LEAD 4013 Module 1 Leadership Styles Comparison Example

Serving First or Inspiring First? Servant and Transformational Leadership Compared in a Credit Union Member Services Center

Student Name

American College of Education

LEAD4013: Strategic Servant Leadership

Module 1 Assignment

Instructor Name

October 12, 2026

Introduction

I supervise a team of eleven representatives in the member services contact center of a regional credit union in Des Moines, Iowa. The center, which is a composite drawn from my experience, answers about 1,800 calls and chats a day about accounts, loans and fraud. Two managers I have worked under led in noticeably different ways: one inspired the team with a vision of being the friendliest credit union in the state, and the other spent most of her time asking what representatives needed and removing obstacles. This paper compares the two leadership styles those managers came closest to, transformational and servant leadership, and asks what servant leadership offers that transformational leadership does not.

Origins

Servant leadership began with an essay. Robert Greenleaf, a retired AT&T executive, argued in 1970 that leading begins with the wish to serve, and offered a test of whether the people served grow as persons, gaining health, wisdom and freedom and becoming more willing to serve others in turn (Greenleaf, 1977). Transformational leadership grew out of political and organizational research and was developed most fully by Bernard Bass, who described leaders who raise followers' aspirations and inspire them to set aside narrow self-interest for the sake of the team and the organization (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Both reject a purely transactional exchange of rewards for performance. They differ in where they start.

Focus

The central difference is the leader's primary focus. Transformational leaders focus on the organization's goals and inspire followers to pursue them; followers' development is valued partly because it serves those goals. Servant leaders focus first on followers' needs and growth, trusting that people who are served well will serve the organization and its customers well. A systematic review described the servant leader's orientation as turned toward others: putting each follower's needs and interests first and directing concern away from self, toward colleagues and the wider community (Eva et al., 2019). The transformational leader asks, "How can I get people excited about where we are going?" The servant leader asks, "What do my people need to do their best work, and to grow?"

Characteristic Behaviors

Transformational leadership is usually described through four behaviors: modeling the values a leader asks of others, offering an inspiring vision, pushing followers to question old assumptions and giving attention to the needs of each person (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Servant leadership has been described through overlapping but distinct behaviors. Liden et al. (2008) identified seven dimensions, among them emotional healing, creating value for the community, empowering followers, helping them grow and succeed, putting them first and behaving ethically. The overlap lies in attention to individuals. The difference lies in emotional healing, community value and putting followers first, which have no direct counterpart in the transformational model.

What the Evidence Shows

Both styles are associated with positive outcomes, but they are not interchangeable. A meta-analysis comparing newer leadership styles with transformational leadership found that servant leadership explained additional variance in outcomes such as employee engagement, satisfaction and performance beyond what transformational leadership explained, while ethical and authentic leadership added little (Hoch et al., 2018). Research in a restaurant chain found that servant leaders fostered a serving culture in their units, which in turn was associated with stronger unit performance and with employees' own service behaviors (Liden et al., 2014). That finding matters for a contact center, where the quality of service to members depends on how representatives are treated.

One Situation, Two Responses

Last winter, a wave of debit card fraud pushed call volume up by 40% for three weeks, wait times passed twenty minutes and representatives faced angry members all day. The manager who led transformationally called a team meeting, reminded everyone that members were frightened and that the credit union's reputation depended on them, set a daily goal for calls answered and celebrated progress on a board. Energy rose for several days, then sagged as exhaustion set in. The manager who led as a servant, during a later surge, spent the first morning taking calls herself, asked each representative what was making the work hardest, arranged for a fraud specialist to take the most complex cases, extended breaks after difficult calls and checked in individually with two representatives who were shaken. Call targets were met less dramatically, but absences and resignations after the surge were far lower.

Why the Setting Matters

The setting shapes which style fits. Contact center work is repetitive, measured minute by minute and emotionally draining, because representatives absorb members' frustration and fear, especially during fraud events. Turnover in such centers is high, and each departure costs training time and service quality. In that environment, a vision of being the friendliest credit union in the state is pleasant but distant from the daily experience of a representative on her fortieth call about a frozen card. What representatives notice is whether their supervisor helps when a call goes badly, whether schedules account for their lives and whether anyone asks how they are doing. Servant leadership speaks directly to those experiences. Transformational leadership remains valuable when the center must change direction, for example when adopting a new chat platform, but its appeal to a larger purpose can ring hollow if daily needs go unmet.

Combining the Two

The two styles are not mutually exclusive. The most effective manager I have worked with did both: she set a clear direction during a system conversion and explained why it mattered, and she spent much of her week removing obstacles and checking on her team. The research comparison suggests that servant leadership adds something distinct, but a leader can draw on transformational behaviors when the organization needs vision and energy for change.

What Servant Leadership Adds

The comparison suggests three things servant leadership adds. First, it attends to followers' wellbeing as an end in itself, which matters in emotionally demanding work where burnout is common. Second, it models service: a manager who takes calls herself teaches the service culture more effectively than a poster about it. Third, it extends concern to the community, which fits a credit union, a member-owned cooperative whose purpose is to serve its members. Servant leadership also has limits. It can be mistaken for avoiding hard decisions, and a leader who only serves may fail to set direction. For that reason, a widely cited synthesis lists giving direction alongside humility and stewardship as part of what servant leaders do (van Dierendonck, 2011).

Conclusion

Servant and transformational leadership share respect for followers and a rejection of purely transactional management, but they start from different questions: transformational leaders begin with the organization's vision, servant leaders with followers' needs and growth. Evidence suggests servant leadership explains outcomes beyond those of transformational leadership and builds a serving culture that carries through to customers. In a contact center during a crisis, that difference showed up in who stayed. Module 2 applies servant leadership's characteristics to a specific leader and team. The two can also be combined, with direction from one and daily service from the other.

References

Bass, B. M., & Riggio, R. E. (2006). Transformational leadership (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Eva, N., Robin, M., Sendjaya, S., van Dierendonck, D., & Liden, R. C. (2019). Servant leadership: A systematic review and call for future research. The Leadership Quarterly, 30(1), 111-132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2018.07.004

Greenleaf, R. K. (1977). Servant leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. Paulist Press.

Hoch, J. E., Bommer, W. H., Dulebohn, J. H., & Wu, D. (2018). Do ethical, authentic, and servant leadership explain variance above and beyond transformational leadership? A meta-analysis. Journal of Management, 44(2), 501-529. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206316665461

Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Liao, C., & Meuser, J. D. (2014). Servant leadership and serving culture: Influence on individual and unit performance. Academy of Management Journal, 57(5), 1434-1452. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2013.0034

Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Zhao, H., & Henderson, D. (2008). Servant leadership: Development of a multidimensional measure and multi-level assessment. The Leadership Quarterly, 19(2), 161-177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2008.01.006

van Dierendonck, D. (2011). Servant leadership: A review and synthesis. Journal of Management, 37(4), 1228-1261. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206310380462