ or ‘‘appear’’ as good,
which would likely be a hidden agenda. Compassionate
love is about doing good with a clear motivation of concern
for the followers, acts of kindness that are intended for the
follower’s benefit not for the leader’s benefit (such as
looking good).
Compassionate love is proposed as an underlying moti-
vation for servant leadership, given that it more than any
other leadership theory emphasizes a concern for the needs
of followers (Mayer 2010); which comes clearly to the front
in Greenleaf’s (1977, p. 62) best test of servant leadership:
‘‘The best test, and the most difficult to administer, is this:
Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being
served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous,
more likely themselves to become servants?’’
Compassionate love is foundational to servant leader-
ship and is considered the cornerstone of the servant
leader/follower relationship; this love is related to agápao
love. According to Winston (2002), agápao love includes
an idea of compassionateness. Agápao love is an unselfish
moral love that centers on the good of the other (Patterson
2003). Agápao love is the Greek term for moral love,
meaning to do the right thing at the right time and for the
right reasons. This type of love applies to today’s leaders;
in that, leaders must consider the needs of their followers;
Winston explains this is more about seeing followers as
hired hearts versus hired hands. This love is shown by
leaders who consider each person as a total person—one
with needs, wants and desires. Compassionate love is
harmonious with servant leadership to the extent that
servant leaders must have such great love for the fol-
lowers that they are willing to learn the gifts and talents
of each one of the followers. The leader that leads with
compassionate love has a focus on the employee first,
then on the talents of the employee, and lastly on how
this benefits the organization.
According to Underwood (2008), compassionate love is
others-centered love and includes attitudes, actions and
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expressions, making this much fuller than a static compo-
nent. Compassionate love has the following characteristics:
valuing the other at a fundamental level, giving the other a
free choice, a cognitive accurate understanding of the
needs and feelings of another, being emotionally engaged
and an attitude of openness and receptivity (Underwood
2008). In comparison to other related concepts such as
empathy, it is directed at the good of the other; it is not
limited to those who suffer like compassion, or offenders
like forgiveness (Oman 2011). It adds an emotional com-
ponent to altruism and does not imply sexual attraction like
romantic love (for a more elaborate discussion, see:
Underwood 2008). The combined findings of a large
research initiative funded by the Pelzer institute provides
empirical support for many theorized antecedents and
consequences of compassionate love that are also relevant
for servant leadership, such as self-esteem, a greater will-
ingness for self-sacrifice, care-giving self-efficacy, for-
giveness, empathy and altruism, among others (Oman
2011).
Compassionate love has also been placed as an essential
element of wisdom (Ardelt 2003, 2004). Wisdom is gen-
erally conceived as instilling a way of life that has a
positive influence on oneself, others and the society at
large. Although psychological research into wisdom is
relatively new, the search for wisdom has a rich history
(Staudinger and Glück 2011), mostly based on analyzing
historic examples and philosophical writings. An exact
definition of wisdom is difficult to give, but usually we
relate wisdom to people who can bridge contradictions, act
selfless, integer and sometimes paradoxical with a sense of
taking care for the whole. Among the first to study wisdom
from a psychological perspective were Baltes and his col-
leagues in the Berlin Wisdom Project (e.g., Baltes and
Staudinger 1993). Their efforts to understand wisdom were
at first inspired by a focus on the positive aspects of aging.
Their conceptualization took a broader focus on adult
development in general life and on the means and ends
toward an optimal life. Among the criteria they developed
that constitute wisdom throughout cultures and philo-
sophical writings are the ability to address challenging
questions on the meaning of life, the ability to deal with the
uncertainties inherent in living, with an exceptional ability
to use a high level of knowledge and give balanced advice.
Their research confirmed that wisdom helps leading the
good life filled with meaning, especially because balance is
at its core weighing parts with an explicit view on the
whole (Baltes et al. 2002).
