Despite widespread adoption of servant leadership, we are only beginning to understand its true
utility across multiple organizational levels. Our purpose was to test the relationship between
personality, servant leadership, and critical follower and organizational outcomes. Using a social
influence framework, we proposed that leader agreeableness and extraversion affect follower
perceptions of servant leadership. In turn, servant leaders ignite a cycle of service by role-modeling
servant behavior that is then mirrored through coworker helping behavior and high-quality
customer service, as well as reciprocated through decreased withdrawal. Using a multilevel,
multi-source model, we surveyed 224 stores of a U.S. retail organization, including 425 followers,
110 store managers, and 40 regional managers. Leader agreeableness was positively and extraversionwas
negatively related to servant leadership,whichwas associatedwith decreased follower
turnover intentions and disengagement. At the group-level, service climate mediated the effects of
servant leadership on follower turnover intentions, helping and sales behavior.