Servant Leadership Examples: 9 Leaders, What They Did, and Their Own Words

TDIndustries, a Dallas mechanical and electrical contractor, appeared on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list 21 years in a row, and its own 2010 press release names Robert Greenleaf's essay The Servant as Leader as "a blueprint for the firm's behavior." That is the kind of servant leadership example this page collects: a named leader, a dated action, a result someone recorded, and a line in the leader's own words that can be checked. Here are nine of them, from George Washington handing back his commission in 1783 to an NFL head coach, with a comparison table, the source for every quote, a section on popular examples that don't hold up, and a guide to using one in a talk or training. For more quotations on the idea itself, start at our servant leadership quotes hub.

A note on the term first. "Servant leader" was coined by Greenleaf, who spent 38 years at AT&T (1926 to 1964) as, in the Greenleaf Center's words, "Director of Management Development," and published the essay in 1970 (Greenleaf Center biography). Some of the people below never used the phrase. They are here because what they did matches his test: the people around them grew, and the leader took the cost. What Greenleaf himself wrote is on our page of Greenleaf's own lines.

The nine examples side by side

The table sorts the examples by setting. "What it cost" matters as much as "what they did": servant leadership that costs the leader nothing is hard to tell apart from good manners.

Handing power back: George Washington, December 1783

The oldest example on the list is also the one with the highest stakes. After the Revolutionary War, Washington commanded the only national institution that worked, and the army was angry about unpaid wages. On 23 December 1783 he walked into the Maryland State House in Annapolis, where Congress was then sitting, and read a short address returning his commission. The last sentence:

Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action—and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.

— George Washington, address to Congress, Annapolis, 23 December 1783 (Founders Online)

Two phrases carry the servant idea. "The work assigned me" casts command as a job given by others, not a possession, and "under whose orders I have so long acted" reminds a room of legislators that the general answered to them. Earlier in the same address he says he came "to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me." The cost was real: he gave up the one position from which he could have kept power, and the precedent of civilian control over the military dates from that afternoon.

CopyShareSave image

The story usually told with this example needs a caveat. George III is said to have called Washington "the greatest man in the world" if he gave up power. That comes secondhand from the painter Benjamin West, and the wording depends on who wrote it down: Joseph Farington's diary (1799) has "the greatest man in the world," while Rufus King's memo of West's account (1797) has "the greatest character of the age," as the Library of Congress Manuscripts blog explains. Use it as West's report, not as the King's words.

Listening before speaking: the regent Nelson Mandela grew up with

Mandela's best-known description of leadership is not about himself. In Long Walk to Freedom (1994), Part One, chapter 3, he describes the meetings held by Jongintaba, the Thembu regent who raised him at the Great Place in Mqhekezweni. The regent opened each meeting by thanking people for coming, and then "he would not utter another word until the meeting was nearing its end." Speakers criticized him to his face; "the regent simply listened, not defending himself, showing no emotion at all." Then:

Only at the end of the meeting, as the sun was setting, would the regent speak. His purpose was to sum up what had been said and form some consensus among the diverse opinions. But no conclusion was forced on people who disagreed.

— Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (Little, Brown, 1994), Part One, ch. 3

This passage is a better servant leadership example than the famous one a few paragraphs later, the regent's axiom that a leader "is like a shepherd" who stays behind the flock (we quote that one in full on our active listening quotes page). The shepherd image can be read as clever steering from behind. The meeting passage shows the harder part: a man with authority sitting through public criticism for hours, then summarizing other people's views rather than announcing his own. Mandela adds that he followed the same practice as a leader, listening to everyone before giving his opinion.

Redefining greatness: Martin Luther King Jr.'s February 1968 sermon

On 4 February 1968, two months before he was killed, King preached "The Drum Major Instinct" at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (King Institute). The sermon starts from the same Gospel story behind most servant leadership writing: James and John asking to sit at Jesus's right and left hand. King's point is that Jesus did not scold them for wanting to be first. He changed what "first" means:

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.

— Martin Luther King Jr., "The Drum Major Instinct," Ebenezer Baptist Church, 4 February 1968

What makes this an example and not only a quotation is what happened next. The sermon ends with King imagining his own eulogy and asking that someone say he "tried to give his life serving others," and the King Institute records that excerpts were played at his funeral at Ebenezer on 9 April 1968. The passage is useful for anyone who worries that servant leadership means giving up ambition: King keeps the ambition ("If you want to be great—wonderful") and changes its direction. The line that follows, "everybody can be great, because everybody can serve," is on our student council quotes page. The Gospel passage King was preaching on, Mark 10, is explained on our servant leadership Bible verses page.

