Made To Lead?

The first lesson we can learn from our emphasis on the history of leadership is that Leadership predates man. The effects of leadership were noticeable on the planet long before humans appeared.

When we emerged into our existed we found a world that was fully functional. Fish were schooling then the same way that they do now. Birds flew in patterns then the same way they do now. We may consider ants to be pests at our picnics but they became masters of the top soil long before we made our appearance. Chimpanzees did not need us to teach them how to coordinate group movement and to keep the peace or wage war. Leadership is a natural phenomenon not a human phenomenon. It is one of the few things we do that are independent of human ingenuity.

We really should have understood this lesson a long time ago. It should have been included in our leadership programs. Unfortunately, our leadership theories have focused on the human application of fundamental leadership theories. Beginning with the ancients who examined the effective leaders of their time and drew inferences about the nature of leadership from them, leadership studies have focused on great-man theories. (Mike DeGrosky, (2011). “Where we Came From.” Wildfire Magazine.
< http://wildfiremag.com/mag/article_24/ >).

A comprehensive treatment of leadership has never been of interest to the leadership theorists. They have never denied that leadership predated humanity but their silence on the subject has had the same effect. The unfortunate consequence of teaching leadership by studying great-man theories is that leadership and leaders are viewed as being synonymous, even after the scholars emphasize that leaders are people and leadership is a process.

The current emphasis in our leadership studies poses another problem because it overplays the importance of the role humans play in the world. For some reason we forget that there was a time when the environment functioned flawlessly without us. The environment did not need us for it to survive. If humans we were to become extinct the environment would continue to exist as it has after the dinosaurs became extinct. In addition, it negates the fact that everything humans have ever done consciously has been borrowed from nature. The need for many leadership theories is probably due to the fact that we do not yet adequately understand the principles of natural leadership.