Advancing Servant Leadership Among College-Aged Youth

Robert K. Greenleaf acknowledged that servant leadership is a way of living and leading. It is not so much of a framework as it is a set of guiding principles that define the character of servant leaders. College-aged youth are at the stage in life when the brain’s long-term orientation begins to take hold; it is the ideal time to successfully persuade individuals that adoption of servant leadership as a lifetime pursuit is a worthy endeavor. Faculty at post-secondary institutions, in their roles as mentors of students, are well suited to have tremendous impact on introducing and modeling servant leadership. Two barriers may prevent post-secondary students from embracing servant leadership: failure to recognize, acknowledge, and understand the role of privilege in society and the essential activity of stepping out of one’s comfort zone and engaging in work and with people with which one is unfamiliar. While the notion of white privilege is commonly addressed in American higher education institutions, additional forms of privilege are recognized in this chapter. To help overcome these two barriers, this chapter proposes two pedagogies: service-learning and student philanthropy. Service-learning builds one’s capacity to engage with diverse individuals and groups, many of whom are privileged in ways post-secondary students may not have experienced. Student philanthropy builds greater student understanding of and commitment to human service systems and actors within the institution’s community. This activity has the additional benefit of improving relationships between the institution and its local community stakeholders.