These descriptions of wisdom can easily be linked to
aspects of servant leadership like foresight, foreseeing
outcomes of situations and working with intuition and
stewardship, holding something in trust and serving the
needs of others, and on the emphasis on working toward
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D. van Dierendonck, K. Patterson
consensus while making decisions where silence, listening
and persuasion are essential. Actually, Greenleaf, accord-
ing to Spears (2011), was one of the first writers to advo-
cate foresight as a necessity for servant leaders, this ability
to foresee with the intuitive mind. Welch and Gilmore
(2011) advocate the idea of wisdom as an aspect of the
heart whereby leaders can slow down and listen to those
deep connections within our souls. In addition, they state
that love is the expansion to intelligence and wisdom
providing greater coherence for the leader. According to
Ardelt (2003, 2004), wisdom can also be viewed as a
personality characteristic. In her three-dimensional opera-
tionalization, the affective component explicitly refers to
sympathetic and compassionate love for others. It allows
for a deeper understanding of others by transcending one’s
subjectivity and projections. Le and Levenson (2005)
indeed showed that an attitude of mature love with a focus
on giving love without thoughts of reward was related to a
stronger sense of self-transcendence. This linkage toward
wisdom helps us understand how compassionate love is
expected to give a deeper understanding of the motives and
behaviors of other people which will allow for more con-
structive behavior and a stronger focus on the needs of
others, which can be connected to servant leadership
wherein the focus is on the needs of the followers (Patt-
erson 2003; Stone et al. 2004).
This explicit attention for love may seem strange within
the competitive context of most organizations. Argandona
(2011), however, recently argued for the existence of love
in modern-day organizations, mainly because it helps cre-
ate a better more human climate. He also argued that love
is already present in most interactions that we have with
other people in organizations. We maintain that working
with love may not be automatically present in organiza-
tions but that a leader plays an important role in bringing
this about and making it part of the organizational culture.
Caldwell and Dixon (2009) reasoned that leaders who work
with love in terms of caring, commitment to the welfare
and happiness of people within their organization change
their focus on employees’ worth and potential, instead of
on seeing them as means to reach organizational goals.
This change in focus helps build an organization based on
trust instead of on control. It has even been suggested by
Boyatzis et al. (2006) that coaching others with compassion
is related to beneficial psychophysiological effects, which
have a positive influence on the well-being of the leaders
themselves and on their long-term effectiveness as a leader.
By acknowledging the virtuous nature of love—instead of
considering it as being purely emotional—and the fact that
in organizations, as in other groups, relationships become
based on more than contracts only.
An alternative way to better understand what leading
with love may mean is to contrast it with leading with fear.
Love and Servant Leadership
Daft (2002) noted that much leadership today within orga-
nizations is based on fear, with an underlying notion that
fear is good because it works, and yet Daft also noted the
consequences of leading with fear. These being the loss of
the best people along with the knowledge they take with
them, the lack of allowing employees to perform at optimal
levels, and the dreaded avoidance that will occur as
employees feel disconnected; in addition, an organization
led with fear stifles innovation and creativity as there is little
room for learning, growing or risk taking. Similarly, Tep-
per’s (2007) review article on abusive leadership showed
that hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors by leaders are
likely to be a serious problem for the people involved.
Although its negative influence may depend on the needs of
the followers, research points toward the potential detri-
mental effects in terms of higher rates of theft, sabotage,
psychological distress and organizational failure.
Love and fear have been placed as opposite ends of a
continuum (Daft 2002; Patterson 2006); within this con-
tinuum, fear will produce organizational cultures where
followers will feel powerless; additionally, Winston (2002)
shows that fear in followers creates anxiousness and worry.
Followers, according to Daft, will lose confidence, com-
mitment, enthusiasm, imagination and motivation—all the
things leaders are so often trying to encourage. The opposite
side of the continuum offers leading with love; this is where
followers, according to Daft, feel alive, connected and
energized. Love encourages ‘‘acts of helping, cooperation,
sharing, and understanding’’ (Daft 2002). For leaders, fear
is manifested as the arrogance, selfishness, deception,
unfairness and disrespect, while love is manifested as the
generation of dignity, respect and honor (Daft 2002).
