Articles / What Leadership Style is Greg Jackson: The Servant Leader Revolutionising Energy
Leadership StylesDiscover Greg Jackson's servant leadership style that built Octopus Energy into the UK's largest green supplier. Learn his empowering management approach.
In an era where corporate leadership often becomes synonymous with ego-driven decision-making, Greg Jackson stands as a remarkable exception. The founder and CEO of Octopus Energy, who recently received a CBE for his contributions to the energy sector, embodies a rare blend of servant leadership and transformational vision that has disrupted one of Britain's most entrenched industries.
Jackson founded Octopus Energy in 2016, and by 2024 the company was valued at over $9 billion, becoming the largest electricity supplier in the United Kingdom, serving over seven million households and active in 27 countries. But what leadership style enabled this meteoric rise, and what can executives learn from Jackson's approach to building one of Europe's most successful energy companies?
Jackson's leadership philosophy centres on what he calls "power with" rather than "power over" – a principle that has guided Octopus Energy from startup to unicorn status whilst maintaining the agility and customer focus that traditional energy giants lost decades ago.
Unlike many CEOs who stumble into industries through corporate ladder-climbing, Jackson's leadership style was forged by personal experience. He told the BBC that he remembered having his energy supply cut off when he was growing up, and "After experiencing my bills jump frequently when I was paying them myself as an adult, I knew that something had to be done to change this".
This personal connection to the problem Octopus Energy solves infuses Jackson's leadership with authentic purpose. Rather than leading from an ivory tower, he leads from empathy – understanding viscerally the frustration and helplessness customers feel when facing unpredictable energy bills.
In his own analysis of leadership qualities, Jackson demonstrates remarkable self-awareness. "I think narcissism is one of the worst traits for a business leader", he notes, explaining that some CEOs "want to see their face in the media and long for personal glory for founding and running the company".
Jackson's philosophy directly contradicts this approach: "the important thing to remember is that it's not about them, it's about the people who are building the business, the business itself, and its mission". This servant leadership mindset – putting the organisation and its people before personal aggrandisement – forms the bedrock of his management approach.
Jackson's most distinctive leadership innovation lies in Octopus Energy's radical organisational structure. "We scaled the business by repeatedly cloning micro businesses", he explains, creating autonomous units that can respond quickly to market changes without bureaucratic bottlenecks.
This approach extends to human resources management, where Jackson has eliminated traditional HR departments. "We train our managers to take on many of the functions that are normally covered by HR departments. In our experience this leads to strong relationships between managers and team members, happier employees and higher productivity".
The results speak volumes: "Our middle management team in operations - which makes up most of our team - fares even better, being made up of 80% women and most of them have been with us from the first 50 employees we hired, showing that people are happy here and like to stay".
Jackson's leadership style prioritises transparency and open communication. "Jackson is also a strong advocate for transparency. He ensures that employees and customers understand the company's goals and challenges". This creates an environment where team members feel safe to contribute ideas and take calculated risks.
During virtual meetings, Jackson demonstrates vulnerability by acknowledging his own imperfections: "I think my humour isn't always helpful. Since we've been doing our weekly all-hands meetings virtually, I sometimes have to make sure my jokes are all above board!" This self-deprecating honesty helps build trust and reduces hierarchical barriers.
"At Octopus Energy, Jackson has implemented a flat organizational structure that encourages collaboration. This approach has enabled the company to remain agile and responsive to customer needs". Unlike traditional energy companies with rigid command-and-control structures, Jackson's flat hierarchy ensures ideas can flow upward from any level.
"We've established an incredibly flat structure here at Octopus, which allows people to make roles their own, and find what really works for them to make them happy to come to work every day". This approach recognises that employee satisfaction directly correlates with customer satisfaction and business performance.
Jackson's servant leadership philosophy extends to prioritising employee wellbeing as a core business strategy. "Don't get me wrong, profit and value are incredibly important to a company's life-cycle, but happiness should be put above all else. Are you happy doing what you're doing? Are people working at your company happy?"
This focus on happiness isn't merely altruistic – it's strategically brilliant. Happy employees provide better customer service, think more creatively, and stay with the company longer, reducing recruitment costs and preserving institutional knowledge.
