A Brief History of Leadership

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A Brief History of Leadership
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A new idea from ancient times

• Todays behaviours (what we do) are influenced by
  our biological history (what we were).
  Leadership development is possible and necessary
  to help us overcome our more primitive instincts.

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Why study the history of leadership?

• To explore leadership concepts (map-reading)
• To test leadership concepts (map-testing)
• To develop richer personal leadership maps
  (map-making)

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Health Warning Anthropomorphism

• Anthropomorphism seeing human behaviour
  patterns in other animals inanimate objects and
  symbolic entities (Peter Rabbit Hal The Four
  Horsemen of the apocalypse )

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Our ancestors tale

• Our ancestors tale begins with the earliest
  common ancestor (concestor) of all living
  creatures.
• If we search, we can find the messages from over
  a billion years of evolution

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Concestual links (1)
Concestor A shared common ancestor (Best
estimates of dates)
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Concestual links (2)
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Concestor links (3)
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Leadership An evolutionary view

• The further back we go into history, the broader
  the definition of leadership needed
• The closer to our personal leadership
  experiences, the greater the need for stipulating
  context

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It depends what you mean by leadership ..

• Influence processes
• Mobilizing resources to arouse, engage, satisfy
  the motives of followers
• Making sense of what people are doing
  articulating purpose and values

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Insects, instincts and information

• Insects behave primarily through hard-wired
  instincts
• Scientists have developed models based on
  information theory
• Insects with valuable resource information can
  lead followers to food, to safety, into battle

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Do insects show creative leadership?
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Do birds show leadership?
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What leadership behaviours can be seen in other
animal families?
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Leadership among the primates
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Leadership in our closest ancestors

• Early hominoids
• Hunter gatherers
• Agrarian tribalism
• Industrial society
• Our informational age

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Atavistic Prototypes
Animal Leaders (non human)
Animal Leaders (human)
Heroic Leaders
Territorial Leaders
New Leadership School
Trait Theories
Pack Leadership
Collective Leadership
Style and Contingency Theories
Thought leaders
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Do we inherit behaviours fromconcestors?
Insects Guided foraging, Home building
Birds, Fish Flocking, Shoaling, Attraction displays, territorialism
Wolves, dogs Hunting, collaboration, learning through play(?)
Horses, elephants Matriarchal schooling for herd conformity (Mature males isolated)
Mandrills Matriarchal large group (Mature males isolated)
Chimpanzees Complex transactions (grooming, nurturing) provide social stability and status (Social capitalists)
( Selected examples)
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Toward a new idea of evolutionary leadership

• Leadership today has preserved residual ancient
  forms sustained mimetically (through leadership
  myths)
• Social and personal development permits
  transcendence of more primitive instincts
  (through consciousness and learning)
• We become and create the leaders we deserve

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So what?

• Whats the use of a baby? (Faraday)
• Helps explain bullying leaders (Mandrills)
  Charismatic influence (Peacocks)
  Anthropomorphism (Termites) Dysfunctional
  behaviours (Horses) Manipulative behaviours
  (Chimpanzees)