The Evolutionary Foundations
of Charismatic Leadership
Ronald F. White (Mount
St. Joseph University, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA)
(Forthcoming in Routledge Handbook of Charisma ed. Jose Pedro Zuquete (2020))
Abstract
Beginning
in the 1960s, Charismatic Leadership Theory (CLT) argued that human followers
are naturally attracted to leaders who possess a mysterious collection of
traits and/or skills called charisma. Subsequently, there was serious scholarly
debate over which charismatic traits and/or skills are necessary and/or
sufficient for leaders to attract and maintain followers in various
organizational contexts. Those traits and skills tended to be associated with
“tall, healthy male leaders.” Evolutionary Leadership Theory (ELT) employs both
biological and cultural evolution to explain how and why both biology and
culture are essential to understanding charismatic leadership. This
chapter will address four main issues. First,
it will argue that leadership involves both traits and skills. Second, it will explore the degree to
which charismatic male political leaders, today, can maintain leadership without
effectively fulfilling follower expectations. Third, it will explain why female political leaders lack charisma,
and how that might affect the future of female leadership and followership. Fourth, this chapter will raise the question
of how the cultural changes wrought the emergence of global information
technologies have influenced charismatic leadership and the perception of
“distress” among vulnerable followers.
Keywords
Charismatic
Leadership Theory (CLT), Evolutionary Leadership Theory (ELT), biological
evolution, cultural evolution
Beginning in the 1960s, leadership
theorists steeped in the social sciences proposed and defended a series of opposing
“leadership theories,” including: trait theories, behavioral theories, cognitive
theories, emotive theories, transactional theories, transformational theories,
authenticity theories, and contextual theories. (Sontag, Jenkins, &White
2011) Those early leadership theories sought to empirically describe how good leaders (in fact) lead
followers. At that time, there was little (if any) analysis of the behavior of
followers, bad leaders, and/or bad followers. Subsequent theories began to explore
the various organizational contexts where leader-follower relationships take
place, and, those scholars prescribed “values” that allow us to differentiate
between good/bad organizations, good/bad leaders, good/bad followers, and
good/bad leader-follower relationships. Most recently, leadership scholars have
sought to develop a “general theory of leadership” that might unify the aforementioned
theories, facts, and values associated with both good and bad leadership and/or
followership. (Goethals & Sorenson 2006) Evolutionary Leadership Theory (ELT)
proposes that biological and cultural evolution, together, explain human
leadership, including charismatic leadership. (van Vugt 2006, 2008, 2011, 2012)
This chapter will explain how and why charismatic
leaders and their followers are both “born” and “made;” and how and why both
biological and cultural evolution are necessary components of any complete explanation
of charismatic leader-follower relationships. Although charismatic leadership
is embedded in human nature, throughout most of human history, charisma alone, has
never been sufficient for maintaining leadership. Leaders have always had to effectively
lead followers toward the fulfillment of organizational goals, ends, or
purposes that followers value. Critics of contemporary leadership observe that,
today, we are suffering from a dearth of effective/efficient leadership. If this
observation is true, then how might ELT explain this phenomenon and perhaps
contribute to the re-emergence of more effective and efficient political leaders?
Before we get underway, this chapter builds
upon three bodies theoretical knowledge that elucidate the nature of charisma: Organizational Theory, Democratic Political
Theory, and Evolutionary Theory.
First of all, the guiding principle that
underlies Organizational Theory is
that we humans, naturally, organize ourselves into groups based on leadership
and followership. The myriad organizations that we spawn serve a wide variety
of human ends or purposes in many different contexts. Our participation in
organizational activities is highly variable, as we all tend to cooperate with many
organizations to variable degrees. We participate and/or withdraw from
organizations in order to advance our personal and/or collective interests and
avoid or remove harms. Some organizations are more effective at bringing about intended organizational ends or
purposes, and among those effective organizations, some are more efficient than others.
Today,
most scholars agree that any theory of organizational leadership must explain
both good and bad organizations, leaders, and followers. Some organizations pursue
morally praiseworthy goals, with greater or lesser degrees of effectiveness and
efficiency, while other organizations pursue blameworthy goals with greater or lesser
effectiveness and efficiency. Unfortunately, some of the most effective and
efficient political leaders in human history, such as Adolph Hitler (Toland,
1976), and Jim Jones (Guinn, 2017) were very effective and efficient at maintaining
followers and bringing about morally repugnant goals via malevolent
organizations.
Secondly, Democratic Political Theory attempts to explain, predict, and
control the outcome of democratic elections. Much of it devoted to identifying
contextual variables such as: who can legally vote, how voting is conducted,
where are the polling places, when is voting conducted, who shows up at the
polling place, who transports ballots, and who counts the ballots. Within
diverse democratic regimes, identity-based voting patterns have also become
increasingly relevant, especially patterns based on: age, gender, race,
ethnicity, and nationality.
