Servant Leadership: the bridge from leading yourself to leading others

Hermann Hesse's published novel Journey to the East (1932) tells of a band of seekers led on a long journey by a servant named Leo, who carries the group's burdens, sings their morale through hard nights, and quietly enables the journey. Halfway through, Leo disappears. The journey collapses. Years later, the narrator discovers that Leo had been the head of the order that sponsored the journey all along; the servant was the leader. Greenleaf cites this parable as the seed of his published thesis: the leadership Leo exercised was inseparable from the service he gave.