Servant-Leadership in a Changing Culture: Reflections on the Brazilian Context

As in any other society, the principles of servant-leadership have an incontestable appeal to Brazilian corporate environment, but the term servant may not sound terribly attractive to people from the Brazilian culture. In fact, this is one of the struggles we face when spreading the servant-leadership philosophy among business corporations and Brazilian society at large. Recently, in a class on Leadership Teamwork for Masters students at University of Santo Amaro, in Sao Paulo, I strategically decided to explore the servant-leadership concept as the foundation of the course, so I outlined the topic on the course syllabus. As I introduced the concept for discussion among the students (most of whom came from different business corporations), I could feel three different consecutive reactions: first, they were shocked by the idea of leading different levels of the company without the traditional, heavily controlled style they are used to; second, as the class continued, they were amazed by the idea of giving priority to people and their potential as persons and professionals; and third, they raised the topic of how difficult it is to accept the idea of servant in the Brazilian corporate environment.