Evolutionary Origins of Leadership and Followership

Drawing upon evolutionary logic, leadership is reconceptualized in terms of the out

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come of strategic interactions among individuals who are following different, yet

complementary decision rules to solve recurrent coordination problems. This article

uses the vast psychological literature on leadership as a database to test several evo

lutionary hypotheses about the origins of leadership and followership in humans. As

expected, leadership correlates with initiative taking, trait measures of intelligence,

specific task competencies, and several indicators of generosity. The review finds no

link between leadership and dominance. The evolutionary analysis accounts for reliableage,

health, and sex differences in leadership emergence. In general,

evolutionary theory provides a useful, integrative framework for studying

leader-follower relationships and generates various novel research hypothese  readmore

When Leaders Protect Their Power

To help their group achieve its goals, leaders are often endowed
with power. Power—operationally defined in terms of asymmetric
control over group resources—affords the capacity to influence
others by providing or withholding resources and administering
punishments some leaders display a tremendous taste for power and are more concerned with preserving their own power than with fos-tering their group’s goals (Maner & Mead, 2010 readmore

The essential tension between leadership and power

Leaders, however, are typically endowed with power, and power can corrupt (Kipnis, 1972). Power is operationally defined as having control over resources, which affords the ability to influence others by bestowing or withholding those resources (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). Instead of wielding their power for the greater good, some leaders may be tempted to use their power in self-serving ways. Although groups often need leaders to achieve important goals, providing leaders with power can make followers susceptible to exploitation.

The recent scientific literature has identified a variety of ways in which power can lead to negative behaviors. Power causes people to become disinhibited, increasing the likelihood that they will act on their (sometimes selfish) impulses, rather than thinking carefully about what is best for the group (Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003; Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003). Power can cause people to objectify others and to see them as a means to their own ends (Gruenfeld et al., 2008). Powerful people tend to be bad at taking the perspective of others (Galinsky et al., 2006) and, at the same time, they are good at satisfying their own needs and goals (Slabu & Guinote, 2010). Power also heightens sexual goals, which can set the stage for inappropriate advances toward colleagues and subordinates (Kunstman & Maner, 2011). With all of these transformative effects of power, it perhaps comes as no surprise that many leaders seem to behave in apparently corrupt ways.  read more