Thirdly,
this chapter will focus primarily on the Biological
and Cultural Evolution of charisma in the context of “political organizations”
and the role that effectiveness and efficiency historically played in limiting the
power of charisma. It will, however, occasionally refer to other contexts, such
as: military, religious, and business organizations. By way of conclusion, this
chapter will suggest that revolutionary changes in Information Technology have had a profound influence on the political
survival of ineffective and/or inefficient male political leaders within
democratic political regimes.
Charismatic Leadership Theory
Historically, the term “charisma” was used
to describe a variety of human relationships whereby one person (or group of
persons) is attracted to another. The origin of the term “charisma” can be
traced back to the Ancient Greek term “charis,” which means “charm, beauty, or
allurement.” (Grabo 2017) Even today, that aura of mysticism associated with Charismatic
Leadership Theory (CLT) remains intact. However, today the nature of
charismatic relationships has been largely demystified by behavioral
psychology, and therefore, today, the concept is rarely encountered outside of
the historiography of leadership studies. Recent scholars, now explore
“charisma” under the rubric of the concept of “influence.” (Sunstein 2014,
2016, 2017)
In its initial form, CLT was one of ten
competing theories of leadership. (van Vugt 2011) It argued that the most
positively influential leaders, such as John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King,
and Mahatma Gandhi, attracted followers via a set of emotive factors called charisma. Those ten early leadership
theories, therefore, tended to focus on the extraordinary traits of male
leaders who effectively elicited a positive, trusting emotive response among
followers. Although the early charismatic scholars sought to identify
timelessly universal traits and or skills, later scholars observed that
charisma is also contextual and relative to specific cultures, times, and/or
specific places. Thus, what might be interpreted as charismatic at any given
place or time, was often relative to group identity via by culturally-specific
variables, especially: tribe, race,
ethnicity, religion, or political party. This complexity, no doubt, contributed
to the longstanding undercurrent of inexplicable mystery associated with
charisma, which tended to discourage serious empirical analysis. (Marturano
& Arsenault 2008) Although, the nature of charismatic influence has been
largely decoded, it is important to acknowledge that charisma is still
associated with the traits and skills most-often possessed by male leaders. How
and why has charismatic leadership among humans, changed over time? In the
modern age of information technology, how and why do charismatic male political
leaders, today, attract, maintain, and/or lose followers.
Biological and Cultural Evolution
Contemporary biology is dominated by
Darwinian evolutionary theory. Back in the late nineteenth century, Darwin
theorized that all living species survive by systematically adapting to
ever-changing environmental conditions. Darwin identified three interacting mechanisms:
replication, chance variation and natural selection.
All living things replicate themselves via
reproduction. Reproduction takes place within and between closely related species,
and therefore, organisms within the same species (and/or closely related
species), share common traits. However, by sheer chance (as Darwin put it), the
process of replication also generates variation among those traits,
individuals, and species. As biological environments change over time, some “chance
variations” become advantageous to the individual lifeforms that inherit those
traits. Hence, those advantaged lifeforms (genes, individuals, species, and
ecosystems) are more likely to survive long enough to pass those genes onto the
next generation; and consequently, those descendants, also tend to survive. Conversely,
other variations turn out to be a liability, and ultimately contribute to the
extinction of the life forms that inherit them. Darwin discovered the mechanism
responsible for selecting winners and losers within various environments. He
called it Natural Selection.
Some living systems and the environments
in which they survive. remain stable for long periods of time, only to be
interrupted by revolutionary change wrought by variation and selection. Microcosmic
organisms (especially bacteria and viruses) tend to evolve at a fast-pace,
while macrocosmic organisms (especially animals and humans) evolve at a slow
pace. Some changes are deemed “progressive” because they increase the ultimate survivability
of those life forms (genes, individual organisms, species, and ecosystems). But
other variations are seen as “regressive” or “devolutionary,” because those
changes contribute to the long-term extinction of those life forms.
Post-Darwinian scholars later observed that
the history of human culture, including beliefs, skills, and technologies can
also be theoretically explained in terms of replication, variation and
selection; and, therefore, the history of human cultures and subcultures can be
similarly explained in terms of “survival of the fittest.” Fast-paced cultural
revolutions can beget systemic changes that effect the survivability of entire
cultures and subcultures, including their collective beliefs, skills, and
technologies. During the twentieth-century, evolutionary epistemologists
debated whether various human cultures and/or subcultures objectively exhibit
stability, progress, or regression; and questioned the degree to which biology
shapes culture and/or culture shapes biology.
Given that the traits that comprise the human
species tend to evolve very slowly, and our cultural systems evolve much
faster, bio-cultural mismatches are inevitable. Some mismatches are evolutionary,
progressive, and life-enhancing; some are devolutionary, regressive, and
life-threatening, and some mismatches are inconsequential. Some mismatches are
progressive or regressive over the short-run and some are progressive or
regressive over the long-run. The impact of bio-cultural mismatches is usually
easier to predict over the short-run than over the long-run.