Ferch and Mitchell (2001) advocated love as a goal for
leaders, whereby the leader is emotionally, physically, and
spiritually present for the follower; furthermore, they
pointed out that this relationship is reciprocal and includes
the premise of challenging any behavior that is inconsistent
with love. Crom (1998) agreed that servant leaders genu-
inely care for others and are interested in the lives of fol-
lowers. Servant leaders exhibit love by leading with
feeling; this fosters understanding, gratitude, kindness,
forgiveness, and compassion (Gunn 2002). This love leads
to serving the best interests of others, illuminating the
corporate culture, and freeing the leader from self-doubt,
self-criticism, and self-imposed limitations.
Arguments for the essential role of compassionate love
for servant leadership can also be found within evolutionary
theory. Van Vugt et al. (2008) described how leadership has
evolved through the ages from prehuman leadership, to
tribal leadership, chiefs, kings and warlords to the current
state and business leadership. Their analyses showed the
importance for good leadership of not only the general
intelligence of the leader, but also of social intelligence,
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political skills, empathy and perspective taking. From an
evolutionary perspective, being socially perceptive is as
important as task knowledge. Followers look for leaders
who can best acquire resources and share them with them,
which makes trustworthiness, fairness, generosity and self-
sacrifice essential leader attributes (Van Vugt et al. 2008).
Some evidence for this proposition was provided in a study
which used a coordination games setup where leadership for
the social good benefited followers. The results showed that
people may choose to be such a leader even if it can be
costly for themselves (Gillet et al. 2011).
Evolutionary arguments for the emergence of compas-
sionate love can also be found in Goetz et al. (2010).
Although their reasoning primarily focused on compassion,
their three lines of reasoning may also inform us about the
origin of the broader concept of compassionate love. First,
they reason that care for others evolved from a need to
enhance the welfare of human’s vulnerable offspring.
Human babies are born prematurely and cannot take care of
themselves for several years. They need protection until
they reach a more mature age. The second argument relates
to mate selection, as it makes sense to choose partners that
are more likely to be faithful and remain bonded to the
relationship in order to protect the young in their vulner-
able years. Third, compassionate love can be posited as
being at the basis of altruism which helps build commu-
nally advantageous relationships. This builds broader
social networks and stronger cultures with a greater chance
of survival in the long run.
Compassionate love is likely to be related to selfless
behavior and motive, and according to Underwood (2008)
is ‘‘centered on the good of the other’’ and not self-centered
or self-motivated. Dambrun and Richard (2011) provided
in their model on self-centeredness and selflessness deeper
insight into why selflessness may be its own reward. They
proposed that people whose functioning is characterized by
selfless functioning work from the harmony principle
where striving toward harmony with self and others is
related to a stronger personal emotional stability and a
feeling of being in harmony, which is related to more
authentic happiness. Authentic happiness in its turn func-
tions as a feedback loop toward feeling in harmony with
self and others. This harmony principle favors working
from the whole where the interrelatedness of different parts
of oneself and that of the environment are in agreement.
This understanding of interrelatedness is at the base of
working from love, kindness and compassion.
Virtues
The compassionate love of servant leaders expresses a
genuine appreciation for followers and care for their people
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(Russell 2001; Russell and Stone 2002). With this love,
which stems from the servant leader’s personal values—or
virtues—servant leaders inspire hope and courage. We
argue that for a deeper understanding of servant leadership
and the role of love as a determining influence, it is crucial
to look at servant leadership as a virtuous theory. A virtue
is a qualitative characteristic that is part of one’s character,
which according to Whetstone (2002) is something within
a person that is internal, almost spiritual; a characteristic
that exemplifies human excellence (Yu 1998).
Virtue in the organizational life, according to Cameron
and Caza (2002), adds to several elements, most notably
human strength, resilience and extraordinary performance.
