Managing Leadership^®

The origins of the celebratory view of individual leadership lie deep in pre-modern times. For millennia prior to contemporary social, political, and commercial developments, leaders were identified, admired, and mimicked – but where did they come from, and who sought to follow their example?

Not you or me, certainly. Individual leadership and aspiration to it were the province almost exclusively of warrior kings, princes, and selected subordinates of one or another level of privileged thralldom – the nobility. It thus neatly combined authority, responsibility, and power, although possession of the third characteristic typically arose from the fact that the first originated in the leader, and the second was exclusively back to that same leader.

Thus, the rest of us were automatically followers, to the extent to which we were aware of and participated in the actions of the pre-modern leader at all. The nobility, as well, merely mediated this leadership from its own obligatory followership positions. One’s potential to attain status as a leader or follower was determined largely, then, by one’s birth – with only the extraordinarily rare historical accident acting as the exception proving the rule.

During much of this time, the social, political, and commercial infrastructure, naturally enough, reflected these coarse and simple divisions. Things, however, began to change in the past 500 years, and more rapidly in the past 100. Whether the accompanying infrastructural evolution has reflected or driven those changes is another discussion, but it can hardly be denied that the world of the 20th and 21st centuries looks little like that of the 16th, or even the 19th.

But we still promote today very much the same type of highly exclusive and specially entitled leadership. And not only that, we remain passively compliant with almost equally constrained opportunities for mobility between the various leadership and followership classes. Why has this concept – together with its practice and consequences – not changed along with the rest of society, as well?

We’ll take a look at that tomorrow. See you then!

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Today’s tips: Speaking of the interaction between societal infrastructure and the way lives are lived, please see these pieces from The Economist: one on mobile phones, global networks, data gathering, and feedback; and the other on how altruism and the warrior spirit, and high and mass culture depend on one another.

Please also take 7 well-spent minutes to view this interview of Peter Schiff, by Jon Stewart, courtesy of Eclecticity; find out why the party is over.

And as long as we’re talking about sameness in the face of change – it’s not all bad. Some of it, indeed, may be quite worth preserving. Please see some examples of that discerned by Michael Wade in the lives of refugees.

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