Chapter 1: Leadership – an Introduction
If you want to see the space (and maybe the place) of leadership find an area that will fit about 200
people, Ask them to move around simply following two rules: “no communication – no sound, signs
or noises and secondly, stay within an arms lengths from each other. Now simply stand back and
watch them mill around. Eventually (often within minutes) they will end up moving around an empty
space in the middle. This is the leadership space.
Repeat the exercise, but this time give about five people a target to aim for – arrange it so that
others don’t realise that these five were picked out for something special. The rules stay the same,
arms length and no communication. Same milling (and giggling and fun) but a different pattern. The
few informed people will somehow lead the group to the target without any of the trappings some
leaders seem to employ – noise, bluster and obvious status symbols.1 If cooperative animal
behaviour is modelled by computer – for instance shoals of fish or flocks of birds – the same pattern
emerges.
This highlights a universal feature of animal sociality that is often overlooked: leadership and
followership — where one or a few individuals steer the behaviour of many.2
We have been studying the phenomenon of leadership seriously since the early 1900s. Most studies
tended to concentrate on a few closely linked questions – essentially ‘what makes a good leader?’ –
which generally does not help us answer why leadership is there in the first place. A number of
recent studies3 are, however, beginning to delve into the evolutionary roots and value of leadership.
Evolution and Leadership
From an evolutionary perspective, leadership arises because it helps the group to survive better. A
leader coordinates the group’s behaviour,4 e.g. frightening off predators by ‘mobbing’, hunting,
teaching the young, creating alliances or fighting with other groups of the same species and keeping
the peace in the group. These can be seen as the evolutionary advantages of leadership.
In animal leadership, the central theme is the one of ‘acting first’, i.e. if one individual (for whatever
reason) acts first, the group would tend to follow her/his lead. The reasons for ‘acting first’ would
appear to be:
Motivation: Food-deprived fish take the front position in shoals where they have a stronger
influence on the direction of movement, or females in reproductive states that consume a lot of
energy often assume the leading positions in e.g. zebras.5
Temperament: Pairs of sticklebacks coordinate their foraging excursions to a food patch. Bold fish
emerge as leaders and shy fish as followers. These differences are enhanced by social feedback, that
is, shy fish made the bold ones bolder.6 In humans we find that extraversion – which typically
includes boldness – correlates positively with leadership. There are strong indications that
extraversion is (at least partly) inherited.7
The five-factor model of personality (which describe human temperament) has been validated often
and consist of:8
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




Extraversion: Individuals who exhibit extraversion are gregarious, assertive, warm, positive,
and active, and seeks excitement.
Emotional stability: They are not overcome by anxiety, depression and hostility or feeling
too self conscious. They tend not to act impulsively, and they do not experience an
exaggerated sense of vulnerability. They are able to accommodate adverse or difficult
events.
Agreeableness: This consists of trust in other individuals, straightforward and honest
communication, altruistic and cooperative behaviour, compliance rather than defiance,
modesty and humility, as well as a tender, sympathetic attitude.
Conscientiousness: The degree to which individuals are competent, methodical — preferring
order and structure— dutiful, motivated to achieve goals, disciplined and deliberate or
considered.
Openness to experience: Relates to the extent to which individuals are open to fantasies,
aesthetics, feelings, as well as novel actions, ideas, and values. Open individuals prefer
novel, intense, diverse, and complex experiences. In contrast, closed individuals prefer
familiar tasks and standardised routines.
Dominance: In most animal societies the strongest animal tends to dominate. The leader of a
baboon troupe, for example, would regularly lead the group to an area where it is easy for him to
monopolise the food source. One would expect followers to become increasingly dissatisfied with
such an arrangement and oust the leader – which often happens. The baboon leader walks this
tightrope by engaging in strong grooming relationships and his closest ‘friends’ and they follow most
dependably9 – no doubt because they depend on the crumbs from the leader’s overloaded table. In
humans, the fact that males generally measure higher on dominance than females might explain
why there are so many more male managers/leaders.
