The importance and evolution of leadership

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The importance and evolution of leadership

• Abraham P. Buunk
• Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
• University of Groningen

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What am I doing here?

• The Economist Magazine (2006, p.5)
• Organizations do not know how to lead people
  because
• .human resources as a discipline has not
  achieved anything like the level of
  sophistication of, say, finance
• Astronomists dont know how to move the stars

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The business and political world seems obsessed
with leadership

• leadership everywhere important issue
• Google 11.800.000 hits
• thousands of models with an endearing
  simplicity and superficiality

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The business and political world seems obsessed
with leadership

• leadership important issue
• Google 11.800.000 hits
• thousands of models
• thousands of consulting agencies

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The business and political world seems obsessed
with leadership

• leadership important issue
• Google 11.800.000 hits
• thousands of models
• thousands of consulting agencies
• direct advices

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The business and political world seems obsessed
with leadership

• leadership important issue
• Google 11.800.000 hits
• thousands of models
• thousands of consulting agencies
• but also psychologists thousands of scientific
  articles
• psychology of leadership
• at least 15 forms of leadership

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Why a preoccupation with leadership?

• Good leadership has strong effects on
  productivity
• In trawlers, skipper accounts for 35-49 of catch
• CEOs account for about 14 of the variance in a
  firms financial results

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The Bloom Van Reenen study

• 700 manufacturing firms in US and Europe
• company performance
• productivity, profitability, sales growth,
  survival rates
• about 50 explained by four characteristics of
  leadership

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1. Operations (e.g., process improvement,
internal communication)
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2. Targets (e.g., rigor and transparency of
goals)
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3. Monitoring (e.g., tracking and following up on
individual performance)
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4. Incentives (links between pay and performance)
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Why should people want to lead?

• Invest large amounts of time
• Take responsibility for groups outcomes
• Subordinates rarely happy
• Put personal security at risk

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Why should people want to follow?

• Work for someone elses income and prestige
• Dependent on someone else
• Lack of attention and appreciation
• Take risks for the benefit of someone else

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Evolutionary perspective

• Humans as animals
• How desires for leadership and followership are
  product of evolution

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Why would someone want to be a dominant or a
submissive?

• Two types of causes
• proximate strong desire for power and
  achievement vs. lack of ambition and lazyness
• ultimate dominance and submission were adaptive
  in evolutionary past

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Human behavior as result of evolution
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But why a leader?The importance of status

• 1999 Columbine high school shootings, Colorado
• 13 people killed
• This is for all the people who made fun of us
  all these years
• 2003 Oaklyn, New Jersey plans to do the same
• Leader in Oaklyn speech impediment, bow legged
  and stooped gait, strange clothes
• He was an easy target, but never lashed out. He
  just took it Everybody picked on him

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The male motivation to attain status and dominance

• Leaders overwhelming men
• Geert Hofstede around the world men more
  interested in power, leadership and
  self-realization
• Linked to testosteron, motivates competition for
  status
• Does not mean at all that men are better leaders

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The ultimate cause of the male drive for status
and dominanceSexual selection and parental
investment theory

• Reproductive success of males limited by access
  to mates
• Males therefore more competitive and more
  aggressive than
• females to gain access to sexually receptive
  females, and to prevent
• access of other males to females
• For females generally off-spring requires much
  more investment
• than for males, reproductive success limited
  by access to resources
• Therefore more choosy in partner choice than
  males status,
• dominance, good genes
• Among human males, long evolutionary history and
  ongoing
• evolution rooted in competition over these
  characteristics
• Men successful in this competition had more
  offspring

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Dominance and status enhanced reproductive succes

• Yanomanö of Amazone men who killed other men have
  more wives and children
• Kipsigis of Kenia men with more acres have more
  reproductive succes
• Dzengis Khan 16 million male descendants
• Laura Betzig six early civilizations the higher
  the status, the more wives
• Even regulated by law Incas
• principal persons 50 women
• leaders of vassal nations 30 women
• heads of provinces more than 100.000 people 20
  women
• governors of at least 100 people 8 women

