Development of the servant leadership assessment instrument

Purpose Building upon Patterson's servant leadership theory, this study aims to present an instrument to measure the constructs of this working theory (identified as agapao love, humanity, altruism, vision, trust, service, and empowerment). Design/methodology/approach Specifically, the seven component concepts, as defined by Patterson, were used to build items for a servant leadership instrument. This study used DeVellis' “Guidelines in Scale Development” to develop an instrument for Patterson's new theory of servant leadership. The participants for the study consisted of a stratified sample taken from the study response data base. The surveys were created, and administered, using an online survey using surveysuite. Findings Three separate data collections were used for the development of this instrument reducing the 71‐item scale to 42 items yielding five factors: empowerment, love, humility, trust, and vision. Research limitations/implications Recommend that future research include surveys at companies and organizations that advocate servant leadership concepts. Future research should include how each gender influences some of these items. Practical implications It is the intention that this instrument has the ability to predict or give measurement to the concepts of Patterson's theory of servant leadership so that a servant leader can measure his or her effectiveness as a servant leader. Originality/value According to the review of the literature, this is the first instrument to measure five factors on servant leadership.