In the field of virtues, we look to Aristotle who is credited
with establishing the framework for virtue definition
(Kennedy 1995). Virtue comes from the Greek word arête,
meaning excellence. The Aristotelian virtue is defined as
consisting of three elements: (a) good habits, (b) the middle
ground between the extremes of too much and too little,
and (c) a habit that is a firm and settled disposition toward
choosing good (Kennedy 1995). Interesting to note is that
virtues, according to Aristotle, are exceeding normal hap-
piness and are applicable to both the individual and orga-
nizational levels (Cameron and Caza 2002). Virtue theory
addresses the idea of doing the right things with a focus on
moral character. Virtue does not answer the overall ques-
tion of right or wrong, rather it seeks to do the right thing in
a particular situation (Kennedy 1995). Considered the
oldest tradition in Western philosophy, virtue theory has its
origins in Greek civilization, most notably in Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics (Arjoon 2000). A contemporary
resurgence has occurred with emphasis focused on the
rights of others, or, rather, with an emphasis on other
people, bringing focus back to the investigation into virtue
theory. Arjoon (2000) proffers that virtue theory is valuable
to leadership due to the focus on the common good, rather
than of profit maximizing, therefore earning a place in
leadership. This is echoed by Hackett and Wang (2012)
who advocate the need for virtues in leadership and the
modern organization; they indicate that virtues will impact
two things, both the behavior of organizational members
and the organizational culture. Virtue theory allows lead-
ership to be concerned with the dynamic interactions
among organizational members. Servant leadership is the
preferred paradigm because servant leaders serve accord-
ing to highly principled means.
We propose that compassionate love will encourage
moral emotions and strengthen virtuous attitudes. The four
virtuous attitudes relevant for servant leadership are in line
with the traits suggested by Emmons (2000, 2006) as part of
spiritual intelligence and the character aspects of the
‘‘worthy leadership’’ model of Dale Thompson et al. (2008):
humility, gratitude, forgiveness, altruism (see Fig. 1).
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D. van Dierendonck, K. Patterson
Humility
Humility is the ability of a leader to put his or her own
interest, talents, and achievements in the right perspective
(Van Dierendonck 2011). True humility means that the
leader is not self-focused but focused on others, the fol-
lowers. Humility is not about having a low view of one’s
self or one’s self-worth, but it means viewing oneself as no
better or worse than others do. The virtue of humility
causes one to consider moderation, to listen to the advice of
others, and to come with the realization of power as being
less than dictatorial. Humility is a peaceful virtue that
rejects self-glorification and is an almost social reversal of
what we normally expect from leaders in that it purports
the idea of serving (Lawrence 2002). While humility is
often considered a weakness, it most certainly is not; this
virtue is the not over-valuing of one’s self which respects
the worth of all moral persons (Hare 1996).
Humility is associated with a willingness to perceive
oneself accurately, acknowledging the contributions and
strengths of others and by an openness to learn (Owens and
Hekman 2012). Humility was mentioned as an essential
element of Collins’ (2005) Level 5 leadership, in fact if one
looks closely the research team considered calling the
‘‘good to great’’ phenomena servant leadership. According
to this study, CEOs that combine fierce resolve and com-
petence with a humble attitude are able to build a company
that outperforms competitors and has long-lasting survival.
Of interest to the link toward servant leadership is that
recent research indeed shows that humility is related to a
more generous behavior (Exline and Hill 2012).
First empirical confirmation of these premises can be
found in the recent work of Owens and his colleagues. In a
qualitative study, Owens and Hekman (2012) studied the
impact of humility of 55 leaders both through interviews and
through observing leader–follower interactions in a diverse
range of contexts, combined with information on the leader
of his leader assessment and financial performance data
where available. Owens and Hekman offered three things
that exist with humble leaders as a way of being; first humble
leaders have high moral character, exemplify quiet charisma,
and possess a belief in personal and follower malleability.
This study allowed them to define the core of leader humility
as ‘‘…leaders catalyzing and reinforcing mutual leader–
follower development by eagerly and publicly … engaging
in the messy process of learning and growing’’ (Owens and
Hekman 2012, p. 801). Humble leaders catalyze learning and
growing by exemplifying a learning attitude, by being open
about their mistakes and limitations and by actively
encouraging others strengths. This led to an increased feeling
of personal freedom and engagement among followers.
