Leadership as Evolution

• All groups contain opposing forces: - adapt and maintain.
• Maintenance fosters group cohesion, efficiency and consistency.
• Adaptation disrupts group stability but is driven by changing circumstances.
• Adaptation occurs, rather than extinction, only if there is variation.
• Variation = people doing different things, disturbing the status quo.
• Some variation is seen as deviance, some as leadership
• Another way of looking at these opposing forces: - individuals or groups - which comes first or is more important? Answer: neither, but the two are always in dynamic tension.
• Leadership is variation that leads the group to change direction.
• Intense competition between groups and constant variation create successful groups.
• When competition is fierce, evolution speeds up - if there is sufficient variation.
• Management = maintenance - managers get things done efficiently and coordinate the efforts of others - change is avoided in the interest of efficiency.
• Leadership is a force for change - the engine of evolution.
• Leaders are deviants whose new ideas increase a group's chance of success.
• The person formally in charge of a group may not be the only source of variation.
• Groups that allow only one leader could reduce the amount of variation - new ideas.

Problem

Two factors motivate those who want to lead: -

1. The drive to differentiate or individuate yourself by doing something different or unique - this is the real basis of leadership.
2. The desire for power over others - to make yourself the sole source of variation.

• Those in power suppress variation in order to retain their hold on power.
• They may not do so consciously in modern organizations, but employees abdicate their own leadership responsibility by deferring to those in charge.
• Some have a strong drive to acquire power, others have an equally strong need to be protected by someone powerful.
• This collusion between leaders and followers creates expectations of leaders that often cannot be met in complex, fast changing environments.
• This is why traditional leadership can be counterproductive today.

What to do about it

• It is not enough for those in charge to foster leadership throughout the organization.
• All employees also need to take more responsibility to demonstrate leadership and be less reliant on formally appointed leaders.

Where leadership is headed

• Attaining power over others was once a mere matter of physical strength.
• Then we created institutionalized authority.
• For centuries we have been moving from power based on formal authority to the power of knowledge
• The ability to innovate or create/apply new knowledge is not the monopoly of people at the top of organizations - it occurs at all levels and especially at the front line.
• This is a new form of leadership that, as yet, is not widely acknowledged or fostered.