Article: Friday 7 August
Dirk van Dierendonck has spent two decades studying what it means to lead with a strong focus on others. As Professor of Leadership and Management at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, and one of the world's leading authorities on servant leadership, he has long argued that putting people first is not soft management thinking but a powerful driver of performance. Here, he describes his latest research which makes that case in a compelling way, tracing key mechanisms by which servant leadership shapes employees' sense of meaning, sleep quality, and the experience of flow at work.
Ask most employees what their best-ever workday felt like, and they will reach for the same description: time disappeared, the work felt meaningful, everything clicked. Psychologists have a name for this state. They call it flow.
Flow, a concept developed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, describes the experience of total immersion in a task. It combines absorption, genuine enjoyment, and intrinsic motivation. Employees in a state of flow are not watching the clock. They are fully present, and the research is clear: this benefits both the individual and the organisation.
What is less well understood is how leaders – that is, people’s direct supervisors – can make flow more likely. A new study by Van Dierendonck and colleagues, published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, provides a detailed answer.
Servant leadership is not a new concept, but it remains somewhat countercultural in management thinking. Rooted in the work of 20th century business executive and leadership consultant Robert Greenleaf, the approach puts the well-being and development of employees first. Rather than leading through authority, servant leaders prioritize their teams’ needs, encourage personal growth, create space for autonomy, and approach their role as stewards rather than commanders.
Van Dierendonck, who has published extensively on servant leadership and co-authored one of the most widely cited reviews of the field, conducted the new study with Feng Lv of Nankai University and Lin Xiu of the University of Minnesota Duluth. Together, they set out to trace the specific pathways through which servant leadership produces better outcomes for employees day-to-day.
The study is based on a diary methodology: 175 employees from three companies in China completed two short surveys each day for five consecutive days, one in the morning and one at the end of the working day. The design captures the daily texture of working life in a way that conventional surveys simply cannot.
The headline finding is both intuitive and important. Servant leadership creates a positive upward spiral. When employees work for a manager who genuinely cares about their development, helps them see the significance of their work, and builds trust rather than demanding compliance, they begin to experience their work as more meaningful. That deeper sense of meaning, in turn, makes them more receptive to the leader's supportive behaviours. They feel more empowered. And ultimately, they experience more flow.
"Servant leadership works by giving employees a greater sense of meaning, and enhances their sleep quality, psychological empowerment, and experience of flow," the researchers conclude.
The mechanism here is theoretically grounded in what psychologists call the ‘broaden-and-build’ theory. Positive emotions and positive meaning expand the range of thoughts and actions available to a person. Over time, this builds personal resources, such as confidence, resilience, and psychological empowerment that make optimal experiences – like flow – more achievable.
In practical terms, the study found that the effect of meaningfulness operates across two levels. At the general level, employees who scored higher on the overall sense of meaning also reported stronger servant-leadership experiences over time. At the daily level, meaningfulness acted as a magnifier: on days when employees felt their work mattered, the positive effects of servant leadership on empowerment were even stronger.
One of the more striking findings is the link between servant leadership and sleep quality. Employees whose managers practiced servant leadership reported sleeping better, and those with better sleep quality reported higher levels of psychological empowerment the following morning.
This matters for a reason that is easy to overlook. Poor sleep does not stay at home. It comes to work. Research consistently links sleep deprivation to reduced attention, impaired decision-making, and diminished emotional regulation. The ability to reach a state of flow, which demands sustained focus and a balance between skill and challenge, is especially vulnerable to fatigue. A manager who sets realistic workloads, fosters psychological safety, and supports employees in managing the boundary between work and home life is, quite literally, helping them sleep at night.
The study was unable to confirm a direct path from sleep quality to flow, suggesting the relationship is more indirect, but the link between servant leadership and sleep quality was robust and meaningful.
The practical implications run in several directions simultaneously.
The research is a reminder that the day-to-day texture of their leadership matters. Employees who feel seen, supported, and trusted bring more of themselves to their work. This is not purely altruistic: the research shows that meaningfulness and empowerment translate into stronger engagement and better performance. The upward spiral benefits everyone.
The case for investing in servant leadership development is growing stronger. Programmes that cultivate humility, empathy, genuine concern for employee well-being, and a focus on supporting growth rather than demanding compliance are likely to yield dividends not just in engagement scores but also in the kind of deep, motivated work that drives innovation and sustained performance.
Sleep, often overlooked in workplace well-being conversations, is also worth taking seriously. Leaders who help reduce the stress their employees carry home and model healthy boundaries around work demands are contributing to something with measurable downstream effects.
The researchers are careful about the limits of their findings. The study was conducted in China, and whilst cross-cultural meta-analyses suggest the dynamics of servant leadership translate across contexts, cultural specificity is worth acknowledging. The design of the diary study also captures associations across time rather than demonstrating causality in the strict experimental sense. Confirming these pathways in longitudinal or experimental field studies remains an important next step.
Nonetheless, the strength of the findings and the coherence of the underlying theory give organisations good reason to pay attention. The question of how to cultivate more flow at work is not simply a nice-to-have. It sits at the intersection of employee well-being, organisational performance, and the kind of workplace culture that sustains people over time.
And the answer, at least in part, lies in how a manager shows up each day.
Read Van Dierendonck and colleagues' study: Servant leadership, meaningfulness and flow: an upward spiral in the Journal of Positive Psychology.
Science Communication and Media Officer
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) is one of Europe’s top-ranked business schools. RSM provides ground-breaking research and education furthering excellence in all aspects of management and is based in the international port city of Rotterdam – a vital nexus of business, logistics and trade. RSM’s primary focus is on developing business leaders with international careers who can become a force for positive change by carrying their innovative mindset into a sustainable future. Our first-class range of bachelor, master, MBA, PhD and executive programmes encourage them to become to become critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinkers and doers.
