Thanks so much for the subject Trevor. I have been pondering the connect of gender and servant-leadership due to the fact that the majority of writing on the subject is being done by men. I do believe that servanthood is very natural for woman. You need only look at how many people realize the great influence of their mothers in their lives. I also think the communities of religious sisters are also prime examples of coming together to serve. That is not to say that men do not also serve. They certainly do. They are traditionally referred to as "providers and protectors". The genders generally serve differently. So are women more attracted to the terminology and/or idea? Servant-leadership in practice tends to be categorized as a "softer" way of acting. It is not forceful or over-powering. In general terms, women would resonate with this way of leading.
Mary mentioned that most of the writing on servant leadership is being done by men. What is also interesting is that although Trevor pointed out the male to female ratio of folks enrolled in Viterbo's Servant Leadership program is 1 to 5, the ratio of faculty teaching in the SL program is almost the reverse of 5 to 1.
I would agree with Mary that men are not in general encouraged to serve, but more to lead. Real power comes not from just serving or not from just leading, but doing the two in unison.
Being a male and former enrollee in the SL program at Viterbo, what attracted me to the program was not the idea of doing sevice work, but finding a better way to get things done then what I had been experiencing in the heiarchical/patriarcical modeled organizations I had worked in. The male based structures of our organizations work great for the man at the top gaining control, but they are very ineffective at meeting the needs of the people they are supposed to serve. Anyway, the whole idea of servant leadership seems like a much more effective user friendly idea then the win at all cost, domination/compition driven organizations that men have developed and continue to strive to master.
My thoughts on the topic for what they are worth.
Last Sunday the New York Times premiered a quarterly magazine about sports called PLAY. In it, there is an article about "Coach K," Duke University's basketball coach. (I don't have the article in front of me so I won't try to spell his name from memory.) He is quite conscious of gender-based leadership styles and credits the women in his life--his wife and 4 daughters--for helping him relate to player issues that he would simply miss as a man. As I recall, one of the paragraph headlines in the story was "Lead like a woman."
Don Frick
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