Knowledge: In golden shiner fish10 and ravens11, individuals with the best, most up to date
Knowledge guide the group to its next meal. Broad-winged hawks line-up behind their elders during
migration.12 Old females’ memories of distant waterholes guide the elephant herd unerringly during
the dry season. Ravens use acrobatic displays of flying to direct others to a food source, mostly
trying to entice other ravens away from where they have hidden their own stash. Ants and
honeybees use chemical signals when the ‘scouts’ (the few with knowledge) direct the behaviour of
the whole nest. Knowledgeable dolphins cause shifts in the behaviour of the entire group through
visual displays.13 Humans are extremely good at estimating the expertise of other individuals even in
newly formed groups and knowledgeable individuals often emerge as group leaders.14
From an evolutionary perspective, it is clear that leader-follower patterns are deeply entrenched.
More so, it has been essential in the development of many forms of life – especially social animals
depend for their survival on cooperative behaviour. We create leaders based on factors such as
motivation, temperament or personality, dominance and the power of knowledge.
How leaders act
Democracy versus Despotism: Red deer herds start moving when 62% or more of the herd stand up15
– a kind of consensus or “voting with your feet”. The alpha female or male rules absolutely,
2
distributing punishment, taking the ‘lion’s share’ of a food source, etc. – typical despotic behaviour.
If you have trouble imagining this in humans, think Robert Mugabe (or your favourite dictator).
There is considerable debate16 as to whether human groups are essentially democratic and
egalitarian or despotic and hierarchical given that the former is more common among huntergatherer societies while the latter is evident throughout recent history. Due to the overriding effects
of industrialisation – where standardisation, efficiency and external control became the norm – most
modern organisations are still managed with hierarchy as the primary organising mechanism to
create order, certainty and a command chain. In these “bureaucracies” the position and role of the
leader are defined within this hierarchical view of the organisation.
The view of leaders as an exclusive club reinforces the possibility for despotism, whereas we need
democratised workplaces that empower everyone to take up a leadership role.
The problem of Freeloading: Among ancestral humans, survival depended on the sharing of
resources such as shelter and food, but finding a trustworthy partner – someone who will share in
return – is a real (life or death) problem. There is growing evidence that human beings evolved
specialised decision rules for cheaters – detecting them and excluding them.17
Fehr and Gachter18 showed in their famous experiments that punishment administered by a single
individual (often arbitrarily chosen) seems to solve the problem of freeloading best. Because people
resent being punished – even seeing someone punished – administering it is always costly. This
might explain why so few leaders and managers are actually liked. Most social animals would shy
away from such an onerous duty, but some can be enticed to do it when given status, access to
resources and/or reproduction rights (or the means to sex, drugs and rock-and-roll).
The Fehr and Gacher experiments show that a leader’s influence increases cooperation in groups
resulting in each group member being significantly better off, especially if the cost of punishment is
restricted to a leader. Among our close evolutionary cousins, the harem leaders under male
hamadryas baboons and alpha-male chimpanzees play a disproportionate role in conflict resolution
and peacemaking, punishing those who fail to cooperate.19
Leaders have to make difficult and unpopular decisions – who to lay off, who to discipline, where to
withhold reward, to name a few. If these actions address the problem of freeloading, followers tend
to approve of these decisions. If leaders use these events to promote themselves or their friends and
protect cronies, followers disapprove.
The Evolution of Leadership
There are obvious differences between the human animal and others species. From an evolutionary
perspective, these are explained by an increase in group size and social complexity which caused an
increase in our brain size. Together, group and brain size created a unique selection environment for
human leadership. The broad evolutionary steps in the evolution of human leadership would seem
to be20:
(1) pre-human and early human societies needed a mechanism to solve simple group
coordination problems. Any person (the hungriest, the most scared, etc.) initiated an action
and others simply followed;
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(2) a stable leadership cadre emerges to maximise collective action. Dominant or socially
important individuals (e.g. elders) keep the peace, often by administering punishment;
(3) these instinctive dominance patterns evolved into democratic and charismatic (prestigebased) leadership (often hereditary) facilitating group coordination,21 like clan chiefs, the
shaman or Sangoma, and other forms of ancient traditional leadership;
(4) an increase in group size causes an increase in social complexity. To cope, powerful socialcognitive mechanisms such as language and theory of mind (the ability to attribute mental
states – like beliefs, intentions, pretending, knowledge, etc. to oneself and to others)
develop. Leaders now use these mechanisms, especially the ability to use manipulation and
persuasion, to attract followers – philosophers, politicians, holy men and their followers are
examples;
(5) because these cultural adaptations are so successful, human societies had the ability to
move from the hunter-gatherer stage to the agricultural stage. This revolution produced the
need for more powerful and formal leaders to manage complex intra- and intergroup
relations. Hereditary chiefs and kings, and in our time, presidents, and CEOs provide, at best,
an important public service and at worst abuse their positions of power by dominating and
exploiting followers.
