Servant Leadership
Teachers Leadership Model in the Classroom
Asep Suryana, Bumi Hadirahmadiani and Riema Afriani
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia
Keywords: Servant Leadership, Leader in the classroom. Teacher as a leader.
Abstract: Teacher as a leader responsible for making pleasant environment in the class. Teacher leadership ability in
the classroom can be showed through the skill of motivating, directing, encouraging, and making a good
relationship with students. Servant Leadership is a leadership style which accommodates by the teacher to
reach affectivity and efficiency in teaching and learning activity. Teacher as a servant-leader is expected to
be a good listener, have empathy, eliminating the communication boundary, raise student’s self-awareness,
effective in persuasion, and can build commitment in the classroom. As the result, the research found that
empathy, flexibility, maturity, good-listener, and ability to make student conform to class commitment are a
very important component for the teacher to create a pleasant environment in the classroom.
1 INTRODUCTION
Teaching is an art, the art of how to assist the
students to remain seated and follow the lessons
until they finish it well. Servant leadership and a
positive work culture are critical owned by an
institution. Teachers leading school improvement
work were reluctant to see themselves as leaders,
and rarely referred to themselves or others as
‘leaders’. In fact, they viewed their informal and
collaborative work as having greater impact on
school improvement than formal efforts directed by
school administrators. Yet, teachers did recognize
the contributions and individual strengths that
colleagues brought to their collective efforts (Janet
and Sarah, 2014).
Clearly, culture gap needs more attention to
solve for good ending. In the class room, effect of
culture depends on teacher handling. Culture is
foundation element for leadership serve in the
classroom by teacher. A high-quality dyadic
relationship, trust, and fairness are expected to be
the most important mediating processes to
encourage self-actualization, positive job attitudes,
performance, and a stronger organizational focus on
sustainability and corporate social responsibility
(Dirk, 2011).
As a professional, you can do everything in your
power in terms of training and skills in winning the
world championship, but it is not worth it if it does
not fit the environment in which the event takes
place. Servant leadership, however, showed more
promise as a stand-alone leadership approach that is
capable of helping leadership researchers and
practitioners better explain a wide range of
outcomes. Guidance regarding future research and
the utility of these three ethical/moral values–based
leadership forms is provided (Julia et al, 2016).
Clashes in the workplace are almost always the
result of differences in values; therefore, it is
important to be careful to stick to that value. So, the
goals of the research to be finding are the teacher as
a servant-leader is a good listener, have empathy,
eliminating the communication boundary, raise
student’s self-awareness, effective in persuasion, and
can build commitment in the classroom
2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
2.1 Servant Leadership in The School
Every organization has a goal that wants to
accomplish together with organization members.
That goal is an enhancement for an organization to
be able to grow and face the environment change.
The organization’s goals could be accomplished if
their activities were planned and carried out under
302
Suryana, A., Hadirahmadiani, B. and Afriani, R.
Servant Leadership - Teachers Leadership Model in the Classroom.
In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Educational Sciences (ICES 2017) - Volume 2, pages 302-308
ISBN: 978-989-758-314-8
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

the established procedures. These activities also
involve the people and the uses of resources as the
main asset in achieving goals. Whatever the form of
organization, in the absence of resources,
organizations cannot possibly achieve the set goals.
For example, the services organization such as
school, schools have a goal to prepare individuals
who have the hard skills and soft skills that later
would become life provision in the life of the
community through a series of learning activities in
the school. Servant leadership, however, showed
more promise as a stand-alone leadership approach
that is capable of helping leadership researchers and
practitioners better explain a wide range of
outcomes. Guidance regarding future research and
the utility of these three ethical/moral values–based
leadership forms is provided (Julia et al, 2016).
