Interrogating Individual Differences in Leadership
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The Politics of Groups
Aristotle and the Polity, and the Civic Ecology of Cities
Leadership
Culture
Leadership Studies
Human Agency
Leadercentrism
Hero Worship
“Great Man” Theory”
Freud on Great Men
Criticisms of GMT
Lincoln and the Great Man Theory
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Human beings have always functioned in groups. The most basic human group is the family, centered around, until
very recently, the pairing of a male and female (and extended kinship networks) for the purpose of procreation
and the raising of children. Family groups are held together by a strong bond of cohesion referred to as kinship.
While kinship is often thought of in relation to blood ties, what is more important is the common sense of identity by
which all the individuals are bonded to the group. This sense of identity causes the individual's self-conception to
be inseparable from the group.
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Behavioral expectations (e.g., mutually beneficial exchanges based on trust and felt obligation or getting a sense
of identity and self-esteem based upon their membership) within the group are often defined by the culture; norms
and roles are established over time, usually in response to needs, and challenges of the environment.
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Traditions and practices strengthen group expectations, religion has historically sanctified them, and law codifies
them. Institutions develop to enforce behavioral expections. These are all necessary functional responses to the
need for the group to operate efficiently.
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http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/westn/humangroups.html
Ties that bind groups:
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Shared purpose
Interdependence
Sense of belonging
Inclusion
Diversity
Participative leadership
Trust
 We are a fundamentally cooperative species (even our competition is defined
by cooperative behavioral patterns). Human beings have always functioned in
groups. The most basic human group is the family, centered around the pairing
of a male and female for the purpose of procreation and the raising of children.
 Family groups are held together by a strong bond of cohesion referred to as
kinship. While kinship is often thought of in relation to blood ties, what is more
important is the common sense of identity by which all the individuals are
bonded to the group. This sense of identity causes the individual's selfconception to be inseparable from the group.
 “When staying alive is not just the responsibility of the individual, but other
members of the species … all members' chances are enhanced. We live in
extremely complex and interdependent societies, where people band together
in groups for mutual aid and protection. Such groups include families,
friendships, associations, tribes, clans, states, nations …since the group
enhances the members' chances of survival, group survival means personal
survival. The individual benefits by supporting the group, because the group
reciprocates by supporting the individual.”
 http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/westn/humangroups.html &
https://public.wsu.edu/~taflinge/socself.html
 The characteristically Aristotelian defense of the
city's authority over its members is summarized
in the statements "every city exists by nature” and
"man is by nature a political animal.”
 Cities then are collections of people in their
natural state- humans, then, formulate
increasingly complex human associations that
culminate in cities.
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From couple to family
Family to group
Group to village
Village to city
 Why do we live in cities?
 To mitigate against the perils of the natural world and
its contingencies
 To preserve security and propagate human life
 For Aristotle, cities exist to perpetuate a good life
1) A city’s ultimate objective is to aspire to quality (to maintain the
morality of the polity)
2) Quality means that individuals make contributions to the civic
ecology– these contributions to the civic ecology define a good
life
3) This section of Aristotle’s Politics outlines our moral
obligation to one another (this is were the concept of leadership
is particularly relevant)
4) Aristotle’s delineation of cities and the maintenance of quality
is applicable to the culture of groups (leadership is an exercise
in group ethos. Or, rather, how we’re bound to one another in
various roles of agreement or coercion)
Correct
Deviant
One Ruler
Kingship
Tyranny
Few Rulers
Aristocracy
Oligarchy
Many Rulers
Polity
Extreme Democracy
For Aristotle, a polity represented a theoretical approach to the ideal state–how states are
organized is, for Aristotle, essential to achieving happiness. Aristotle believed in the wisdom of
crowds—that people could bring their experiences to bear on the shape of government. He also
cautioned against extreme democracy whereby a majority of the crowd holds disproportionate
influence over the state’s decision-making process. The polity, for Aristotle, was a variation of
democracy were the many govern in their own interests rather than governing just for leadership.
The success of a polity then was contingent upon the quality of leadership and their ability to work
with –and take cues from—common interests (i.e., quality of law, virtue, and their relationship to the
masses). The best polity is that which is formed by citizens of the middle class.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/
 What tie bonds our group (i.e., what makes an American an
American)?
 How does context, our civic ecology, influence what we value in
ourselves and our leaders?
 Conceptual Definition:
 Leadership is not entirely a person or position. It is a complex moral
relationship between people and that relationship is predicated on role
agreement. Cultural, political, economic, and social context not only helps
define these relationships, these factors help bind role agreement. In this
way, leadership is a dynamic, co-creational process between leaders,
followers, and environments.
 Basic Behavioral Definition:
 Leadership, according to Judge and Long , can be defined by actions by individuals and/or
groups which serve to direct, control, or influence behaviors toward a particular objective.
This phenomena of control, influence, and direction is essentially universal to the behavior
of human groups
 Culture is learned, patterned behavior (or set of assumptions) that
not only frames our experiences, but also influences what we
expect, believe and experience. Displays of these values manifest
in ways of knowing and interacting with physical landscape and
other people (inside and outside of groups or the polity).