Humility and servant leadership are inexplicably linked,
the two are hand-in-hand and inseparable. Servant leaders
Love and Servant Leadership
exhibit humility in the very essence of leading and serving
others (Patterson 2003). According to Patterson, the
humility aspect of servant leadership allows the leader to
be focused on others as opposed to a self-focus or orga-
nizational focus. This is congruent with the insights into
Sandage and Wiens (2001) who advocated humility is key
in the leader keeping one’s accomplishments and talents in
perspective, which includes self-acceptance and further
includes the idea of true humility as not being self-focused
but rather focused on others. This is further validated by
the work of Fairholm and Fairholm (2000) who stated that
the servant leader’s concentration on service limits the
negative effects of self-interest, and humility counteracts
that self-interest.
Gratitude
Gratitude is probably one of the most researched positive
virtues of the last few years. Gratitude can be defined as a
feeling of thankful appreciation for the good things
received in life. It is an other-directed moral emotion which
has been linked to being interested in the needs of others
and of society (Michie 2009). In line with Watkins et al.
(2003), we assume that grateful leaders have a sense of
abundance, will appreciate the simple pleasures in life, are
appreciative of the contribution of others, and will
acknowledge the importance of expressing gratitude
toward those in their environment. There is abundant evi-
dence that a gratitude attitude is related to a greater sense
of well-being and happiness (e.g., Watkins et al. 2003;
Emmons and McCullough 2003), that it promotes effec-
tively dealing with stress, enhances personal growth and is
related to higher self-esteem (Emmons and Mishra 2011).
Gratitude has a strong otherness orientation, which dif-
ferentiates it from psychological capital dimensions such as
hope and resilience. Leaders with a grateful attitude are
more likely to have an open attitude toward the people
around them, which is an essential characteristic of servant
leaders (van Dierendonck 2011). As such, it is likely that
leaders with a grateful predisposition will disseminate this
attitude within their organization and their team, creating
more social harmony. Previous research has shown that
gratitude facilitates making new friends, that it promotes
trust, and is a character strength that makes people who
have it more desirable to become romantically involved
with (Emmons and Mishra 2011). In particular, the ability
to promote mutual trust is an important asset for servant
leaders, which is essential for building long-term effective
leader–follower relationships. Evolutionary biology
hypothesizes that gratitude may have evolved to facilitate
reciprocal altruism and upstream reciprocity (giving back
to others than to those that gave to them) (McCullough
125
et al. 2008). Not surprisingly, therefore, is that gratitude is
also believed to be cross-culturally relevant and may even
be observed among nonhuman primates. When looking at it
from the perspective of servant leadership and the organi-
zational life, the virtue of gratitude lends one to be more
focused on both employee and societal issues (Anderson
et al. 2007). First evidence for the potential beneficial role
of gratitude in the leader–follower relationship can be
found in the combined outcomes of the studies by Michie
(2009), who showed that leader gratitude was related to
treating followers with respect and concern for the rights of
others, and by Waters (2012), who showed that institutional
gratitude was related to job satisfaction.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness is a way for individuals to repair damaged
relationships and overcome debilitating thoughts and
emotions resulting from interpersonal injury (Aquino et al.
2003). Interpersonal workplace forgiveness is a process
whereby the injured employee overcomes negative emo-
tions toward his or her offender and refrains from causing
the offender harm even when he or she believes it is
morally justifiable to do so (Verdoold and van Dierendonck
2010). Given their position, servant leaders can play an
important role in cultivating forgiveness as part of the
organizational and team culture. They function as role
models and by showing intentional forgiveness they help
build an open, noninvasive and consistent dialogue in the
organization regarding conflict issues (Ferch and Mitchell
2001).
By forgiving others, negative emotions can be overcome
and resentment is let go. Leaders can play a vital role in
fostering forgiveness and, consequently, the healing that
allows the organization to move forwards (Cameron and
Caza 2002). Spears (2011) already positioned healing, the
ability to make whole, as one of the essential aspects of
servant leadership. One of the roles of servant leaders is to
provide meaning and vision through forgiveness. Provision
of legitimacy and support is also essential. Leaders can
exemplify, highlight and celebrate virtuous actions such as
forgiveness, by initiating and supporting organizational
structures, systems and resources that are aligned with
forgiveness and other important virtues (Madsen et al.
