The Myth of Leadership
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We are accustomed to working in groups with leaders. We are also accustomed to giving the leader credit or blame for the group's accomplishments.
A leader can certainly be influential. They can push the group this way or that way. But they aren't magicians who can magically control everyone and all the circumstances a group with a project faces. Reality is pretty unpredictable.
Our culture reinforces the idea of the magical leader in many ways. I don't know about now but when I was in school history was a story about leaders and their triumphs and failures. I didn't take history in university but I saw that those courses weren't as simplistic. But I think that the myth of the magical leader was planted in young minds.
Religion, of course, is another tradition that supports the idea of a magical leader. The deity or deities are literally magic and in control of reality. Lots of heads of state claim to be the instrument of a deity.
With small groups the leader can also be a worker. They may be the most experienced for instance. But I've observed that leaders in bigger groups have a different skillset than other members of the group.
In my last job I spent 10 years working in an office and I got to be a fly on the wall to see what the leaders were thinking about and knew. Definitely not my skillset but I could see that their skillset was needed for the smooth operation of the company.
With large groups I think I can see a fractal pattern emerging. The whole group is divided into subgroups that all share the pattern of 'group with a task and a leader'. This forms a pyramid structure with somebody at the top - a president or prime minister or king when the group is a nation or state.
One of the skills the leader of a large group needs is the capacity to keep the large group working in a unified and coherent manner. There is always competition among subgroups and some subgroups may resist the leader of the whole.
It's possible for societies to evolve systems that are benign and that work. There are almost as many ways of doing that as there are societies. A benign society takes a long time to evolve but is vulnerable because the delicate balance it requires can collapse in a very short time.
It is easier to give leader credit or blame if they lead as a dictator. In a democracy it's harder because so many competing forces are at work.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.