What is it about?
We explore two alternative perspectives on the evolution of leadership. The dominance perspective of leadership posits that leadership is about a battle for control of the group. The coordination perspective, by contrast, posits that leadership is about facilitating and organizing group activities. These two perspectives make different predictions as to who should emerge as leader. The dominance perspective suggests we should observe leaders who are selfish and egoistic while the coordination perspective suggests we should observe leaders who are pro-social and willing to sacrifice for the group. We study endogenous leadership in two experimental games - the minimum effort game and a battle of the sexes like coordination game. Leadership in our setting is to choose first and so it is leadership by example. In the minimum effort game we find that leaders earn significantly less than followers and that subjects classified as pro-social choose to lead more often. In the battle of the sexes gain the results are more nuanced but we again find that leaders earn (weakly) more than followers and subjects classified as pro-social lead more often. Our results, therefore, support a coordination, servant perspective of leadership. It is noteworthy that we obtain our results in two diverse games. In the minimum effort game the primary issue is trust and the leader trusting followers will reciprocate. In the battle of the sexes game there are divergent preferences over the preferred outcome and the leader shapes the group outcome.
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Why is it important?
Leadership is often portrayed in terms of dominance. The servant leadership perspective receives far less attention. Our results, and those of others, suggest a re-balancing on how we think about leadership. Leadership likely evolved, in part, to help groups solve coordination problems and so we should not be surprised to see leaders who are willing to sacrifice for the group and facilitate group activity. This has important implications for how we think about leadership - the motives of leaders and followers, and the benefits of leadership to the group.
Perspectives
After the article was published, a number of people got in touch to dispute the servant leadership perspective. The typical starting point was 'most bosses are selfish, ruthless, arrogant,...'. There can be no denying that many bosses do indeed fit this caricature of dominant leadership. But that doesn't mean they are good leaders. And it doesn't mean there are not other leaders that are willing to sacrifice their own interests for colleagues. Servant leadership may be more widespread than we appreciate because, by its very nature, it flies under the radar - the servant leader gets the group working without any great fanfare or fuss.
Professor Edward Cartwright
De Montfort University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Selfish or servant leadership? Evolutionary predictions on leadership personalities in coordination games, Personality and Individual Differences, August 2011, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2010.06.003.
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