Jackson demonstrates emotional intelligence by recognising his own stress patterns and adapting his leadership style accordingly. "I know when I get stressed, I sometimes try to take control of the situation myself. I pride myself on being self-aware about when I get stressed, so I've worked really hard over the years to recognise when those times are happening".
Rather than defaulting to authoritarian control during difficult periods, Jackson consciously leans into his servant leadership principles: "In situations like this, I try to take a step back and listen even harder than before to my colleagues and take their point of views".
Jackson recognises that sustainable leadership requires attention to mental health and resilience. "There will always be stressful moments that push the boundaries of your mental wellbeing when you are a founder, so being acutely aware of your own resilience and mental health is one of the most important traits for any leader".
This awareness extends beyond self-care to creating organisational resilience through distributed leadership and empowered teams that can function effectively even when senior leaders face challenges.
Jackson's servant leadership extends beyond employees to encompass customers as primary stakeholders. "The deep understanding of customers should be defining everything you do", he argues, positioning customer needs as the North Star for all business decisions.
This customer-centric approach manifests in personal engagement: "Jackson similarly reported that he frequently engages with customers on social media, noting that, 'It teaches you so much that gets lost [when you solely look at the data] … The degree of detail we get is extreme'".
Unlike CEOs who delegate customer communications to marketing teams, Jackson personally crafts messages to customers. "members of the company's senior leadership team – namely, Octopus' creative director, herself, and Jackson – still personally write price change communications for customers".
When explaining complex pricing changes, "Jackson recorded a video of himself talking customers through the changes, which was embedded within the email". This personal touch reflects servant leadership principles of transparency and direct accountability to those the organisation serves.
Jackson's transformational leadership combines servant principles with inspirational vision. "He fosters a culture of innovation and empowers his team to think creatively", whilst maintaining focus on the broader mission of addressing climate change through affordable green energy.
The company's growth trajectory reflects this mission alignment: "Octopus Energy has grown its domestic customer based in UK, from just 198,000 customers in 2018 to over 1.5 million customers in 2020. That's an amazing 658% growth". When asked about the secret behind this success, Jackson replies simply: "Passionate young people who believe in our mission".
Jackson's leadership development was influenced by his time at Procter & Gamble, where he learned from "a brilliant HR Director, Dennis Shuler at Procter & Gamble, who was a massive advocate of decentralisation and people centred management". This foundation in established management principles, combined with entrepreneurial innovation, creates a unique leadership synthesis.
As Octopus Energy expands internationally, Jackson faces the challenge of maintaining servant leadership culture across diverse markets. The company has expanded beyond the UK, entering markets in Japan, Australia, and several other countries, whilst preserving the flat hierarchy and empowerment principles that drove initial success.
The technology platform Kraken enables this scaled servant leadership by automating routine tasks and freeing human teams to focus on relationship-building and creative problem-solving. Kraken, Octopus's proprietary green tech platform, is at the heart of the Group's growth and is now contracted to serve over 40 million accounts across the globe.
Jackson's servant leadership approach has resonated with major investors who recognise authentic leadership as a competitive advantage. Octopus has attracted over $2.3 billion worth of funding from international energy companies, large pension funds and global investors, including Generation Investment Management, chaired by former US vice-president Al Gore.
These sophisticated investors understand that companies led by servant leaders often outperform those with traditional command-and-control structures, particularly in rapidly changing industries requiring innovation and adaptability.
Jackson's leadership style echoes great British leaders who combined personal humility with transformational vision. Like Sir Ernest Shackleton, who prioritised his crew's welfare during the Endurance expedition, Jackson places employee wellbeing at the centre of business strategy.
His approach also recalls the industrial innovations of Victorian entrepreneurs like George Cadbury, who recognised that treating workers well created superior business outcomes. Jackson modernises this tradition through technology and contemporary management science whilst preserving the fundamental principle that organisations exist to serve people, not the reverse.
Jackson's appointment as Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2024 King's Birthday Honours reflects recognition that his leadership approach serves broader national interests. By revolutionising energy supply whilst maintaining focus on affordability and sustainability, Jackson demonstrates how servant leadership can address societal challenges whilst building commercial success.
