The role of values in servant leadership

This paper reviews the existing literature regarding values in leadership. It identifies issues relating to both personal values and organizational values. The literature indicates that values affect leader behavior, as well as organizational performance. The paper also provides an overview of servant leadership theory and extrapolates applications of the values in leadership literature to three aspects of servant leadership: trust; appreciation of others; and empowerment. Values constitute the foundation of servant leadership. Fundamentally, leader values may be the underlying factors that separate servant leaders from all other leadership types.