By Myka Kennedy Stephens January 22, 2026
This is the first of an 8-part series on Attendant Leadership theory.
I was in a committee meeting recently and witnessed a troubling display of leadership. The type of meeting, the people in the room, and even the agenda are not all that important. This could’ve been any meeting, and in fact, I’ve experienced meetings like this before and I will probably experience meetings like this again.
The committee was joined by an executive leader and the conversation went something like this: “We’re making cuts. You’ve already heard this; this is just an opportunity to give you details. We’ve looked at the research and, even though people value what you do, they just don’t have time for it. It’s really important that we save money. So the work you’re doing won’t continue as it has. We’re changing the scope so that it better fits our need to save money while giving people something smaller that they should have time for.”
A Troubling Pattern
That’s a pretty standard conversation that a lot of organizations are having right now as the economy’s uncertainty continues and we’re grappling with the effects of burnout and rollbacks. What makes this troubling is all that came before, during, and after these words. The executive leader opened the conversation assuming we already knew the decisions they had come to discuss. We did not. The information was delivered in a top-down way, oblivious to everyone’s mood and emotional state. When we began to ask questions, there were no clear answers. Only deflections that made it impossible for us to take any action that would have been helpful or responsive. In the days that followed, committee members were singled out by the executive leader for private conversations with no stated agenda, effectively cutting us off from one another. Trust and collegiality within the organization evaporated.
Anyone paying attention to leadership trends on the national and global stage will recognize some haunting similarities here. Making a decision on a questionable interpretation of research data without consulting those who have direct experience. Not communicating the decision effectively and starting a conversation under the assumption that everyone is informed. Claiming to be able to provide details and then deflecting when questions are asked. Failing or refusing to read the room and not acknowledging the effect of what is being communicated. Creating conditions so that people are isolated and socially separated, making it difficult to work as a team and take action together. We see this type of top-down, autocratic leadership modeled for us in Washington, DC daily. And like it or not, it’s starting to seep into our organizations, eroding trust and fragmenting our sense of community.
Avoiding or ignoring the problem eventually normalizes it. The more normal it becomes, the harder it is to change and the more likely it is to spread.
When leadership in an organization begins to trend toward control and autocracy, as the committee meeting I observed signaled, our ability to respond or challenge it is shaped by our mental and emotional state. Our social, political, cultural, and geographical contexts influence the amount of energy and brain space we can give to troubling situations in our organizations. Put more simply: if we are already numbed by the news of the day, it is likely that there’s very little energy left to call out and challenge a lesser version of autocracy emerging in an organization. Avoiding or ignoring the problem eventually normalizes it. The more normal it becomes, the harder it is to change and the more likely it is to spread.
Greenleaf’s Disruption: Servant Leadership
This situation reminds me of another moment in recent history: a time of social unrest, war waged for questionable reasons, and deteriorating trust in institutions and government. It was a moment in which Robert Greenleaf diagnosed a leadership crisis and offered a disruption: Servant Leadership. Since the 1970 publication of the essay, “The Servant as Leader,” Greenleaf’s philosophy of leadership, which prioritizes service, has inspired countless leaders and organizations. Servant Leadership is particularly resonant with organizations that are in the “business” of serving—libraries, schools, churches, and non-profits, to name a few. While Greenleaf’s inspiration actually came from Hermann Hesse’s novel, Journey to the East, many Christians have adopted the term as a reference to Jesus’s model of servanthood in ministry. Given the parallel between the leadership crisis Greenleaf named in 1970 and the patterns emerging today, the question naturally arises: Can Servant Leadership help us disrupt and find a way out of our current crisis?
At the risk of upsetting a lot of Servant Leadership evangelists, I want to say clearly: no, I do not believe it can. I believe we need something that is not just grounded in the practice of service, but also the practices of justice and peace. We need a more holistic approach to leadership that prioritizes relationships across the full spectrum of human experience. We need an authentic approach to leadership that can be embodied by people at every level in an organization. Why? Because leaders have to be nurtured first before they can lead effectively, and it benefits the organization as a whole when everyone understands and can recognize leadership principles. In order to counter the rise of leadership that’s motivated by a need to control and command, we must have a way to talk about leadership that is attentive to power dynamics and contextual factors. The disruption I’m talking about for times such as these is Attendant Leadership.
A More Holistic, Power-Aware Alternative
Attendant Leadership theory proposes two dimensions of relationality that intersect to shape five expressions of leadership, all grounded in practices of service, justice, and peace. The relational scope dimension traces a continuum from a leader’s relationship with self to their relationship with community. The relational depth dimension traces a continuum from our shared human systems out into the wider cosmos and the ecological, spiritual, and structural systems we inhabit. Together, these dimensions reveal five expressions of Attendant Leadership: healer, sage, emissary, companion, and steward.
We need a more holistic approach to leadership that prioritizes relationships, attends to power dynamics, and takes context seriously.
This theory first emerged from my participation in a consultation on diaconal studies in 2023. I further developed it as part of the article, “A Post-Colonial Response to Servant Leadership: Reclaiming Diakonia from Greenleaf,” written in collaboration with my husband, Darryl W. Stephens. In my ongoing work with leaders in libraries, I have continued to develop this theory, testing the terminology and concepts for a more secular audience and giving it the name Attendant Leadership. Even though it is a work in progress, I am feeling a nudge to begin sharing it. At a time when many of us, myself included, are feeling overwhelmed, overstretched, and overburdened by the events of our workplaces and the world, anchoring what’s left of our energy to something constructive can provide a sense of grounding. Attendant Leadership is my offer to you of a place to ground yourself as a leader.
An Invitation to Explore Together
Over the next several weeks, I invite you to explore Attendant Leadership with me. With this introduction, we’ve completed the first part of an eight-part journey. In a couple of weeks, we’ll begin in earnest by attending to relationships as leaders, and then we’ll spend time with each of the five expressions of Attendant Leadership: healer, sage, emissary, companion, and steward. We’ll complete the series in early May by bringing Attendant Leadership into conversation with other leadership frameworks you may already know, like Servant Leadership and Adaptive Leadership. Along the way, we’ll keep circling back to the questions of power, context, justice, and peace that this moment demands.
Attendant Leadership is still in an active phase of development, and your insights matter. If something in this introduction resonates with your experience, or pushes against it, I would be grateful to hear from you in the comments. Let’s shape this conversation together.