Proceedings of ASBBS Volume 22 Number 1

SERVANT LEADERSHIP:
QUEEN ESTHER AND MARY KAY ASH

Nixon, Maureen
South University
ABSTRACT
This biographical analysis explores the tenets of servant leadership through the lives of disparate
historical figures, Queen Esther and Mary Kay Ash. The two women both began their journeys to
powerful positions from humble roots and their lives offer testimony to servant leadership in
action, an axiological assumption of importance in leadership.

INTRODUCTION
Servant leadership is a concept that was first fully developed by Robert K. Greenleaf in his 1977
book, Servant Leadership. Textbooks offer definitions of traditional leadership such as “the
process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do
it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared
objectives” (Yukl, 2013, p. 7) or “leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a
group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (Northouse, 2014, p. 5). Many leaders seek
positions of authority or are pushed into them by organizations or circumstances. Numerous
theories of leadership such as Fiedler’s contingency theory, House’s path-goal theory, theories of
charismatic leadership, and trait and personality theories emphasize this leader-centric approach.
Servant leadership offers a sharp contrast to these leadership theories by purporting that servant
leaders first desire to serve which brings them to aspire to lead, rather than desiring to lead and
perhaps choosing to serve at a later time (Greenleaf). Greenleaf offers the following tests to
distinguish between the goals of a leader and a servant leader: “Do those served grow as persons?
Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely
themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will
they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived?” (p.13). In the introduction to Greenleaf’s The
Power of Servant Leadership, Spears (1995) identified a set of ten characteristics of the servant
leader: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight,
stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. Building upon this
brief outline of servant leadership, this paper will compare and contrast the leadership of two
women who embraced servant leadership, Queen Esther and Mary Kay Ash.

METHODOLOGY
The biographical method was selected for this study because of its flexibility as a qualitative
method in searching for “patterns in the decisions and behaviors” (Jones, 1998, p. 163) of the two
women. According to Aspinwall (1992), biography as a research method grew from interest in
ethnographic research methods and “as part of a rejection of the scientific, hypoethetico-
deductive method which dominated social science research” earlier in the century (p. 249). The
biographical method presents challenges in data management, emotional commitment to the
method itself and the problem of maintaining sufficient distance from the data (Aspinwall). Even
with these challenges, biography offers an opportunity to explore the historical significance of the
characters, lessons in human behavior found in their lives and to discover applied leadership
theory while comparing the writings of various scholars on the two subjects. The patterns of
behavior revealed in the analysis not only provide insight into the leadership styles of Queen

ASBBS Annual Conference: Las Vegas 331 February 2015