CopyShareSave image

Servant leadership in the workplace: five companies

Business examples are the ones people search for most, and the ones most often padded with invented numbers. Each one below gives only figures from a named source.

Herman Miller and Max De Pree

Max De Pree was chairman and CEO of the Michigan furniture maker Herman Miller from 1980 to 1987, according to the company's timeline. The servant habits started before him: in 1950, under his father D. J. De Pree, Herman Miller became "the first company in Michigan to adopt the Scanlon Plan," a system of participative management and gain sharing. In 1983, during Max's term, "a special stock-ownership plan establishes all Herman Miller employees as shareholders." His book Leadership Is an Art moves the test of a leader onto other people:

The signs of outstanding leadership appear primarily among the followers. Are the followers reaching their potential? Are they learning? Serving? Do they achieve the required results? Do they change with grace? Manage conflict?

— Max De Pree, Leadership Is an Art, p. 12 (as cited by the De Pree Center)

Note that "Serving?" is on the list of things to look for in the followers, not only in the leader. That is Greenleaf's test ("do those served grow as persons?") turned into a checklist a manager can actually use in a review. You will often read that De Pree capped the CEO's pay at 20 times the average worker's. No annual report, proxy or major newspaper source for that cap turned up, so it is left out of the table.

TDIndustries and Jack Lowe Jr.

TDIndustries is the company most often named as the first to build itself on Greenleaf's essay. Beginning in the 1970s, under its founder Jack Lowe Sr., the company adopted the essay as its guide, and his son Jack Lowe Jr. kept it when he took over as CEO. The company's 2010 release calls the essay "a blueprint," and its history page counts 21 consecutive years on Fortune's list. In a 2015 interview, Lowe Jr. corrected the soft version of the idea:

At first we thought Servant Leadership was just 'being nice to each other.' But now, we know it includes accountability, too.

— Jack Lowe Jr., Contracting Business Hall of Fame interview, 17 August 2015 (source)

He went on: at TD "we expect everybody to produce business results, whatever their responsibilities are; and, to help others around you grow. If you can't do both of those things pretty well, you can't work here." This is the most useful example for anyone who has to answer the objection that servant leadership is too soft for a business. It is the same argument our accountability quotes page makes from the other direction.

Southwest Airlines and Herb Kelleher

Kelleher, Southwest's co-founder, was asked for decades which came first: employees, customers or shareholders. In a 2001 interview with the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, he gave his standard answer:

If you treat your employees right, they're happy and proud and participative with respect to what they're doing. They manifest that attitude to your customers and your customers come back. And what's business all about but having your customers come back, which makes the shareholders happy?

— Herb Kelleher, interview with McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, 2001 (source)

The record behind it: Southwest reported its 47th consecutive year of profit for 2019 (SEC filing, January 2020), and for more than five decades it had no involuntary layoffs, including after 9/11 and during the pandemic. That record ended in February 2025, when the airline cut about 1,750 corporate jobs (Fortune), so "Southwest has never laid anyone off" is no longer true. One more correction: in the McCombs interview, the phrase "shareholders last" comes from the interviewer's question, not from Kelleher.

Popeyes and Cheryl Bachelder

Bachelder became CEO of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen in 2007. Her approach was to treat franchise owners as the people the head office existed to serve. Nation's Restaurant News reported that franchisees who felt aligned with the company rose from 44% in 2009 to 85% in 2013. She summed up the approach in her book Dare to Serve (Berrett-Koehler, 2015):

The dynamic tension between daring and serving creates the conditions for superior performance.

— Cheryl Bachelder, Dare to Serve (2015), as quoted in Nation's Restaurant News, 11 September 2015 (source)

Over her tenure, the company reported restaurant sales up 45% and restaurant operating profit more than doubled, and NRN says the stock "quadrupled." In February 2017, Restaurant Brands International agreed to buy Popeyes for $79 a share in cash, about $1.8 billion (Food Business News). Her pairing of "daring" with "serving" is the useful part. Serving people does not replace setting a hard goal; it is how you get them there.

The Ritz-Carlton motto

The Ritz-Carlton puts its servant idea in the motto every employee carries on a wallet card:

We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.