Ongoing research is enriching our understanding of the phenomenon of leadership – how it
originated, what its contributions might be and, especially, the instinctive patterns that drive the
day-to-day practices of leaders.
The Evolution of Organisational Thinking during the 20th century22
The “modernist” period (and the idea of a ‘modern’ organisation) evolved out of the industrial
revolution, which introduced machines into our lives. Machines, no longer just scientific curiosities
(as they were in Michelangelo’s time), became essential for human survival. Charles Babbage (1791–
1871), for instance, recognised the need for organisations to become more ordered and systematic
to improve the efficiency with which machines were utilised23. He also made one of the first
successful calculating machines, which is why people often refer to him as the “father of
computing”.
In the early 1900s, schools of thought on management began to emerge. The first of these was the
scientific management approach. This view was developed by the likes of the American engineer
Frederick Taylor24 (the father of business process re-engineering) and Henry Gantt (originator of
Gantt charts). They believed that the most efficient method of executing any task could be
scientifically determined. This data could then be used to optimise workflows and factory layouts,
but also to scientifically determine staffing requirements and pay scales. Workers, at best, were seen
as extensions of machinery, best managed by authoritarian control. Many leaders still believe that
improving quality and reducing cycle times is the only path to organisational growth.
To operate machines efficiently meant that many people had to be employed in one place (where
machines could be cared for and utilised) — the factory. Administrators (clerks) were needed to
manage the machines and their operators. Obviously, all those clerks and operators became too
numerous for the owner to supervise personally, and managers were required. Henry Fayol started
the administrative management approach in 1916 when, for the very first time in human history, he
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considered the role of management itself. Many of Fayol’s 5 functions and 14 principles25 of
management are still very useful and very much in use.
After Fayol, theories on management began to include the human element. The work of Mayo,
Maslow and McGregor, carried out between the 1930s and the 1960s, points to the fact that
humans were no longer subordinate to machines. These organisational scientists examined those
factors that impacted on employee motivation and performance, reflecting the insight that people
have a determining impact on machines — and therefore on an organisation’s productivity and
profitability. Approaches developed as a result of these studies focus on the optimisation of worker
performance as the key to organisational success. Much of the nomenclature developed during this
time is still used to manage organisations today.
The basic idea is, not that machines and factories are doomed to maltreat people, but rather that
thinking about humans in a machine-like way, or thinking about people as you would think about
machines (as spare parts, as a cog in a bigger machine, etc.) is ineffective and counterproductive.
This implies that even workplaces that rely on routines and highly standardised tasks, interfacing
primarily with machines (like computers) can be environments where human potential is nurtured
and galvanized.
Until well into the 1950s (and even early 60s) organisational complexity was low and the rate of
organisational change was slow — this meant that strategic thinking was not necessary. The owner
or his agents (the management team) could still take/make business decisions on their own and
stake the business on that decision — the gambler’s option of “a six or a nix”. The rise of strategic
management began in the 1950s and 60s with the work of Alfred D. Chandler (structure follows
strategy); Igor Ansoff (who invented much of the vocabulary of strategic management) and Peter
Drucker. Chandler, for instance, built his conclusions after studying the rise of American corporations
like E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Standard Oil of New Jersey, General Motors, and Sears,
Roebuck and Co.
When the Harvard Business School was started, the faculty quickly realized that there were no
textbooks suitable to a graduate program in business. Their first solution to this problem was to
interview leading practitioners of business and to write detailed accounts of what these managers
were doing.26 Up to today, cases are generally written by business school faculty with particular
learning objectives in mind and are refined in the classroom before publication. Additional relevant
documentation (such as financial statements, time-lines, and short biographies, often referred to in
the case as "exhibits"), multimedia supplements (such as video-recordings of interviews with the
case protagonist), and well reasoned teaching notes make the standardised use of case studies
possible.
Throughout the 1970s and 80s, the use of case studies led to the generalisations characterised by
fixed solutions (recipes) to strategic business themes. Porter’s “three generic strategies” (cost
leadership, differentiation and segmentation) is an example. During the late 1980s it became clear
that following these recipes no longer ensured success. Increasingly the focus fell on the process of
creating and maintaining competitive advantage. Resource-based theorists, for example, argued that
the resources and capabilities (or competencies) of an organisation were the source of its
competitive advantage.