2009). Humility, gratitude and forgiveness have been
positioned as together representing an orientation to lead-
ership that ‘‘includes effectively handling oneself in a
nonegocentric, positive and offense-resistant manner’’
(Grahek et al. 2010, p. 272).
123
126
Altruism
Scholarly interest in altruism in general dates back to the
early 1800s (Gane 2003) and the definition of the term has
been widely discussed and debated. Altruism has been
studied in the context of various disciplines, including
economics, evolutionary biology, psychology and anthro-
pology. In general, altruism has been seen as the link
between good motives and good behavior. It has been
explored on the individual level and as a human quality,
yielding a general definition of altruism as helping others
just for the sake of helping. Monroe (1994) and Kaplan
(2000) stated that altruism not only is that which benefits
another but added that risk or sacrifice is involved. It is
about a concern for the welfare of another. DeYoung
(2000) also concurred with the traditional view of altruism
as an unselfish concern for others often involving personal
sacrifice; however, he believed that the personal pleasure
derived from helping others could also be included in our
understanding of altruism. Northouse (2013) showed the
linkage between servant leadership, as did Patterson
(2003), by stating that servant leaders are altruistic exhib-
iting a ‘‘strong motivation and deep-seated interest in
helping others.’’
Following (Sosik 2000), we define altruism within the
leadership context as behavior that seeks fulfillment of
others and is directed toward their benefit. With its focus
on seeking the best for others, altruism is clearly an
essential element of servant leadership. At least three
measures of servant leadership have incorporated altruism
as an essential subdimension. Dennis and Bocarnea
(2005) operationalized altruism with two items, focused
on the extent that leaders made personal sacrifices and
endured hardship to defend their followers. Barbuto and
Wheeler (2006) altruistic calling subscale focused on the
interest of others ahead of one’s own, sacrificing own
interests to meet other’s needs and going beyond the call
of duty to meet other’s needs. More recently, Reed et al.
(2011) showed that altruism was part of top executive
servant leadership with items focusing on sacrificing
personal benefit, serving without expectation of reward
and placing the interest of others over one’s own. Nort-
house (2013) reminds us that leaders who serve are
altruistic and further that servant leaders display altruistic
behaviors with ethical undertones that are follower-cen-
tered while placing other’s interests before their own and
act in ways that will benefit others.
Together, the arguments made above give the first
proposition:
Proposition 1 A leader’s compassionate love is related
to a stronger virtuous attitude in terms of humility, grati-
tude, forgiveness and altruism.
123
D. van Dierendonck, K. Patterson
Leader–Follower Behavior
The virtuous base of servant leadership encourages
behavior that exemplifies the realization that a sense of
responsibility comes with a leadership position; that with
transcending one’s own needs, it becomes essential to show
this in the relationships to others. As such, the four virtuous
traits are expected to be related to four key servant lead-
ership behaviors that most strongly represent the giving of
attention to others’ needs and perspectives: empowerment,
stewardship, authenticity and providing direction (Van
Dierendonck 2011).
The first servant leadership behavior is empowerment,
which stands for giving autonomy to followers to perform
tasks, developing their talent and letting them engage in
effective self-leadership. Leaders can do so by creating an
atmosphere in which empowerment can grow, and by
giving employees the feeling they have control over and
may use organizational resources that will benefit their
performance. Empowerment is expected to enhance fol-
lower’s intrinsic motivation, which is generally believed to
be positively related to performance through the facilitation
of creativity, cognitive flexibility and conceptual under-
standing (Amabile et al. 1990).
Second is stewardship, which refers to the willingness of
a leader to take care of and be responsible for the company
as a whole and to provide service instead of only thinking
about him- or herself (Spears 1995). There is an awareness
of the responsibility for future generations and the contri-
bution of an organization to society and the greater good.
