Exploration of Cognitive Antecedents for Servant Leadership

Servant leadership is described as prioritizing the needs of others and serving them over the power and needs of themselves. In order to investigate servant leadership and its cognitive antecedents, the current study focuses on cognitive processes and experiences that are aimed to develop individuals who serve the needs of others in organizations. To understand how one recognizes and practice servant leadership, the present study is investigating 1) Theory of Mind (ToM), 2) recognition of essential servant leadership characteristics, and 3) one’s involvement in an organization that focuses on servant leadership through service and service-oriented leadership experience. Students were recruited from Montclair State University to participate in the study. Participants were randomly assigned to complete various sets of tasks, including Yoni Task (ToM), Reading in the Eye (ToM), Match-to-Sample (recognition), and the Leader Behavior Descriptive Questionnaire (LBDQ; one’s involvement). Due to the nature and timing of the research, actual final results are not available at the time of this publication. However, it is predicted that performance on ToM measures will be positively related to exhibiting servant leadership behaviors. Additionally, it is predicted that a higher ToM will have congruence with the leadership ratings on the questionnaire. Further, those with higher ToM will also be able to identify more servant leader characteristics in the Match-to-Sample task.