Our Journals
GVER Articles 
Service Before Self: Towards a Theory of Servant-Leadership
SAUNDRA J. REINKE
GVER, Vol. 5 No. 3,
(2004)
This article explores the relationship between
perceptions of leadership and the level of trust between
employees and supervisors. More specifically, this article seeks
to begin a theoretical discussion of a particular leadership
approach, servant leadership, introduces an instrument for
measuring servant leadership, and presents the result of its
initial use in a survey of 651 employees in a suburban Georgia
county. While the results are preliminary, they show that one
component of servant leadership, stewardship, is a determinant
of trust level, indicating that “service before self” is not just a
slogan, but a powerful reality that builds trust between
employees and supervisors.