Stewardship may come from the awareness that the first
responsibility of a leader is to be of service and that we are
accountable to something higher than ourselves (DeGraaf
et al. 2004).
Authenticity refers to being honest about oneself and
being open about inner thoughts and feelings and
expressing oneself in ways that are consistent. Authenticity
is about being true to oneself, accurately representing—
privately and publicly—internal states, intentions and
commitments (Van Dierendonck 2011). The importance of
authenticity for effective leadership is most strongly
emphasized in Avolio and Gardners’ authentic leadership
(2005). They define authentic leaders as working through
an increased self-awareness, relational transparency,
internalized transparency, an internalized moral perspec-
tive and balanced processing. A growing number of studies
confirms its importance for follower ethical and pro-social
behavior (Hannah et al. 2011), commitment and perfor-
mance (Leroy et al. 2011; Peterson et al. 2012).
The fourth servant leadership behavior is providing
direction, which means that leaders make sure that fol-
lowers know what is expected of them. It is about pro-
Love and Servant Leadership
viding support, providing goals and helping them see the
complete picture. It is related to Greenleaf’s emphasis on
foresight as a key competence of servant leaders (Spears
1995). For this, they need to understand the past and have
an accurate view of the present and the probable outcomes
of decisions. It is related to the emphasis on vision as an
essential element of transformational leadership (Bass
1990). However, servant leaders are expected to use per-
suasion and listening rather than their authority to convince
others.
This can be summarized in the following proposition:
Proposition 2 A leader’s virtuous attitude encourages
servant leadership behavior towards followers in terms of
empowerment, authenticity, stewardship and providing
direction.
We propose that this virtuous perspective on servant
leadership will strengthen three essential aspects in the
relationship with followers in line with what was suggested
by Correia de Sousa and Van Dierendonck (2010): optimal
human functioning, sense of community and meaningful-
ness. First of all, a servant leader’s focus on the needs of
followers and their personal growth, combined with a
willingness to share power in decision making might play a
fundamental role in ensuring that workers are able to
develop into what has been called optimal human func-
tioning (Ford and Smith 2007). The whole-person focus of
servant leadership is well expressed in this concept of
optimal functioning, given that it takes a motivational
approach and emphasizes the need for coherence and bal-
ance. This will help workers to feel competent, work
intuitively and have a greater tolerance for ambiguity
which allows them to think outside the box; in short to be
more creative, given that they are encouraged to use their
full creative potential. Optimal functioning means that
goals are aligned and integrated, there is a feeling of
ownership, and one experiences an internal locus of cau-
sality resulting in pro-active behavior. Personal goals play
an important role in optimal human functioning (Ford and
Smith 2007). Where a controlling social context is likely to
negatively influence autonomous motivation and thus hin-
der goal attainment; an autonomy-supportive environ-
ment—such as provided by servant leadership—is likely to
promote internalization and enhance the effect of intrinsi-
cally motivated goals (Van Dierendonck and Rook 2010).
Secondly, the strong focus of servant leadership on high
quality relationships will promote a sense of community by
emphasizing strong interpersonal relationships—a strong
bonding—within organizations. Having and maintaining
qualitative good human relationships is a key dimension of
well-being. Baumeister and Leary (1995), in their review
article, gave abundant evidence of the need to belong as a
fundamental human motive. The lack of human ties is
127
related to the deterioration of one’s health, a diminished
capacity to adjust and diminished well-being. Ryan and
Deci (2004) also acknowledged the need for relatedness.
This feeling of togetherness and trust is seen as essential to
handle the challenges faced by current-day organizations.
It creates an atmosphere that encourages people within an
organization to do and become the very best they can. The
idea of having a sense of community was deeply imbedded
in Greenleaf’s top characteristics of servant leadership
(Spears 2010). The sense of community needs to be built
by the leader for the benefit of the follower; it is interesting
how Spears notes that this sense of community is needed
due to the shift from smaller-scale community life to lar-
ger-scale communities within institutions, and how this
concept of having community is a life shaping for
followers.
