Drift. We all dread the consequences of an organization becoming unmoored, lacking any effective leadership. This applies to a workgroup, corporation, sports team, government agency, or the country at large. We crave “effective” leaders. We abhor the feeling of drift. Anarchism is the most universally derided political ideology on Earth – by left, right, and center. But what is this thing called leadership, anyway?
Theories of leadership go back to the beginning of civilization. Originally, a leader was anointed by the group (those idyllic hunter-gatherer societies presumed to exist in the neolithic era). Later, as communities grew larger and more diverse, when villages and agriculture emerged, the concept of royalty established itself; guaranteed succession by the offspring of the ruler did lead to some stability in leadership. Feudalism gradually became dependent upon some degree of innovation – entrepreneurship – and new wealth began to be created (if only new land to cultivate, but also a relative decline in the wealth of royal families). It was clear that certain individuals had special talent for acquiring new wealth – hence, the “Great Man” theory of leadership. But there was uncertainty about how those talents were bestowed – were they genetically determined? Or could they be learned? Eventually, people who thought a lot about these things decided that the organization, or social group, in need of leadership could be engineered to be more amenable to that Great Man ascending – this became known as “contingency theory.” As social groupings became so complex as to be unpredictable, considering the externalities coming from all directions, the qualities needed for leaders also became unpredictable – an “emergent” theory of leadership started to take hold. Today, it seems only various for-profit institutions (trying to sell their services) even bother to talk about what is needed to produce leaders. Most of us agree that anybody can be a good leader, given the right conditions!
It’s those conditions that matter. Gambling on success via the stock market, or political partisanship, continues to attract attention but always constitutes risk. This uncertainty even trickles down to seeking and accepting a job or selecting a mate when you’re young. Selecting a leader is more than simply about contingencies and probabilities, more than an engineering problem. It is about risk management. Failure will produce that most feared outcome: drift!
What is the job of the leader? Much of it depends upon who’s the boss. What are the boss’s goals? The leader must buy in – and, more importantly, must convince the team to buy in. Surely there are communication skills involved in this task, and empathy. You may need to fool those below you in the hierarchy as much as those above you. Your lies must be convincing. Best of all, of course, is actual belief in the organization’s goals. This may be rare, however. In the 1930s, Leon Trotsky decried a “crisis of leadership” among various socialist groups around the world, because neither Stalin nor the centrist reformists (social democrats) in power in various countries at the time could supply the true proletarian leaders for the revolution to come. Does the American political system (two parties) of the 2020s have a similar “crisis of leadership”? What about those AI industry Silicon Valley bros: Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Dario Amodei? Are they the real leaders? Is revolution even on the agenda? Or is maintenance of the status quo what we crave? Anything to prevent that awful drift.
Sometimes organizational goals are fuzzier than quarterly earnings forecasts for NYSE, or a party trifecta in the U.S. government, but rather mushy values-oriented goals. Religious institutions and nation-states viewed in historical context are noteworthy examples. In these cases, leaders communicate values – both received from above and transmitted below – in such a way that a coherent group identity may be fostered. When we call ourselves Christian, or American, or Black, or queer, or neurodivergent, or Texan, we’ve posited group membership. Failure of leadership in these cases means, ultimately, dissolution of the group identity – analogous to Trotsky’s “crisis” of the class struggle. But most of us claim membership in multiple groups; no single group membership may subsume the others. Hence the group leader’s job becomes magnifying whatever group identity is the boss’s preference – to convince us that we should, in fact, subsume all other identities to theirs. Unfortunately, one common tactic to achieve these results relies on disparaging the other contenders, exclusivity – if I’m Christian, I can’t be Buddhist, and Muslims may be my enemy! Even advertising campaigns seeking brand loyalty exert some coercive force – not the most legitimate tool of leadership. What about social media influencers? Are they leaders? Yes, they are – their effectiveness is measured by the number of followers they have.
Politicians tend to exert leadership via communication skills and sharing the values of voters. So, how has Donald Trump been able to gain his followers? He seems to rely mostly on intimidation and obviously empty promises. His supporters famously declare that it “doesn’t matter what he says,” but then what does matter? He is perhaps the best example we have of how literally anybody can become a leader … in the right circumstances. It remains to be seen if those circumstances can be engineered to facilitate change, or if a change of leadership relies only on some mysterious emergent property. Regardless, voters seem to be getting weary of the same old plays from the same old politicians. Drift, once again, is threatening us, and our desire for concrete leadership change is growing. We need to remember, as voters in a democracy, we are the ones who choose our organization’s leaders – we are not royal subjects. The catch is determining what our organization’s (or social group’s) goals really are; will our leaders further those goals or the goals of our competitors? And how big is our social group, anyway? If it’s the whole country, so much the better – maybe even the whole world?
In the end, leaders represent both our goals and our values. When we choose them (playing the role of employer/recruiter) we want them to succeed for us. But there should also be a “moral compass” where we, as members of a group led by others, assent to the terms of their leadership. Assent depends either upon the perceived likelihood of any alternative’s failure, or faith and trust in the leader’s ability to deliver. That moral compass does not depend on intimidation of competitors but, instead, upon free and fair engagement in the marketplace — both economic and intellectual marketplaces. With assent from both employer and employee (leader and follower), leadership can be effective. With the addition of a moral framework, it can be good. Thus, any of us can don the mantle of “leader” … if only we define our group correctly, buy in, and communicate to followers.
— William Sundwick
Warp and Woof 