The inspiring sentence said by a captain who
trained in summer 1941, the concept of servant
leadership stated by Neuschel in his book The
Servant Leader: Unleashing the Power of Your
People “Feed your troops and they will fight like
hell for you. And when I say feed, I don't mean just
the belly, but that is important. I also mean to feed
the mind, the heart, and the spirit. In fact, grow the
total soldier”. Beside the hard and discipline training
that given by the captain, Robert learned that the
captain has a goal to make his soldiers the best
fighter and open their chance to come back safely
from the war. The captain has as strong willingness
to help his soldiers be the best, to come out as the
winner, and stay alive. Based on that experience,
Neuschel concluded that a leader must be able to
develop others totally. This story is an example of
the true servant leadership. A caritative leadership
would support Building – a comprehensive view of
the edification of life, personal growth and maturity
– as an ultimate goal of education. In the emerging
model of a caritative leadership in education, a
humanistic ethos of love, trust, and forgiveness
shapes the culture of the educational organization
(Yvonne, 2017).
To develop the quality of servant leader is the
most difficult task. It is because a leader should be
more concerned about others rather than themselves.
A servant leader is one who unleashed people
reputation, skill, or in some way contributes to
develop them into a valuable and happier people.
Servant leaders are people with a high sense of
humanity. "They that have power to hurt and yet will
do none" (Shakespeare). Servant-leaders are
supposed to be really mature and rarely ever use that
power. The true servant-leaders should be truly
unselfish. values influenced the school leaders'
perceptions of their leadership and how they
articulated their relationships with students, staff and
the local community and their aspirations and
expectations for their schools (Carol et al, 2010).
Being the servant leader is requiring an unusual
tolerance for imperfection. This does not mean
accepting less than high-quality effort, but rather an
honest realization that “God made more slow people
than fast people,” that organizations are not made up
of angels but that a leader’s task is often to deal with
the imperfections. In this study, we propose that the
upward leader-leader exchange (LLX) relationship is
an important moderating condition in predicting the
consequences of leader-member exchange (LMX)
differentiation within work groups (Andrew et al,
2014).
The term Servant Leader is used for the first time
by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970, in his article
entitled The Servant as Leader. In the discussion
stated that the Servant Leadership Theory is a theory
that emphasizes on improving service to others. A
holistic approach to work, promote a sense of
togetherness and sharing power in decision making.
The theory of servant leadership is oriented towards
flexibility delegation to subordinates organizational
structure and oriented towards the future. Public
school principals identified as servant leaders were
rated significantly higher by their teachers in the five
leadership areas highlighted by the Leadership
Practices Inventory (Tim et al, 2007).
There are ten servant-leader characteristics
which can be identified in Robert Greenleaf’s work.
The ten characteristics are explained below;
Listening, Leaders have traditionally been valued for
their communication and decision-making skills.
Empathy, the servant-leader strives to understand
and empathize with others. Healing, learn to healing
is a powerful force for transformation and
integration. Awareness, General awareness, an
especially self-awareness, strengthens the servant-
leader. Persuasion, the servant-leader uses
persuasion rather than on one’s positional authority
to convince others in making decisions within an
organization. Conceptualization, Servant-leaders
seek to nurture their abilities to dream great dreams.
The ability to look at a problem or an organization
from a conceptualizing perspective means that one
must think beyond day-to-day realities. Foresight,
Foresight is the ability to foresee what will happen
and where it will happen in the future. Stewardship,
Servant leadership, like stewardship, assumes first
and foremost a commitment to serving he needs of
others. Commitment to the growth of people,
Servant-leader believe that people have an intrinsic
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303

value beyond their tangible contributions as a
worker in company. Building Community, The
Servant-leader senses that modern society has lost
much in recent human history as the result of the
shift from local communities to the large institutions
as the primary sharper of human lives.
2.2 Teacher as servant leadership
Learning leadership implies that a good leader is a
good learner at the same time it also indicates that
the process of leading is intertwined with the process
of learning as a part of human life. A good
leadership creates change and improvement in life. It
is in line with stated that “The entire process of
learning is a journey to change–change that is
growth enhancing development” Teacher
development needs enhancing in capability as a
personal own, look below: Personal characteristics
and culture are positioned alongside the motivational
dimension. Servant leadership is demonstrated by
empowering and developing people; by expressing
humility, authenticity, interpersonal acceptance, and
stewardship; and by providing direction (Janet et al,
2014).
