<![CDATA[Research Aims: This research recognises the evolving landscape of followership within Indonesia’s education sector, specifically examining the fundamental role of trust in the leader in promoting servant leadership behaviour. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study involved 248 teachers from 11 of Indonesia’s 38 provinces, representing 25 cities and 79 schools across kindergarten, elementary, middle, and high school levels. Analysis was conducted using a regression-based method with SPSS 26.0 and PROCESS Macro 4.2. Research Findings: The findings revealed two mediation pathways between principal servant leadership and followers’ servant leadership: one through trust in the leader and a serving culture, and the other through trust in the leader and serving self-efficacy. Theoretical Contribution/Originality: This study advances servant leadership theory by validating trust in leaders as a central mechanism shaping followers’ servant leadership. Through serial mediation via serving culture and self-efficacy, it extends social learning and exchange theories, framing servant leadership as a trust-enabled, multi-level developmental process. Managerial Implication in the South East Asian Context: In high-power-distance, collectivist cultures, trust in leaders legitimises relational influence within hierarchy. School leaders should model ethical stewardship and embed servant leadership through communal practices, collaborative dialogue, shared decision-making, feedback, mentorship, and practice-based capacity building to strengthen teachers’ serving self-efficacy. Research Limitation & Implications: Limited by its reliance on cross-sectional self-reported data from Indonesian schools, future research should employ longitudinal to better capture causal relationships and strengthen the generalisability of servant leadership mechanisms in the South East Asian context.]]>
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