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A Self-Transcendence Model of Servant Leadership

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The Palgrave Handbook of Servant Leadership

Abstract

The best possible leadership in turbulent times is a visionary, competent leader who serves others with the twin power of faith and sacrificial love. This chapter explains why the self-transcendence model, the core of existential positive psychology (EPP or PP2.0), is needed for implementing servant leadership (SL) and capable of integrating the SL literature. We then propose the servant leadership profile-revised, with its 360-degree measure, as a promising tool for servant leadership research and present some new validation data. Finally, we introduce the best practices in servant leaderships and discuss its limitations and future implications. We conclude that in today’s climate, servant leadership represents the highest ideal for moral and selfless leadership for the greater good; therefore, even though it is difficult to implement, society is still better served when we aim at this ideal for leadership and good work.

This paper includes text and material from three unpublished blogposts on the first author’s (Wong) personal website (Wong, 2003; Wong & Davey, 2007; Wong & Page, 2003), as well as two of the first author’s (Wong) previously delivered presentations (Wong, 2020a, 2021a). All the materials in this paper are being published for the first time.

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Wong, P.T.P., Page, D., Cheung, T.C.K. (2022). A Self-Transcendence Model of Servant Leadership. In: Dhiman, S., Roberts, G.E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Servant Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69802-7_58-1

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