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What remained constant during the modernist period, however, was that there is essentially one
right or best answer to any business dilemma.
During the last few decades of the 20th century managers and administrative staff increased
dramatically in number. This introduced the theme of the knowledge worker into the workplace. It
became clear that an increasingly complex organisation could only survive in an increasingly complex
world by relying on increasingly diverging and competing points of view. Gone were the days of just
concentrating on one business technology to survive. Businesses are complex and can only be
understood and managed from many points of view. This change is what has been labelled “postmodern” by many leading thinkers – there is no longer one right answer, only many opinions
competing in a marketplace of ideas. Postmodernism rejects definitions that are not multidimensional; it does not accept final truths and distrusts the rationality that served modernism so
well.
Like so many of the organisational ideas we will be working with, postmodernism was born out of a
shift — the shift from a manufacturing economy to one based on service and information. This
would of course have been impossible without the ultimate machine, the computer. This then, is the
home of the knowledge worker.
Post-modern thinking uses theoretical knowledge as an instrument of change rather than a measure
of truth. It accepts that multiple realities exist and that one should replace a uniform idea of the
world (also the organisational world) with ideas based on the ambiguity of many truths and the
importance of “local” truth. Complexity and the rate of change are resulting in the rapid demise of
conventions, truisms and dogma – also the dogmas of post-modernism.27
Within this thinking context, there is a recognition that no single tool or process will lead to
sustainable competitive advantage.
The emphasis is therefore moving to the use of dynamic processes where eclectic blends of models
and techniques will provide for the needs of a particular organisation in a particular context at a
particular point in time. This dynamic approach, born of the need to be flexible and fast, sensitive to
change and new ideas, paradoxically requires a high degree of structure. This includes internal
organisational stability, well-structured thinking frameworks, collaboration and interdependence
between organisational units (and increasingly between organisations) supported by strong servantleadership, open to feedback from within and from outside the organisation. Throughout, the
importance of human capital as a critical leverage for organisational sustainability is growing.
If history is any guide, this transformation will not be completed during this decade (or maybe even
the next). Therefore, it is risky to try to foresee in every detail the world that is emerging. But, the
new questions that will arise and where the big issues will lie can already be discovered with a high
degree of probability.
The influence of change and the unpredictability of success created another metaphor to talk
coherently about the organisation — biology. The language of systems thinking is just one attempt
to marry the organisational and the biological and the concept of “feedback loop” comes from the
biological sciences. It would appear that organisations, in many ways, are becoming alive! Chaos
theory, complexity theory, systems thinking, social systems theory, self-organising processes,
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learning organisations (to name a few) are all fundamentally based on biological insights. For
example, one of the latest models of leadership is the so-called Neuro-leadership approach.
Models of Leadership
In most conceptions of organisation and organisational life, leadership has been given a central place
– engaging employees, enforcing principles and discipline, communication future goals and a vision
to strive for. Theoretical and practical thinking and writing on the subject assume that leadership
makes a special, significant and positive contribution to generate focused action in organisations.
Leadership studies has traditionally been leader-centred, i.e. it focused on the individual leaders and
their traits, abilities and actions. The earliest “Big Man” theories listed the personality traits of
successful leaders. On the positive side, leaders were now chosen for their suitability and formal
merits (rather than kinship – the old boys club), but these theories tended to neglect the cultural
context of leaders.28
To rectify this, other theories emphasised the relationships between leaders and followers. “Concern
for Task” versus “Concern for People” tended to be the thinking frame.29 This gave rise to many fourquadrant frames, with the right-hand top quadrant usually depicting the best style (High concern for
Task and High concern for People) regardless of the business situation.