— The Ritz-Carlton motto, Gold Standards (Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center)

The motto works on two levels. It tells guests the staff will serve them, and it tells the staff they are the guests' equals, not servants in the old sense. Horst Schulze, the company's long-time president, said in a 2019 Knowledge at Wharton interview that he first wrote down the idea in an essay when he was 16. The government record of the Baldrige award (NIST) says the company is the only two-time winner in the service category (1992 and 1999), that first-year managers and employees get "250 to 310 hours of training," and that turnover had "declined nine years in a row." Investing in the people who serve is what turns the motto from a slogan into a practice.

Servant leadership in sports: Tony Dungy

Tony Dungy coached the Indianapolis Colts to a Super Bowl win on 4 February 2007, "the first such win for an African American head coach," and was the first head coach to take his teams to the playoffs ten years in a row, according to his publisher. In The Mentor Leader (Tyndale, 2010), written with Nathan Whitaker, he is asked whether there are practical benefits to "being in a position of service rather than a position of authority." His answer separates the two words most leaders blur:

Authority and leadership sometimes come with position. When you're the head coach, you have authority over the team. But even though the players must submit to your authority, it doesn't mean they will respect your leadership. The best way to create an environment where people willingly follow your leadership is to let them know that your number one priority is to help them. And there's no better way to show that than by demonstrating your desire to serve.

— Tony Dungy, The Mentor Leader (2010), p. 212 (publisher's sample)

Sport is a hard test for servant leadership because the scoreboard is public and the coach can bench anyone. Dungy's distinction between authority (which the position gives you) and leadership (which the players give you) holds for any manager with a reporting line. It is the coaching version of Lowe's point at TDIndustries: serving the team and demanding results are not opposites.

CopyShareSave image

Is Abraham Lincoln a servant leader?

He is one of the most common answers to "who is a famous servant leader?", and two documented habits support it. First, he made himself reachable. Lincoln held open receptions where anyone with business could see him, and he told the journalist Charles Halpine he called them his "public-opinion baths." That is Halpine's recollection, not a Lincoln document, as President Lincoln's Cottage notes. Second, he went to the people paying the price. On 8 April 1865 he toured the army hospital at City Point, Virginia, shaking hands with several thousand wounded men, Confederate wounded among them (HistoryNet).

The quote most often used to make the case is a different matter. "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power" is not Lincoln's; Quote Investigator traces it to Robert G. Ingersoll writing about Lincoln in 1883 (QI). Lincoln's own words on humility in office are on our humble leadership quotes page.

Popular examples that don't hold up

Lists of servant leadership examples repeat some claims that fall apart when checked. These are the ones to drop or reword:

For more lines that leaders never said, see our misattributed leadership quotes reference.

Which example to use, and how to tell it

Look across the nine examples and four things keep coming back: the leader listens before deciding (the regent, Lincoln), gives up something they could have kept (Washington, De Pree's shareholders), measures success by how other people do (De Pree, Dungy), and still demands results (Lowe, Bachelder). Pick the example that matches the point you need to make:

When you tell the example in a talk, a training session or a leadership essay, three steps keep it honest:

1. Give the act before the quote. "In 1983 Herman Miller made every employee a shareholder" lands harder than any slogan, and it makes the quote that follows sound earned.
2. Name the cost. What did the leader give up: power, time, a defense against criticism, a bigger share? An example with no cost is a story about being nice.
3. Cite it in one clause. "…as Jack Lowe Jr. told Contracting Business in 2015." One clause is enough, and it saves you from repeating a version someone made up.

Two short examples of how that sounds:

• For a team-lead training: "At TDIndustries, servant leadership has been the company's blueprint since the 1970s, and its former CEO, Jack Lowe Jr., says the first lesson was that it isn't just being nice: 'we know it includes accountability, too.' So today we'll practice both halves: helping people grow, and holding the line on results."
• For a manager's opening remarks: "Tony Dungy wrote that a head coach has authority over the team, but 'it doesn't mean they will respect your leadership.' I'd like to earn the second part, so my first job this quarter is to find out what's getting in your way."

How we checked these examples

Every quote on this page was matched word for word against a fetched copy of its source: Founders Online for Washington; the King Institute transcript of the sermon; the full text of Long Walk to Freedom; the De Pree Center's citation of Leadership Is an Art; the original interviews for Lowe and Kelleher; Nation's Restaurant News for Bachelder; the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center for the motto; and Tyndale's own sample pages for Dungy. Figures (profit years, list years, sales changes, training hours) come only from company filings, press releases, government pages or trade press, and are linked where they appear. Claims we could not confirm on a primary or reliable page, such as De Pree's pay cap and several Sam Walton lines, are named as unconfirmed rather than repeated. Our full method is on the how we verify page.