Most of the generation of leader at school or
principals are invigorated to be an instructional
leader, how over only a few of them actually
encouraged to be a learning leader. The instructional
leaders mostly pay attention to the planning,
implementation and evaluation, meanwhile the
learning leaders are enforced to focus on how things
are learned and what to be learned to enhance the
organization including the instructional function.
The deep of the learning leadership include the
following six steps: (1) expectations; (2)
demonstrations; (3) hospitality; (4) possibility; (5)
inquiry; and (6) the whole learner. Significant and
positive relationship between servant leadership
behaviors of principals and the teachers’
commitment to school. Servant leadership was a
significant predictor of teachers’ school commitment
(Yusuf, 2010).
The previous steps especially in terms of inquiry
and possibility, indicate that process of learning is a
never-ending process proven by the research.
Biologically speaking, our brain does not learn
somehow and incidentally, more or less well, or only
when it has to do so. From an evolutionary
perspective, the human brain has evolved to do
nothing else better than learning and to prefer
nothing else to it. Consequently, this type of
Leadership is what really close to the nature human
being as a learner.
Looking at the history of a long-standing list of
leaders around the worlds with different vision,
principles, background, social standing, education,
and even different purpose and goals there is always
one thing they have in common namely the ability to
learn. Most of the leaders learn through the mistake,
the failure, the falling that they have to endure
before they can stand proudly on top. Through the
falling, the mistake, they learn to be an exemplary
leader to follow. As a leader with Learning capacity
there are at least five fundamentals or characteristics
of learning leadership which are believe in yourself,
aspire to excel, challenge yourself, engage support,
and practice deliberately. Results of the 1st study
demonstrate that managers and professionals in
different generational cohorts do value different
attributes in leaders. Results of the 2nd study find
that managers in different generational cohorts also
report behaving differently (Valerie et al, 2010).
The leader with the capacity to learn will have
faith in their self. Being self-confidence is the part of
being a leader and having faith as a leader reassure
the member of organization, stated that the
occupational skills, learning leadership and the
leadership ability in general will help the human
population to thrive and work efficiently in the ever
changing and complex situation such as these times.
3 METHODS
3.1 Research Method
The study will be explored through qualitative and
descriptive means. Due to its nature, the use of the
qualitative approach deems relevant and the most
appropriate to conduct this research as this research
favors descriptive rather than numerical data.
Subsequently the qualitative approach favoring more
on the process of how the phenomenon may occur
instead of the result, in line with the circumstances
and the condition of this study. Therefore.
Two primary school are chosen as the samples
which are considered representing the existing
institutions. The respondents as principal, and
teacher who are chosen purposively from the
selected school institutions.
3.2 Instruments
To aid the qualitative approach the interview and
questionnaires were chosen as the techniques to
gather the sought data in this study. The interview is
purposively designed to gain clearer view or
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understanding towards the characteristics of the
leaders including their capacity and experience in
the line of duty. Meanwhile, the questionnaires are
used to identify principal leadership capacities and
learning leadership growth. To maintain the validity
and the reliability of the data gained from interview,
the conducted interview was recorded.
3.3 Research Questions
The stage of the study is directed to explore the
questions and the leadership growth related to five
fundamental of learning leadership i.e.: first believe
you can, second aspire to excel, third challenge
yourself, fourth engage support, and fifth practice
deliberately. In order to specify the focus of the
study, the research is formulated as follow:
1. How does learning play a role in leadership?
2. How the exhibition of action as exemplary
leader helps the leadership practice?
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The indicators for servant leadership can be seen in
table 1.
Table 1: Finding nine indicators for servant leadership.
No Indicator Discovery
1 How teacher
become a good-
listener in class?
First step is by paying
attention to students and
listening to what they have
to say without interrupting
them although the teacher
has already comprehended
purpose of their questions.
Interrupting them would
affect to their mentality to
have the courage to be
actively participate in future
activity. Teacher have to
listen before giving them
response or solution to their
problems, and also have to
motivate those who are less
active.
2 How teacher
develop
empathy toward
student?
