Leadership as Service

This provocative and readable discussion of leadership in higher education argues that leadership is essentially an act of service; that the more responsible the leadership position, the greater the responsibility to serve. Weaving together the Servant Leadership philosophy of Robert Greenleaf with the management principles of Mary Parker Follett, Farnsworth presents a model for 21st-century educational leadership that calls upon college administrators to see themselves as “servants first.” He argues that the voices and interests of many of education’s key stakeholders—students, employers, and society as a whole—have been marginalized by a consolidation of power in the faculty, requiring a bold new approach to leadership that refocuses service to these important, but underrepresented constituents.