Jackson's leadership effectiveness stems largely from authentic connection to Octopus Energy's mission. Leaders seeking to emulate his success must identify genuine personal connections to their organisation's purpose, rather than adopting servant leadership as a management technique.
Jackson's flat hierarchy and manager-as-HR-practitioner approach provides a replicable model for organisations seeking to improve employee engagement and retention. However, successful implementation requires genuine commitment to distributing power and accepting that empowered employees will make decisions differently than centralised leadership might prefer.
Octopus Energy's success demonstrates how technology can enable servant leadership by automating routine tasks and providing data for better decision-making. However, Jackson's approach keeps technology subservient to human relationships and customer needs, rather than allowing technological efficiency to drive strategy.
As Octopus Energy grows larger and more complex, maintaining Jackson's hands-on servant leadership approach becomes increasingly challenging. The question remains whether the empowerment and flat hierarchy principles can survive the operational complexity of managing millions of customers across dozens of countries.
Jackson's very British approach to servant leadership may require adaptation for different cultural contexts as Octopus expands globally. What reads as authentic humility in British culture might be perceived differently in markets that expect more assertive executive presence.
Jackson faces the challenge that all servant leaders eventually confront: building organisations that can maintain their values and effectiveness beyond the founder's direct involvement. Octopus Energy's structure suggests Jackson is consciously building distributed leadership capability that could survive his eventual departure.
As traditional energy companies struggle to adapt to renewable technology and changing customer expectations, Jackson's servant leadership model may prove to be the template for industry transformation rather than merely one company's success story.
Greg Jackson's leadership style represents a masterclass in combining servant leadership principles with transformational vision and practical business execution. By prioritising employee empowerment, customer centricity, and authentic purpose over personal aggrandisement, Jackson has built one of Europe's most successful energy companies whilst maintaining the agility and values of a startup.
His approach challenges conventional wisdom about executive leadership, demonstrating that companies led by servant leaders can achieve extraordinary growth whilst maintaining high employee satisfaction and customer loyalty. For business leaders seeking sustainable competitive advantage in rapidly changing industries, Jackson's model offers a compelling alternative to traditional command-and-control approaches.
The true test of Jackson's leadership legacy will be whether Octopus Energy can maintain its servant leadership culture as it continues scaling globally. If successful, Jackson may have created not just a successful company, but a new template for how modern organisations can thrive by putting service to people at the centre of everything they do.
As Jackson himself notes, "the most daring and transformative leaders will share their power with colleagues" – a principle that may well define the future of effective leadership in an increasingly complex and interconnected business environment.
What type of leadership style does Greg Jackson use at Octopus Energy? Greg Jackson employs a servant leadership style combined with transformational leadership principles. He emphasises empowering employees, maintaining flat hierarchies, and prioritising customer and employee wellbeing over personal recognition.
How does Greg Jackson's leadership differ from traditional energy company CEOs? Unlike traditional energy executives who rely on command-and-control structures, Jackson uses decentralised decision-making, eliminates bureaucratic layers, and personally engages with both customers and employees to maintain transparency and trust.
What role does technology play in Jackson's leadership approach? Jackson uses technology, particularly Octopus Energy's Kraken platform, to enable servant leadership by automating routine tasks and providing data for better decisions, whilst keeping human relationships and customer needs as the primary focus.
How does Jackson maintain company culture during rapid growth? Jackson maintains culture through systematic empowerment, training managers to handle HR functions, implementing flat organisational structures, and personally engaging in customer communications to preserve transparency and accountability.
What can other leaders learn from Greg Jackson's approach? Leaders can learn the importance of authentic purpose connection, systematic employee empowerment, customer-centric decision-making, and the willingness to distribute power rather than hoarding it for personal benefit.
How does Jackson handle stress and pressure as a leader? Jackson demonstrates self-awareness about his stress responses and consciously adapts his leadership style during difficult periods by listening more carefully to colleagues and taking a step back from trying to control situations directly.
What makes Jackson's servant leadership effective in the energy industry? Jackson's approach works because it enables rapid innovation and customer responsiveness in an industry traditionally characterised by slow, bureaucratic decision-making and poor customer service standards.