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Is there still a link between status and
reproductive success among men and not among
women?
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Reproductive success and income
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Result of evolution hormonal effects of winning
and loosing

• Higher status accompanied by higher androgen and
  serotonin levels good feeling
• Lower status accompanied by elevated cortisol
  levels, greater physiological stress changes
  during conflict
• Following competitive games (even chess!) male
  winners (and supporters!) show elevation of
  testosteron

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Winning an election testosteron level increases

• Importance of winning

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Sex differences

• Males used to functioning in hierarchies, more
  direct ways of dominating and dealing with
  rivals, accept being subordinate,
• Females less used to functioning in hierarchies,
  more indirect ways, such as spreading rumors,
  excluding, ignoring, and isolating rivals,
  preventing other females from being successful

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Queen Bee effect women block careers of other
women

• Naomi Ellemers and colleagues
• (University of Leiden,
• The Netherlands)

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How male supervisors judge their subordinates
fair and egalitarian
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How female supervisors judge their subordinates
biased against their own sex
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Questions and comments!
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The Russian Doll Model layers of ways of
attaining dominance
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Major evolved strategies for achieving dominance

• 1. Direct fights, physical strength
• Bigger animals more dominant in many species,
  smaller animals prevent getting involved in fight

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The inner Russian Doll (1) tendency to fight
physically is still non-verbally manifest
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The inner Russian doll (2) unconscious
perception of physical dominance of rivals
subliminal priming
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Rivalry in men
90
85
80
75
rivalry
70
65
60
55
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Subliminal exposure to physically dominant
Subliminal exposure to physically non-dominant
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The inner Russian doll (3) height still matters
a lot
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Sarkozy Frankly, Dom, what do I still lack to
win the elections in 2007?Dom Oh not that
much. At its most just a 20 centimeters
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The importance of height in organizations

• Taller men
• are more persuasive
• held in higher esteem
• more likely to emerge as leader
• perform better
• earn more 15 cm equals 166.000,- over 30
  years
• have higher positions in organizations
• are more liked by women
• have more reproductive success

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Rivalry among women

• Height for women less positive
• Related to depression
• Women of medium height higher fertility and
  reproductive success
• Men dont like women taller than they are (except
  Sarkozy)
• Smaller women advantage

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Test for intrasexual rivalry with questions like

• When I go out, I can't stand it when men pay
  more attention to a friend of mine than to me
• I just dont like very ambitious women
• I can't stand it when I meet another woman who
  has accomplished more in her life than I have
• I wouldn't hire a highly competent woman as a
  colleague

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Intrasexual rivalry among females
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Why would individuals be submissive?Submission
to physically stronger animales is functional

• Prevent attacks, being killed, expelled from
  group
• Benefit from knowledge dominant animal
• Wait ones chances Prepare for future dominance

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Major evolved strategies for achieving dominance

• 1. Direct fights, physical strength
• 2. Social skills machiavellianism

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Social brain hypothesisMaintaining and
manipulating relationships

• Why around 150 people invited?
• Why not 75? Or 350? No coincidence!
• Evolution human brain very fast 2.5 millions of
  years ago
• Not at all parallel to increase of complexity of
  technology
• Not at all parallel to increase of complexity of
  environment
• Robin Dunbar (University of Oxford) being able
  to function in large groups

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100
Mean group size of primates
10
1
0.1
1
10
Neocortex Ratio
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150 - the magic number

• number of people we can know and interact with on
  a personal basis

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Around 150 found everywhere

• clans of hunter gatherers
• military units
• business organizations
• church congregations (200 maximum of coherent,
  well-integrated congregation)
• size of personal networks

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Knowing personally about 1000 people
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Functioning in groups, and especially being and
becoming dominant, requires intelligence
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Why does functioning in large groups require
intelligence?