Situational leadership tried to rectify this by being situation sensitive, for example, very simple or
very complicated situations were thought to be best handled through task-oriented leadership,
while most other situations are better handled through socio-emotional leadership styles.30
Although very popular, it has been criticized recently for over-emphasising the role of the leader at
the expense of the group process.31
In contemporary writings, the leader is described as a member of a group – albeit with specific
possibilities to influence the group – making leadership a series of interaction processes where
leaders inspire followers by creating common meaningful images of the future. Central to this
argument is the distinction between transactional and transformative leadership, i.e. the difference
between leadership as a contractual relationship between leader and followers (give me this and I
will give you that) versus a social relationship where the aspirations of followers are raised to those
of the leaders themselves.32 There is a dark side to transformative leadership though, Enron being a
prime example.33
New concepts such as authentic leadership34 were needed to overcome the risk of manipulation
inherent in the transformative ideal. In this way the leadership concept was also linked to the ever
more popular ideas of Positive Psychology – teaching that happiness causes (and is reinforced by) a
pleasant, engaged and meaningful life. We will return to authentic leadership in more detail shortly.
Neuro-leadership35 is also a comparatively new development, linking our growing understanding of
the brain and how it operates in leadership. Research in this area has found that participants who
were higher in positive mood solved more problems, specifically more with insight36 (as opposed to
analysis). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) showed that areas in the brain associated
with creativity and insight were more active in positive subjects, even before the problem-solving
activity commenced – positive (or negative) affect primes the brain. Positive mood enhances insight,
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at least in part, by modulating attention and cognitive control mechanisms via the anterior cingulate
cortex (ACC), enhancing the sensitivity to non-standard solution candidates.
Lately teams have been experimenting with shared or distributed leadership, where the task of
leading is shared by more than one person in a team – even by the whole team. In self-managed
teams there is still a team leader, but her/his role is to link formally with the organisation, to
represent the team in meetings and to do the administration of team management (leave,
performance reviews, etc.). In contrast, self-organising teams take decisions collectively. Everyone’s
primary role is to focus on the task at hand and no one person has the job to link with the
organisation. Some or all members may lead for brief periods when the team deems it necessary.37
leadership happens in self-organising teams, but there is no formal, identified leader.
More about Authentic Leadership
Authentic leadership lies at the convergence of positive psychology, transformational leadership and
ethical leadership38. Research (see Neuro-leadership earlier) proves that positive mood (a state of
mind or emotion) has positive results in the workplace. Leadership styles that encourage positivity
create a climate for creative and original behaviour, resistant to bad news about the economy or a
dip in company performance, for instance.
Authentic leadership is about more than happy, positive followers though – it is essentially about
how the leader behaves to create a positive working environment. The authentic leadership process
positively influences the self-awareness of leader and team members and this causes positive selfregulated behaviours from all – stimulating positive personal growth and self-development for
everyone:
The authentic leader is confident, hopeful, optimistic, resilient, moral/ethical, futureoriented, and gives priority to developing team members into leaders. The authentic leader
is true to him/herself and their behaviour positively transforms others.39
The authentic leadership process (see Figure 1.1) explains the elements of authentic leadership and
its effects on the Leader (R1) and the resultant influence processes that creates happiness-causing
(eudaemonic) wellbeing in Followers (R2) – self-realization, personal growth and expressiveness and,
more generally, human flourishing and the fulfilment or realization of one’s true nature.
It should be mentioned that authentic leadership processes are also strongly linked to emotional
(hedonic) wellbeing.40 Both emotional and (especially) happiness-causing wellbeing have a positive
correlation with the concept of “flow”41 – the mental state in which a person in an activity is fully
immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in doing the task.
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Fig. 1.1. Authentic leadership influences on Leaders’ and Followers’ well-being.42
Returning to Figure 1.1, we will briefly discuss each of the elements:
Authentic Leadership Behaviours (R1)
1. Self-awareness: My insight into (and trusting that insight), my own personal characteristics,
motives, feelings, values and convictions. Self-awareness means acknowledging my inherent,
always contradictory, self-aspects and to understand how they manifest in the real world by
influencing my thoughts, feelings, actions and behaviours. More self-aware people are
generally more confident about their ability to accomplish things, tend to have less mood
swings and therefore feel in control of their lives (they have an internal locus of control).
2. Unbiased Processing: Open to personal feedback, interpreting it in an unbiased way,
without rationalising, distorting or minimising it. People who are practiced in unbiased
processing choose challenging developmental assignments – where they run the risk of
failing, but will learn a lot. This influences the leader’s risk-reward decision making profile.
Unbiased processing depends on a leader’s theories about her/himself and is an indicator of
psychological authenticity.
