THE MEANING OF SERVANT LEADERSHIP: A QUALITATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY

Introduction: In this day and age, finding the servant leadership is really hard, most organizations focus on bigger profits and corporate business expansion. A serving leadership emphasizing more on members’ interests faces various challenges because any profits gained is used for the members’ welfare. The model of servant leadership can be adopted by non-profit organization in the field of human welfare, such as education field.

Research Purpose: This research aims are: (1) to explore the individual experience of people doing servant leadership in daily organizational life; (2) to find meaning in individual experience doing servant leadership in daily organizational life.

Research Design: The research type is a qualitative research with interpretative phenomenological analysis method. Interpretative phenomenological analysis consists of two steps, first, the subject will interpret their world; second, the researcher tries to define the subject interpretation process of their world. Through phenomenology, researcher tries to explore the meaning of life of some individuals to create a universal meaning.

Research Question: This research has two questions, those are: (1) how is the experience of someone doing servant leadership? (2) What is the meaning of someone doing servant leadership?

Sample: The sampling technique is purposive sampling. This research takes the subject from those who use the servant leadership model in their organization. Data gathering was done through a semi-structural interview, so the dialogue between the researcher and the subject in the exploration of the subject experience in doing servant leadership up to finding the meaning of said experience can occur.

Result: According to data analysis of someone doing the servant leadership, some group of themes can be seen, those are: (1) it arises from their concern about problems around them, (2) it pushes the subject to start collecting resources to start a movement for change, (3) the movement for change is vital in welfare improvement of the members, (4) organizational activities are not for profits but sincerely for helping members. (5) Servant leadership is shown by various attributes and traits to serve members. Conclusively, servant leadership means: (1) a leadership born from the concern of wanting to help members’ issues. (2) A leader needs to directly serve members so a trust can grow, and such trust can inspire members to help and grow with each other’s. (3) The most important things to understand from servant leadership is assuming other members as equal members of family, working honest, being sincere, being wholehearted, and being committed to keep helping each other.