 We often measure people’s value systems by examining displays
of behavior like kinship bonds, gender roles, class, etc. Religion,
government, music, food, clothing, visual arts, history are also hard
cultural examples (or, institutions that we associate with culture)
 Culture, broadly, on other hand, demonstrates how various social
groups grapple with meaning– this is where we get into leadership
studies (we use context to measure culture and culture is the
barometer in which we make sense of role agreement).
 The study of leadership explores fundamental questions about
who we are, how we live together, and how we influence the
course of history. Leaders are not entirely a collection of people
“deemed to be official by scholars on high.”
 Leadership is a process and the study of this process focuses
on the ubiquitous phenomenon of role agreement in human
groups– to this end it questions social context, culture, and
organizational behavior. On the one hand, it examines the
process of influence, power, and authority. On the other hand,
leadership studies questions the legitimacy that leaders assert
and followers grant (by consent or coercion).
 It also questions why and how certain types of leaders emerge
when they do.
 Human agency is, quite simply, the ability for individuals and
groups to influence change
 More broadly, human agency is the capacity for human beings
to make choices. It is normally contrasted to natural forces,
which are causes involving only unthinking deterministic
processes. In this respect, agency is distinct from the concept of
free will, the philosophical doctrine that our choices are not the
product of causal chains, but are significantly free or
undetermined. Human agency entails the claim that humans do
in fact make decisions and enact them on the world or the
institutions they partake in.
 Historically, people didn’t believe that most people made
history. History, until recently, experts believed, was made by a
few good men.
 “Many of our cultures are leader-centric; we have long looked
at leaders as the predominant influence, believing that if we”
invested enough in cultivating good leaders then good
leadership would make our institutions (and lives) more livable.
Leadercentrism not merely over-emphasizes the agency of
leaders, but it also ignores how leadership represents
significantly more than the behaviors of persons in positions of
influence. It often fails to take into account how followers and
environments shape outcomes.
 Heroes and hero narratives fulfill important (if often imaginary)
“cognitive and emotional human needs, including the need for
saviors, wisdom, meaning, hope, inspiration, and growth.” It is
often the direct result of humanity’s need to make sense of life’s
complexity and it frequently results in the glorification of a
subject to divine level (the act of being raised to god-like
status).
 This process is often a reflection of group/individual value
systems and, most always, a reflection of specific contextual
conditions.
Great men theorists like Thomas
Carlyle argued that history of
humanity has been perpetuated
by the actions of a few good
men, heroes. These heroes were
brought to earth by god to direct
the initiatives of humanity. These
people, Carlyle contended, were
significant in influencing human
progress on a grand scale. They
were able to do this, scholars
like Carlyle contended, because
they were born with these Godgiven traits. For Carlyle, “Great
Men” were, in a divine manner,
rarely with flaw.
 Sigmund Freud was also essential in putting forward GMT (but
with caveats). Freud believed that people’s need for great
leaders was primal– it arose from the drive for dependency
and love. Commitments to community groups –Aristotle’s civic
ecology—shaped this need into culture and era-specific molds.
Yet, for Freud, people’s reliance upon great men indicated a
reduction in intellectual engagement and personal
responsibility, and increased passivity of group members.
 GMT lacks context!
 GMT “reveals a long-standing tension between the desire to place an individual center-stage” at
the expense of recognizing “that complex environmental dynamics help shape events.”
 We know now that the independent agency of non-leaders shapes directives and that toxic
obedience to can have worrisome affects on human groups
 “I claim not to have controlled
events, but confess plainly
that events have controlled
me!”
 What does he mean?
 The Great Emancipator!
 Why?
 Did he free slaves?
 Lincoln's proclamation, as has often been noted, freed not a single slave. It applied only to
the slaves in territories then beyond the reach of federal authority. It specifically exempted
Tennessee and Union-occupied portions of Louisiana and Virginia, and it left slavery in the
loyal border states -- Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri -- untouched. Indeed, the
Proclamation went no further than the Second Confiscation Act of July 1862, which freed all
slaves who entered Union lines professing that their owners were disloyal, as well as slaves
who fell under federal control as Union troops occupied Confederate territory.
 Steadily, as opportunities arose, slaves risked all for freedom by abandoning their owners,
coming uninvited into Union lines and offering their help as laborers, pioneers, guides and
spies.
 Slaves forced federal soldiers at the lowest level to recognize their importance to the
Union's success. That understanding traveled quickly up the chain of command. In time, it
became evident even to the most obtuse federal commanders that every slave who
crossed into Union lines was a double gain: one subtracted from the Confederacy and one
added to the Union. The slaves' resolute determination converted many white Americans to
the view that the security of the Union depended upon the destruction of slavery.
 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1992/12/27/how-the-slaves-freed-
themselves/7d58b82c-3446-4f96-a07d-52fc868eb960/?utm_term=.80fe484108b8
 In a nutshell, African Americans forces Lincoln’s hand– slaves were the Confederacy’s chief
labor force. As they fled to Union lines – known as contraband– Washington realized that
they could undermine the Confederacy from within (blacks were a fifth column)
 Who are the agents?
 Where’s the hero worship?
 Why the hero worship?
 Why is the story of Lincoln so leadercentric and what does the
narrative of Lincoln’s story tell us of what we value?