3. Authentic Behaviour/Action: Acting according to one’s values, preferences and needs as
opposed to merely trying to please others or to attain rewards or avoid punishments
through acting “falsely” or wearing a social mask. Even in situations that might lead to
severe sanction (e.g. whistle-blowing), authentic leaders remain sensitive to the potential
implications of their behaviour. Authenticity should not be confused with “a compulsion to
be one’s true self, but rather in the free and natural expression of core feelings, motives and
inclinations” 43 (my emphasis). In general, leaders are more likely to experience flow at work,
to be intrinsically motivated and to express themselves when leading if the live their deep-
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seated values. Authentic leaders report less contingent self-esteem,44 i.e. dependent on
matching the excellence standards of external evaluations and evaluators.
4. Relational authenticity: It involves a growing openness and truthfulness in your relationship
with followers and associates. A key outcome of this is high levels of trust, leading to high
levels of co-operation. It also increases transparency – “the willingness to hold oneself (and
one’s actions) open to inspection in order to receive valid feedback.” 45 Transparency is a
powerful driver, not only of learning, but of the development of trust between leader and
follower.
These leadership behaviours cause happiness and wellbeing in the leader (as can be seen in Figure
1.1), but this is only half the story. The other half is the wellbeing it causes in followers (R2).
Influence Effects of Authentic Leadership on the Wellbeing of Followers (R2)
1. Personal and organisational identification: Social Identity Theory46 teaches that one’s
membership of social groups powerfully affects one’s self-concept. When I really identify
with a group I tend to see myself as “more like them”. Followers not only internalise the
authentic behaviours of the leader (accept her/him as role-model), but they also make the
organisational goals supported by the leader their own.
2. Emotional Contagion: The leader’s positive emotions seem to be especially contagious
“because positive emotions can trigger upward spirals that transform communities into
more cohesive, moral and harmonious social organizations” 47 and it even has long-term
physical and psychological health benefits. Entrainment effects (discussed later) explains this
process.
3. Positive Behaviour Model: As already shown, not only people, but all social animals model
the behaviour of leaders/senior members of the team. Anyone with any working experience
will have experienced this, often the modelling of negative organisational behaviour –
rumour mongering, backstabbing, destructive organisational politics. A more positive mood
throughout the organisation has a bottom-line impact as positive people are more
productive, more creative and more resistant to bad news. Add to that the effects of social
learning (or modelling) and this become a positive reinforcing loop.
4. Supportive Self-determination: We have known for a long time about the negative impact
on motivation or engagement of the following organisational practices:
 manipulating rewards48
 close supervision49
 anticipating performance appraisal50
 deadlines51
 competition52
Similarly, we know how to engage people. Increase choice; develop competence through
personal control over performance and rewards; and give feedback that rely on noncontrolling, informational (rather than competitive) information. At the heart of this lies selfcontrol (or an internal locus of control). Leaders who support and rely on followers’ selfdetermination has a positive effect on their intrinsic motivation.53
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5. Positive Social Exchanges: Positive social exchange (as opposed to economic exchange)
creates a climate that makes it more likely that followers will respond in a similar way.54
Authentic leaders are more likely to have positive relations with followers, thereby creating
a climate conducive to wellbeing.
So far we have looked at the effect of the authentic leader on followers, but this is not the end of the
process, because followers also have a reinforcing (positive or negative) effect on leaders. Figure 1.2.
illustrates this effect.
Reinforcing loop R3 flows like this: The Followers’ Well-being reinforces the Leader’s Well-being,
encouraging more Authentic Leadership behaviour, which in turn causes more positive Influence
Processes, which increases the Followers’ Well-being, which reinforces the Leader’s Well-being, and
so on, and so on – authenticity increases authenticity, well-being increases well-being.
Figure 1.2. The effect of Followers’ Well-being on the Leader’s Well-being
These positive reinforcing loops explains how a positive or authentic ‘mood’ develops – a pervasive
state of thinking, feeling and being. This is what sport coaches call ‘team spirit’ and it often makes or
breaks a team’s performance.
Authentic Leadership in Context
For our purposes, it is useful to consider the overlap between three related leadership models,
namely Servant Leadership, Principle-based Leadership and Authentic Leadership.
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The term Servant Leadership was coined by Robert Greenleaf.55 According to him, there are two
criteria for servant leadership:


People ‘served’ grow as individuals, becoming “healthier, wiser, more autonomous and
more likely themselves to become servants”.56
The least advantaged in society benefits most (or are at least not more disadvantaged).
