Servant Leadership
Most recent studies see transformational leadership as the most complex one. A new concept is taking hold, so things are gaining a new perspective: who is in fact the leader? Who serves who? These questions were answered by Greenleaf’s model of leadership.
Various similarities have been identified between transformational leadership and servant leadership, starting from the very basic concepts: vision, influence, credibility, trust, support, service. But with regard to servant leadership, it can be argued from theoretical studies that it transcends the boundaries of transformational leadership by simply aligning the motives that drive the leaderswith those that drive their disciples. The core concept of leadership within the team is ‘the first among equals' ("primus inter pares").
In 2002, Barbuto and Wheeler described Servant Leadership by eleven characteristics. This image, based on the most influential works in the field is fundamental for further research, since it fulfills Greenleaf's original idea. In 2002 as well, Russell and Stone restricted the number of attributes to nine and called them functional attributes due to their frequency in specialized literature: Vision, Honesty, Integrity, Trust, Service, Training, Pioneering, Appreciation of others, Empowerment. These nine functional attributes form the basis of the Servant leadership construct within the research model of analysis presented in this paper.