The Wisdom of the Hyphen
In reading the critique of servant leadership and Brendon's excellent response, I was reminded of Greenleaf's use of a hyphen in the phrase "servant-leader." Bob was very precise about his language and worked hard on perfecting each sentence. Whitehead taught him that language should encourage an imaginative leap in the reader, and that's exactly what the phrase servant-leader does. The hyphen does not allow us to interpret the words in their normal sense as the author of the critique tried to do.
In the Introduction to Greenleaf's biography I tried to address this issue because it is at the heart of a lot of misunderstanding—and enormous power—of servant leadership:
"Servant and leader are two nouns that usually describe two quite different roles. The hyphen holds them together in paradox, creating a Zen-like koan that stops the reader as he or she considers how two such dissimilar words could go together. Greenleaf was fully aware of this effect and wanted the reader to complete the meaning.
He wrote that he was comfortable with paradox in his own life and even welcomed it—'I believe that I live with as much serenity as do my contemporaries who venture into controversy as freely as I do but whose natural bent is to tie up the essentials of life in neat bundles of logic and consistency.'
The phrase 'servant-leader' points to a whole that is greater than the sum of the two parts. The joining evokes the presence of a third force, one that is as ancient as Buddha, Lao-Tsu, and Jesus, and as fresh as the latest book on organizational behavior—the transformative power of serving. Although Greenleaf never wrote about it, he may have omitted the hyphen in the phrase 'servant leadership' because that phrase describes a philosophy of leadership, one among several possible, and refers more to the strategic actions taken by a servant-leader."
Don Frick
In the Introduction to Greenleaf's biography I tried to address this issue because it is at the heart of a lot of misunderstanding—and enormous power—of servant leadership:
"Servant and leader are two nouns that usually describe two quite different roles. The hyphen holds them together in paradox, creating a Zen-like koan that stops the reader as he or she considers how two such dissimilar words could go together. Greenleaf was fully aware of this effect and wanted the reader to complete the meaning.
He wrote that he was comfortable with paradox in his own life and even welcomed it—'I believe that I live with as much serenity as do my contemporaries who venture into controversy as freely as I do but whose natural bent is to tie up the essentials of life in neat bundles of logic and consistency.'
The phrase 'servant-leader' points to a whole that is greater than the sum of the two parts. The joining evokes the presence of a third force, one that is as ancient as Buddha, Lao-Tsu, and Jesus, and as fresh as the latest book on organizational behavior—the transformative power of serving. Although Greenleaf never wrote about it, he may have omitted the hyphen in the phrase 'servant leadership' because that phrase describes a philosophy of leadership, one among several possible, and refers more to the strategic actions taken by a servant-leader."
Don Frick
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