Therefore, the servant leader:

Uses Transformation as a vehicle for personal and institutional growth.

Uses Personal growth as a route to better serve others.

Creates Enabling environments that empower and encourage service.

Sees Service as her/his fundamental goal.

Builds Trusting relationships as a basic platform for collaboration and service.

Creates commitment as a way to collaborative activity.

Engages in Community building as a way to create environments in which people can trust
each other and work together.

Nurtures the spirit as a way to provide joy and fulfilment in meaningful work.
To be able to act as servant leader, s/he should develop the following competencies: “listening,
empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to
growth of people, and building community”.57
The second model is Principle-Centred Leadership, developed by Stephen Covey.58 Covey outlines 8
characteristics of principle-centred leaders:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
They are continually learning – they seek training, learn from their experiences and listen to
others.
They are service-oriented – they see life as a mission to serve others.
They radiate positive energy – they have optimistic attitudes and are positive and upbeat.
They believe in other people – they do not over-react to criticism, negative behaviour or
human weaknesses, as they understand that behaviour and potential are different things.
They lead balanced lives – they are active socially and intellectually, and have many life
interests.
They see life as an adventure – they savour life and are not afraid of the unknown, as they
know it will be exciting and educational.
They are synergistic – they are catalysts for change, improving any situations in which they
become involved.
They exercise self-renewal – they regularly exercise the four dimensions of the human
personality: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
The Overlap
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Figure 1.3. The Overlap between Servant, Principle-Centred and Authentic Leadership
If we interrogate the thinking behind Servant Leadership, Principle-Centred Leadership and
Authentic Leadership, we find that they overlap in the 6 universal virtue themes identified in Positive
Psychology, namely: courage, wisdom, temperance, humanity, justice, and transcendence – see
Figure 1.3.
Chapter 4 will discuss this issue in much more detail, but writers59 have consistently pointed to the
moral dimension inherent in these models. Its value has been underscored by the corporate
scandals of the recent past (e.g. Enron and WorldCom) and the recent 2008 financial crisis due to
morally dubious banking practices. Leaders of leading, global financial firms showed scant regard for
the moral basis which underlies the trust we have in business and the implications this has for
corporate citizenship.
During the crisis Barack Obama said we should not only ask whether business is profitable, but we
should also ask: Is it right? With Drucker60, we believe that asking this question does not necessarily
guarantee results, “but failure to ask the question virtually guarantees the wrong decision”.
Summary – so far
In this short overview of leadership, we have tried to show the evolutionary roots of leadership and
how this impacted on how we think about leadership. Furthermore, our views on leadership have
also been influenced by the mental models we held about organisations and what they should do to
be useful citizens of society.
These factors determined the different models of leadership developed to explain how leadership
manages to engage followers and focus their energy on outcomes important to the organisation.
Authentic leadership was discussed in detail to show the link to emotional (hedonic) and overall
happiness and wellbeing of leaders and followers because it will, over time, also cause and create an
organisation that is overall happy and emotionally well – a state that also has bottom-line effects.
We also saw that Authentic Leadership overlaps with the more recent models of Servant and
Principle-Centred Leadership. We believe they share what Positive Psychology calls the six universal
13
virtue themes, pointing towards the moral core of leadership – of managing people and resources
and of doing business in general. This idea will be explored more fully in Chapter 4.
What is left is to find some kind of unifying principle (or principles) in order to explain, not only that
leadership is so, but why it is so. We propose two principles – one from the world of musicology and
another from physics – that is, at least to our knowledge, not well known in discussions about
leadership.
Enter Synchrony and Entrainment
At a soccer or rugby match, have you ever felt swept up by the crowd? Have you ever participated in
coordinated movement without anyone saying so – like the Mexican wave? At a music concert, have
you ever felt ‘carried away’ by the music or swayed in rhythm without anyone giving an instruction?
Have you ever been in a crowd that was applauding and suddenly started to ‘slow-clap’ in unison
with others? These are all instances of synchrony or entrainment.
Under ‘How leaders act’ (discussed earlier) we saw that an important task of the leader is to deal
with the problem of freeloading. Recent research61 has shown a statistically significant decrease in
freeloading and an increase in cooperation in a common task after people were asked to walk in step
for a little while – the control group were asked to just walk together. In fact, armies, churches,
organisations and communities often do things in synchrony (together in time) – they sing, they
dance, they march.
