The Leader Dilemma

There was a time in my life when I was obsessed with the subject of leadership; an interest that pushed me in the process to consume numerous and diversified accounts and treatise discussing the concept. This had its roots in a full year course I took during my high school. The course main materials were "Animal Farm", a novel, and "Chicken Run" the movie. The common denominator between the two was the depiction of leadership in times of revolutions.

I came to believe, in retrospect, that this classical approach to teaching the subject (i.e. presenting leadership in the context of revolutions) can be attributed to the accentuation of the leader role during such times, the ease of defining the process and the outcomes, and the short time scales, which in combination make such examples more tangible compared to, say, a company stewardship under a CEO for 15 years.

Nevertheless, with a bit of contemplating, one will most likely notice that there are fundamental differences between the characteristics we associate with leadership in the varying contexts (e.g. what is common between a leader of a revolution and another who leads an army?). Also, one might observe that leaders are not necessarily the best we can find around to fit the role. I think these two points were the main generators of my obsession.

And so, I set to collect and read every book I could lay my hands on that tackled the issue. The majority of the books I ended up reading are considered to be the staple references for MBA students (e.g. The Eight Habit, Good to Great, The Art of War,... etc).

But there was something unsettling about all of the theories propounded within the pages of these books. Now aside from the fact that they were rife with baseless platitudes and infested with wishful thinking, or worse, marred by normative approaches to the problem, the most unsatisfying thing was the elusive concept of Charisma, which, to my tasting, seemed to be conjured and interpreted differently, in an inconsistent manner from an author to another, for the sole purpose of concealing the shortcomings of their own theories.

Charisma, unlike entropy for instance (the most elusive concept in the history of physics thus far) does not seem to have a central logical form which can be consulted to resolve contentions resulting from its vagueness. So I gave up and thought that may be this was one subject which refuses to lend itself to theories and books.

However, my interests were recently revived upon a serendipitous landing on one of two separate findings that converged rapidly to give what I feel is a proper starting point in tackling the problem. Regardless of the story order, I decided to see what the anthropology of contemporary hunter gatherer societies (e.g. aboriginal Australians, and bushmen of Africa) has in store for us, and lo and behold! In these societies there are no leaders! What?

In such societies, it seems that anyone, even a kid, is entitled to participate in the process of decision making, but with more weight given to the opinions of the experienced in what is being at stack. What might come as a surprise is the system's stressing on the genuinity of the expertise regardless of any other factor (e.g. age or sex). This is to say that, while someones suggestions might be taken seriously when it comes to hunting rabbits, based on a long record of successful rabbits hunted, hers on warfare might be deemed irrelevant, with no personal offense taken on her side! These people, unlike us in the societies which are largely shielded from selection pressures, don't have the luxury of screwing up or acting irrationally, lest they be ousted from the next round of life at the jungle!

The other finding, which I read a bit about in an unrelated book, was the relationship between specific types of sociopathy and leadership in its vertical paradigms (e.g. the ones you find in our civilized societies). It seems that most of the leaders, who seek authoritative positions are sociopaths. Though they still find very little satisfaction in bonding with others, they think that humans make for good pawns in their grandeur designs.

All of this might lead one to conclude that leadership being delegated to a single powerful entity is an alien concept that humans might not be well equipped to rationally play its roles at both ends, the leader's and the followers'. But at the same time, a pressing question of whether the lack of a distinctive leading role can be imported to our civilized societies or not comes to mind. It might be correct that we need a form of leadership, but this does not necessarily mean that the types we came to adopt are optimal.

But it gets more exciting. The story of Adam and Eve is interpreted by many as a metaphorical documentation of mans' transition from a hunter gatherer style of life to a civilized one. Simultaneously, the Jewish Mythology, talks of a plot carried out by a narcissist and manipulative god called Yahweh, noting that these are two traits of the sociopath, who cunningly and deceptively aimed at overthrowing and stripping other gods of their ranks until he became the only deity around to be worshiped.

So could it be that humans were aware of these shifts from the very beginning?