It is to build familiarity in
class that would boost up
their confidence; which also
means not to perceive
differences between each of
them. Look around to find if
any student needs teacher’s
assistance and, at the same
time, help other students
understand the importance
of assisting their friends.
3 How teacher
effort to make
the class free of
discomfort?
Both student and teacher
could feel discomfort which
the first thing the teacher
can do is to make things
interesting for students;
being friendly to result in
joyful learning. The second
step is that to use various
different approaches in
learning process. The third
step is for teacher to be
confidence in teaching by
grasping the materials fully.
And the fourth step is to
make students comfortable
for being in class.
4 How teacher
raise student’s
awareness in
learning?
In the beginning of the
class, teacher would be
giving students directions of
how learning offers them
crucial provisions, and then
teacher lets students
understand their tasks,
roles, and purposes in class
by asking. To evaluate their
awareness in learning,
teacher can form the habit
of giving them homework
when they fail to fulfil their
task for once or twice, and
then assign a rule to call
their parents to school when
they also fail to fulfil their
task for the third time.
5 How teacher use
persuasive
method to build
relation with
students?
Is by persuading students to
participate in discussion, so
that they would have a
chance to communicate
their opinion with teacher.
To build closeness between
students, teacher could
apply ‘fair teaching’ (same-
age tutor) and let students
learn in various groups
based on their capability.
6 How teacher
develop concept
of closeness in
their association
in class?
The concept of the
closeness between teacher
and students is very
important; therefore, to
develop the feeling of
comfort, teacher needs to
embrace their students and
not to perceive differences
between each of them.
Teacher would never wish
their students to undergo
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bad experiences they had
when they were student.
Also, teacher can always
use aforementioned ‘fair
teaching’ method (same-age
tutor).
7 How teacher
develop class’
future vision?
Teacher needs to emerge
students’ awareness of what
they are trying to achieve
together. Applying the
concept of ‘knowledge will
take you everywhere,’ so
that they would focus more
on their study; performing
kinship to unified students;
organizing learning activity
out of the classroom to
build up students’
confidence and let them
comprehend the
characteristics of other
students and teacher.
8 How teacher
maintain to
become a
composed
matured adult in
class?
It is to be mature in
maintaining their attitude
such as adjusting
themselves on when to
become students’ friend or
parent. Keeping their
composition by being firm
in term of discipline.
Teacher has also to
empathize to all of their
students frequently.
9 How teacher
building up
commitment
and strengthen
up the class into
an excellent
community?
Building up commitment
such as purposes, functions,
roles, and goals that is
aimed to be achieved by the
class to become an excellent
community since the
beginning of the learning.
A good communication developed from the
ability to be a good listener. Likely for teacher,
being a good listener is not necessarily difficult
thing to do, however the ability to be able to listen to
and giving the appropriate response to what students
have conveyed is. A good teacher is a good listener;
a good teacher is able to adapt into their students’
expectation. A good teacher is a good leader which
starts from being a good listener for all parts of their
community. It is a manager’s communication skills
which motivate and inspire teammates to work hard
and achieve team targets and organizational goals as
well (Anchal and Richa, 2015).
Meaningful interaction starts from teacher’s
empathizing ability while being in contact with
students. The situation of students’ house, of the trip
they take to school, or of the school itself might be
the aspects they need teacher’s help with. Teacher
should be capable to go through similar emotion
with what their students are feeling, understand what
their students feel and think about; rid the border
between teacher and students. The servant leader
strives to understand and empathize with others.
People need to be accepted and recognized for their
special and unique spirits. One assumes the good
intentions of co-workers and colleagues and does not
reject them as people, even when one may be forced
to refuse to accept certain behaviors or performance.
The most successful servant leaders are those who
have become skilled empathetic listeners (Janet,
2014).
The gentleness of teacher would make students
feel comfortable around them. Favorable manner
with encouraging gesture and language of a teacher
would bring the students to be more open in
communication. This would also cause them to feel
comfort and secure while studying. The healing of
relationships is a powerful force for transformation
and integration. One of the great strengths of servant
leadership is the potential for healing one’s self and
one’s relationship to others. Many people have
broken spirits and have suffered from a variety of
emotional hurts. Although this is a part of being
human, servant leaders recognize that they have an
opportunity to help make whole those with whom
they come in contact (Larry, 2010).
