Scale library · HRM & organizational behavior
Servant leadership (SL-7): Liden et al. (2015)
The SL-7 is the short form of the 28-item servant leadership scale, validated by Liden, Wayne, Meuser, Hu, Wu and Liao (2015). Servant leadership puts followers' growth ahead of the leader's own interests, cares about the community and upholds ethical standards. Each SL-7 item represents one dimension of the SL-28, so the scale is short yet covers the full content. It suits theses on how direct managers affect employee engagement, creativity, organizational citizenship behavior and turnover intention.
Cite the original, not the blog.
- Model or scale: SL-7
- Constructs: 1
- Items: 7
Original English items
Items marked (R) are reverse-coded: recode them before computing reliability or scale scores. Replace bracketed placeholders such as [system] with the name of the system, brand or organization you study.
Servant Leadership (SL, 7 items)
| Code | Item wording | Reverse-coded |
|---|---|---|
| SL1 | My supervisor can tell if something work-related is going wrong | No |
| SL2 | My supervisor makes my career development a priority | No |
| SL3 | I would seek help from my supervisor if I had a personal problem | No |
| SL4 | My supervisor emphasizes the importance of giving back to the community | No |
| SL5 | My supervisor puts my best interests ahead of his/her own | No |
| SL6 | My supervisor gives me the freedom to handle difficult situations in the way that I feel is best | No |
| SL7 | My supervisor would NOT compromise ethical principles in order to achieve success. | No |
Response scale
Agreement scale. The studies we checked used 5 points (1 = Strongly disagree … 5 = Strongly agree) or 7 points; choose one and keep it consistent with the other constructs in your questionnaire. Employees rate their direct manager; the score is the mean of the 7 items.
Licence and permission
The items are published in an academic article and widely used in research. We found no purchase or licensing conditions; cite Liden et al. (2015).
Sources (APA 7)
- Liden, R. C., Wayne, S. J., Meuser, J. D., Hu, J., Wu, J., & Liao, C. (2015). Servant leadership: Validation of a short form of the SL-28. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(2), 254–269. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2014.12.002
- Wang, W., Kang, S. W., & Choi, S. B. (2022). Servant leadership and creativity: A study of the sequential mediating roles of psychological safety and employee well-being. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 807070. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.807070
Vietnamese translation
A Vietnamese translation of every item, with sample-size advice and studies that used the scale, is on the Vietnamese page for this scale.