There is some evidence that synchronous cooperation played an important role in human
evolution,62 but it is not unique to humans (as long thought). For instance, rattan ants synchronise
their behaviour when in danger, creating a startling joint rattling noise in the rattan vine on which
they live63.
Tomorrow Today (a Deutsche Welle programme) reported on 15 August 2011 that the brainwaves of
musicians synchronise with each other and thereafter the brainwaves of audience members
synchronise with those of the musicians. This is an example of entrainment (a French word meaning
“to pull or draw along after itself”). The entrainment effect was first named by Christiaan Huygens
(1629 – 1695), an important figure in Physics. He was a clockmaker and, after fixing the clockwork,
he would hang the clocks on a wall to check their functioning. He noticed that the pendulums would
end up swinging in time, although in opposite directions. The heaviest pendulum would act like a
‘master clock’ and the other pendulums would gradually swing in time with it.
Since then other entrainment effects have been noticed – women that share a dormitory
synchronise their menstrual cycles; the cycle of day and night entrains all kinds of body rhythms –
when we get sleepy or hungry, for instance; the infant’s heartbeat and mood entrain with that of the
mother – good mother, good breast, good me.
Finally, and more to our point, the behaviour of the leader tends to entrain the behaviour of
followers. This principle explains why authentic leaders tend to have authentic followers. Of course,
this principle is also true for inauthentic leaders, who will tend to cause inauthentic followers. Good
musicians often use their breathing to help them with timing and interpretation when playing –
typically the breath will entrain the playing. Leaders use routines to make themselves effective, for
14
instance, taking a deep breath to calm breathing and nervousness before a presentation. This book
will offer 101 routines or practices leaders can use to entrain their own behaviour.
Social entrainment occurs when the social behaviour of the leader entrains the behaviour of
followers. This is the principle behind the role model – the leader’s behaviour acts like a ‘master
clock’ and followers begin to display the same behaviour. This explains why consistency of leader
behaviour is so important when they model organisationally acceptable behaviour – it sets up a
steady and recognisable ‘beat’ that followers can follow.
It is not a one-way street however. Social entrainment also occurs when the expectations and
behaviour of followers entrains the behaviour of the leader – which is why people can say: ‘we got
the leader we deserved’. But because leaders have more organisational ‘weight’, they tend to
entrain the behaviours of followers, rather than the other way around.
Figure 1.4. shows how synchronous or entrained behaviour cause coordinated behaviour.
Figure 1.4. Entrainment Effect: Harmonising; Being ‘In Tune’; Resonating with each other;
Coordinated behaviour.
These social behavioural dances can be seen in the workplace – management and trade union
gearing up for the annual salary negotiations and, even more so, the roles they play during
negotiations, for example. ‘Tit-for-tat’, and ‘but-you-did-that-first’ are just two of the obvious games
often played.
15
This complex view of entrainment can best be seen in the emergence of a culture within an
organisation. “A shared social context is necessary for entrainment processes to operate properly
and efficiently, given its importance in a variety of coordinated activities in humans such as learning
language, music and teamwork.” 64
The slow, steady work of leaders to create a climate or culture within an organisation is one of the
best examples of entrainment processes at work. Agreeing on a set of values and acceptable norms
of behaviour and living them is of utmost importance. Individual leaders use the same mechanism to
create a climate (or mood) in her/his own team (obviously in synchrony with the organisational
values and norms of behaviour). The often crucial effect of ‘mood’ on the results of a team has been
known and studied for a long time – there is even evidence that it played a key role in human
evolution65.
This then brings us to the conclusion that entrainment and behavioural synchrony occurs more
naturally along the lines of emotions, harmony, being in ‘tune’ and ‘in step’ etc. – the so-called ‘soft’
side of leadership.
Conclusion
Given the effects of entrainment, leaders should realise that they have an impact – for better or for
worse, for good or ill. It should be our intent as leaders to ensure that this impact is as good (or as
positive) on those around us – staff, customers, suppliers, competitors, etc. We should also accept
that we are always on show – the camera is always on; our stakeholders are always watching us. We
cannot escape this scrutiny. Transparency and ‘no place to hide’ is part and parcel of a democratised
world.
This book aims to assist you when you ask: “What can I do as leader to increase my personal impact
and influence?”
16
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