Awareness developed since early age by means
of examples and habits. This should start from
applying good examples from teacher for students to
copy such as being discipline with time, giving
careful valuation, and avoiding carelessness. General
awareness, and especially self-awareness,
strengthens the servant-leader. Awareness helps one
in understanding issues involving ethics, power, and
values (Larry, 2010).
A good communication is the key into good
interaction with students, such as using gentle and
careful persuasion. Words become the symbols for
students of what kind of person they are dealing.
The servant leader seeks to convince others, rather
than coerce compliance. This particular element
offers one of the clearest distinctions between the
traditional authoritarian model and that of servant
leadership (Larry, 2010).
Teacher should be a mature figure for students to
feel comfortable and secure around as teacher is
becoming the proper example of someone whose
words or deeds are available for them to imitate.
Teacher’s demeanour and behavior should cause
students’ psychological state to develop positively.
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Servant leaders seek to nurture their abilities to
dream great dreams. The ability to look at a problem
or an organization from a conceptualizing
perspective means that one must think beyond day-
to-day realities. For many leaders, this is a
characteristic that requires discipline and practice.
The traditional leader is consumed by the need to
achieve short-term operational goals (Larry, 2010).
Directing students into having great valued and
well purposed vision. To follow the goals developed
from understanding their own capability which was
directed from teacher’s guide in having confidence.
One knows foresight when one experiences it.
Foresight is a characteristic that enables the servant
leader to understand the lessons from the past, the
realities of the present, and the likely consequence of
a decision for the future. It is also deeply rooted
within the intuitive mind (Larry, 2010).
Sacrifice of time and energy in taking care of and
guiding students will get paid off by the exemplary
result of their study. Servant leadership, like
stewardship, assumes first and foremost a
commitment to serving the needs of others. It also
emphasizes the use of openness and persuasion,
rather than control (Larry, 2010).
True dedication marked by effort in learning and
the period of time spent interacting with students;
seen from teacher’s effort in developing a joyful
class and a well-spent time. As such, the servant
leader is deeply committed to the growth of each and
every individual within his or her organization. The
servant leader recognizes the tremendous
responsibility to do everything in his or her power to
nurture the personal and professional growth of
employees and colleagues. In practice, this can
include (but is not limited to) concrete actions such
as making funds available for personal and
professional development, taking a personal interest
in the ideas and suggestions from everyone,
encouraging worker involvement in decision-
making, and actively assisting laid-off employees to
find other positions (Larry, 2010).
5 CONCLUSIONS
This study concludes that servant leadership is
important and has been applied in the organizational
life of students at the University of Education
Indonesia. From the eight dimensions of servant
leadership, the six dimensions of servant leadership
are considered important by students who are
involved in student organizations or student activity
units and the other two are neutrally close to
important. The dimension of wisdom is the most
important dimension and is the dimension that
students recognize they already have and apply in
organizational life among organizational
stewardship, services, humility, vision, persuasive
mapping, altruistic calling and emotional healing
dimensions.
The altruistic calling dimension has the lowest
level of importance compared to other servant
leadership dimensions because the statement items
that indicate altruistic calling are: placing the
interests of subordinates above their own interests
and sacrificing their interests to meet the interests of
subordinates for some students who are involved in
the organization are considered less important.
Overall, this study shows that the current leadership
taking place in student organizing has already led to
servant leadership.
Student implication is student activity and
student organization are advised to continue for
support the continuity of student activities, because
the student activity cannot only increase the student
organization's experience in the classroom but can
help the students find the meaning of their life.
The implication for the teacher, teacher can take
leadership training that emphasizes servant
leadership dimensions to enhance understanding of
the importance of living in mutual service to achieve
a healthy classroom.
For subsequent research on servant leadership
surveys in student organizations or student activity
units can increase the number of samples with more
diverse departments and types of organizations. In
addition, it can compare the importance and
application of servant leadership to students who are
actively organizing in public universities with
private universities.
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