The focus on personal growth together with enhancing a
sense of community might play a key role in helping others
fulfill their need to experience a sense of purpose at work
that is intrinsically satisfying. For many years, job satis-
faction was a key focus of HRM; nowadays, employee
engagement has become an essential focus. While job
satisfaction is essentially about the extent to which
expectations are met (Locke 1976), engagement takes that
a step further, where meaningfulness becomes an essential
aspect in creating engagement at work. Work is not only
something we do because we need to, but it can become a
calling and fulfill our strong inner need for meaningfulness.
Self-actualization and striving for personal growth have
been positioned as central motivators in a person’s life.
Meaningfulness through self-actualization includes a sense
of wholeness and purpose in life (Ryff and Singer 1998).
Servant leaders encourage meaning by providing direction
and allowing for tailor-made conditions based on the
employee’s needs. Servant leaders are expected to try to
find opportunities for their followers to grow within the
organization. They do so, among other things, by creating a
supporting, encouraging and challenging environment. The
corollary being that people who can find meaningfulness
through their work will perform better. There is in fact
sufficient evidence demonstrating that meaningful work
can in fact have an important impact on performance
(Hackman and Oldham 1980; Wrzesniewski 2003).
Together, this gives the final proposition:
Proposition 3 Servant leadership behavior is related to
follower’s optimal human functioning, sense of community,
and meaningfulness.
Conclusion
Our article proposes a further elaboration and conceptual
broadening of recent theoretical models on servant
123
128
leadership with compassionate love. It provides a more
detailed insight into how the key characteristics of servant
leadership may influence each other and may be placed
within a causal model. It addresses an essential element
within Greenleaf’s (1977) original positioning of servant
leadership, which is the need to serve. Although embedded
in the core thinking on servant leadership, research is
lagging behind, with exception of the work of Ng and Koh
(2010). Positioning compassionate love grounded in a
sense of wisdom as a practical translation of this need to
serve links servant leadership research with the recent
insights gained in these fields (Underwood 2008; Stau-
dinger and Glück 2011), bringing a more differentiated
outlook on what servant leadership may bring to followers
as individuals by the linking our conceptualization toward
the literature on optimal human functioning.
We hope that our discussion will be helpful in encour-
aging new research. A first step would be developing a
measure on compassionate love for the leadership context.
As a relative new area of research, measures have been
developed for use within the interpersonal context (e.g.,
Sprecher and Fehr 2005). Translating such instruments into
a valid and reliable measure for leaders would be extremely
important and allow for testing of the propositions under-
lying our model. Compassionate love might also be
something than can earn a place within leadership devel-
opment programs, both scholarly and corporately.
On a practical side, working with compassionate love
will contribute to organizations that work for the greater
good (Peus 2011). Daring to care has been the theme of the
2010 Academy of Management Meeting, signifying an
explicit attention for facilitating compassion in organiza-
tional processes. An intriguing application has been sug-
gested by Waldman et al. (2011) who described how
positive deviant responses in terms of compassionate
behavior may have a beneficial influence on perceived
organizational responses to victim’s suffering in the after-
math of terrorist attacks. Care and compassion have
recently been called ‘‘timely and timeless’’ in a special
topic forum of the Academy of Management Review
(Rynes et al. 2012). Some of the implications of daring to
care as described in this forum are changing group norms
away from self-interest, inclusion in training to enhance
psychological flexibility, developing volunteer programs to
enhance the quality of work, more effective dealing with
conflict that comes with a stronger focus on forgiveness
and fostering inclusion among a diverse workforce.
In conclusion, this article sought to show the deep
connection between servant leadership and compassionate
love with the outgrowths of humility, gratitude, forgiveness
and altruism. Servant leadership has seen remarkable
attention in the academic literature, but more interestingly,
it has seen attention in the business world, mainly because
123
D. van Dierendonck, K. Patterson
it offers an approach that speaks beyond the moment and
speaks to the humanity within us all. Servant leadership
offers an approach that matches the times we are in where
both leaders and followers should seek to do the right
things, seek the humanity within us all and offer real-world
solutions that are based on moral and virtuous strengths.
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