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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

I get the idea, my problem is that in actuality, the leader is not serving the team. He is leading it and when a hard decision has to be made, the leader is taking it whether the team likes it or not. This isn’t the position of a servant. It’s a fake masking of the real power dynamics at play.

I get the same vibe from “flat” management structures. People can claim that there is no superiority in the org chart and that everyone is equal, but in reality it never works this way.

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No one is suggesting that servant leadership is implying their leader is actually a _servant_. Rather, it implies that serving your team humbly should be a priority over stroking your own ego. I'm not sure how useful it is to generalize the concept as "fake masking". Do some people use it as an ego trip? Sure. Are some people good leaders with their people's interest in mind? Absolutely.

Many times in life, someone has to make a call and it's usually the person in charge. Not sure why that has to have malicious intent behind it. You don't have to like the decisions your leaders make, but that doesn't inherently make them bad leaders just because the team isn't 100% on board. (I will concede that good leaders will take the time to get the team on board. It's usually laziness to explain the "why" that results in teams not being on board. That or ego prevents them from letting go of their ideas.)

You don't have to like the decisions your leaders make, but that doesn't inherently make them bad leaders just because the team isn't 100% on board.

No no, I'm not saying this at all. I'm completely fine with the leader making the decision, I just have an issue with the narrative that they're a "servant" serving the team. And if no one is suggesting this, why call it "servant leadership"?

That is what I mean by "fake masking." All of the best leaders I've encountered are cognizant of the fact that they are in charge and thus have more responsibility and decision-making power – and don't try to pretend that somehow they are "servants."

I think our disagreement here may largely be semantics. To be clear, I'd never label myself a "servant leader". I agree I think it's ingenuous to do so. However, if other people use that terminology to describe a type of leader—I get the picture they're trying to paint.

So to be clear, I agree the label is weird and cheesy and maybe should only be used to describe a type of leader (which again, I'd argue is just a good leader). Leaders absolutely should hold themselves to a higher standard due to their responsibility for the good of the team and the fact that they DO have more power.

I'm still not clear on what "pretending" to be a servant would look like. If I'm a shift manager and someone needs to sweep the floors before we leave and one of my team members is a teenager with an exam the next day—damn straight, I'm going go send them home early and sweep up myself. That's "serving" them—putting them before myself. But quite frankly it's also just the right thing to do. So in a sense, yeah I'm a servant in that I am serving my team members, but holy hell if you say, "Yeah, I'm a servant leader so why don't you go ahead and take off early." You're a cheesehead, a weirdo, and probably not actually a good leader. And in that case yeah I agree it's a weird play.

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