• Animals move of their own volition and have
  feelings and thoughts
• To keep track of that requires enormous
  computational capacity

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• Remembering behavior of group members, whos to
  trust
• Recognizing cheaters and free-riders
• Floating social norms without being caught
• Manipulating others for ones own goals

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Leaders not necessarily nicer, often manipulators

• Better liars
• Lack of empathy
• Narcissistic tendency

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Power and perspective taking

• Adam Galinsky (Kellogg School of Management)
• Power diminishes perspective taking
• Powerful people are less likely to adopt another
  persons perspective

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The E test

• Draw an
• E
• on your forehead

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Power and taking another persons visual
perspective
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Submission functional

• bide your time
• voids at the top emergence of new dominants
• fish species when dominant male dead, other
  males more testosterone, competitive fights

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The functionality of submission

• Margaret Tatcher
• who bit her tongue - held back criticism until
  criticism with Ted Heath grew
• then acted
• by not being submissive, one may forever ruin
  ones chances

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Promotion tips as submissive strategies

• Leonard Sayles (1993) based on years of study of
  managers, promotion tips
• Avoid confrontation
• Withhold suggestions
• Do not ask your boss to champion unpopular
  opinions
• Always agree with your boss
• Concentrate on presentation skills and looking
  good in meetings with superiors
• Demonstrate an intense desire for career
  advancement and beat your peers
• Try to find your next promotion because rapid
  advancement looks good

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Career success - attaining status and dominance -
is not the same as succesful leadership

• Commitment to ones career is not the same as
  commitment to the
• organization
• No relation between career success and team
  performance

• Career success socializing, politicking, and
  networking upward ingratiation
• Effective team leadership communicating,
  motivating, managing conflicts, training of
  subordinates
• downward affiliation

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Comments and questions!
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Major evolved strategies for achieving dominance

• 1. Direct fights, physical strength
• 2. Social skills machiavellianism
• 3. Altruism and heroism

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The next doll the altruistic doll

• Competition in social skills in groups lead to
  evolution of additional strategy of attaining
  dominance Altruistic behavior

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Altruistic leadership

• Gaining status and prestige through
• Interfering impartially in conflicts
• Being fair and generous to followers
• Showing altruism
• Self-sacrifice for sake of the group

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Altruism pays off the self-sacrifcing leader

• John McCain
• 1967 prisoner of war (pow) in Vietnam for more
  than five years
• very badly treated, tortured many times
• refused to be released as a special favor, if
  fellow pows who were captured earlier were also
  not released
• benefits from this 40 years later

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The effectiveness of altruistic leaders

• Study of Fortune 1000 selection of companies
  that first performed below business sector
  average for 15 years, and than above average for
  15 years
• Only 11 companies fit profile
• In each case after new CEO took over
• Two characteristics of these CEOs

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Characteristics of most effective CEOs

• 1. Modest and humble
• 2. Extraordinarily persistent in pursuit of
  organizational goals

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What have these two men in common?
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Charismatic leadership

• Articulating vision and mission
• Inducing identification, loyalty, faith, respect,
  inspiration, commitment and devotion to the
  leader
• Hitler the arrogant non-altruist
• Mandela the humble altruist
• Study among Fortune 500 firms leader charisma
  predicted his level of pay, but not firm
  performance

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Major strategies for achieving dominance

• 1. Direct fights, physical strength
• 2. Social skills machiavellianism
• 3. Altruism and heroism
• 4. Showing a Peacocks tail

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The human peacock tail producing art
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The human peacock tail beautiful and expensive
goods
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Importance of physical attractiveness
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Physically attractive people .

• Are hired more likely
• Are promoted more likely
• Are evaluated more positively in terms of their
  performance
• But ..

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Crown Princess effect women block careers
particularly of attractive women

• Experiment among students
• Job description student assistant working on
  data entry and photocopying, at the same project
  as oneself
• Personality description, e.g., nice, extravert,
  pleasant, outgoing personality
• How likely would you hire this person?

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Men and women prefer female candidates
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Both men and women prefer attractive candidates
of the opposite sex
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But for same sex candidates the oppositemen
prefer attractive male candidates, and women
unattractive female candidates
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A guideline

• Bright leaders should be directive and tell
  group members what to do the relatively less
  bright should be participative and listen
  (Fiedler House, 1988, p. 76).
• Make your own choice!

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Questions and comments?