I dislike the phrase servant leadership. I have a mental link between that and curling parenting, where parents anticipate any problem and sweep the way for the

I dislike the phrase servant leadership. I have a mental link between that and curling parenting, where parents anticipate any problem and sweep the way for their children. The drawback of servant leadership in the workplace (and curling parenting in childrearing) is that the servant leader quickly becomes (in my experience) an overworked single point of failure, and once they leave there is nobody else who knows how to handle the obstacles they've moved out of the way for everyone. In the worst cases, they leave behind a group of people who have been completely isolated from the rest of the organisation, and has no idea what their purpose is and how to fit in with the rest of the world, once the leader leaves. I would like to invent my own buzzword: transparent leadership. In my book, a good leader - coaches people, - connects people, - teaches people methodical problem solving, - explains values, principles, and other fuzzy values to aid people in making aligned decisions on their own, - creates direct links between supply and demand (instead of deliberately making themselves a middle man), - allows their direct reports career growth by gradually taking over leadership responsibilities, - continuously trains their replacement (related to the above), and - generally makes themselves redundant. Ideally, transparent leadership has a side effect: it gives the leader more time to work on technical problems, keeping their skills fresh, which gets them more respect in the eyes of their direct reports too. Note that servant leadership/curling parenting feels really good for the direct report/child... until it doesn't. TL;DR: Parenting and leadership is very similar. Teach a man to fish etc.