Evolutionary Leadership Theory
So how might ELT go about explaining
charismatic political leadership? Well,
the first step is to distinguish between proximate and ultimate explanations. (White
2017) Proximate Explanations explain
who, how, where, and when leaders lead. Ultimate
Explanations explain why those leaders lead. For many centuries, the
ultimate explanation for all human behavior was based on the Doctrine of
Special Creation, whereby God created the world, plants and animals. The human
species was regarded “special” in that God created us in his own image selected
certain men to lead organizations. Since the late 19th century,
ultimate explanations based on Biblical authority have been supplanted and by
Darwinian Evolutionary Theory. Of course, defenders of Biblical authority
objected to the fact that Darwin attributed variation to chance, rather than
God’s will, and his insistence that the border lines between various species
are malleable.
Like all biological traits, patterns
of leadership and followership among various species are the products of
biological evolution. Scientists who embrace ELT observe that that there is
both continuity and variation within and between the various species of social animals;
especially between humans and our closest primate relatives: chimpanzees and
bonobos. (De Waal 2005) Among political scientists, this observation spawned a
debate between defenders of the “good natured hypothesis” (Corning 2011, 2018)
and the “bad natured hypothesis” (Somit and Peterson 1997; and Wrangham and
Peterson 1996). The good-natured hypothesis views human nature as mostly
non-violent and peaceful. The bad-natured hypothesis sees human nature violent
and warlike.
In terms of political psychology,
chimpanzee societies are male-dominant, hierarchical, and authoritarian.
Leadership is often sustained via violence and/or threats of violence.
(Wrangham & Peterson 1996) In contrast, bonobo societies tend to be
female-dominant, non-hierarchical, democratic, and peaceful. Although, human
beings exhibit both chimpanzee and bonobo political behaviors, scholars
disagree over whether our genes naturally predispose us more toward
authoritarianism or egalitarianism. State-of-the-art genetic testing indicates
that present-day humans are slightly more closely related to bonobos than
chimpanzees and that authoritarian leadership orchestrated by physically
dominant, alpha males is primarily the product of cultural evolution. So how
and why did cultural evolution bring about and sustain male-dominated
authoritarianism?
Again, proponents of ELT rarely use the
term “charisma” but rather seek to identify the specific traits and/or skills that
successful political leaders possess and/or acquire. ELT acknowledges the fact
that at all times and all places the vast majority of political leaders have
been “tall, fit, male leaders.” (van Vugt 2011) That simple observation raises
a host of age-old questions. Is charisma primarily comprised of traits and/or
skills? Why are those traits and/or skills seemingly possessed mostly by males?
If charisma is overwhelmingly a biological trait, then someday, might future
charismatic leaders be identified at birth via a DNA test or a brain scan. Or, perhaps
the physical components of charisma might someday be manufactured via surgical
techniques. If charisma is purely a matter of acquiring a skill set, then then can
any aspiring leader those skills and thereby attract and maintain followers? If
so, what precisely are those skills, how are those skills best taught and/or
acquired? Have those essential leadership skills changed over time?
ELT observes that the human brain evolved
very slowly; and that it is still, nearly identical to that of our Stone Age
progenitors. Hunters and Gatherers survived (if not thrived) for 3.5 million
years wandering the savannas of Africa years in groups of 100-150 individuals. (Giphart
and van Vugt 2018) Throughout the Pleistocene Era, there was no single leader
perched on the top of an authoritarian hierarchy. Leaders were contextually chosen
on the basis of merit; that is, those
who obviously possessed the specific traits and skills necessary for group survival.
In short, the most effective/efficient hunter(s) led hunting expeditions, the most
effective/efficient gatherer(s) led the gathering process, the most effective/efficient
warrior(s) led the group in warfare, and the most effective/efficient navigators
led migration. Those traits and skills were rarely (if ever) possessed by the
same person. There were no elections.
The most effective and efficient hunters, warriors,
navigators tended to be “tall, fit, males” (van Vugt & Ahuja 2011). But among
hunter and gatherers that initial charisma, alone, was never enough to sustain leadership.
Based on observational consensus, ineffective and/or inefficient leaders were
readily detected by followers and replaced by leaders that were more
effective/efficient. Thus, for over 3.5 million years, effectiveness and efficiency
trumped initial charisma. Why? Because, over the long run, communities that
protected charismatic, but ineffective and/or inefficient leaders, suffered extinction;
via either starvation, or by being conquered by other groups with more
effective and efficient leaders.
The question of the relative frequency
that Pleistocene hunter-gatherers changed leaders is still open to scholarly
debate. (Buckner 2017) Unfortunately, the vast majority of hunter-gatherer
societies are now extinct and the accuracy of anthropological studies of those
few remaining hunter-gather societies has been called into question.
Nevertheless, over the course of 3.5 million years, it is probably safe to
assume that while the human population remained rather sparse, and when food
was plentiful, most hunter-gathers groups rarely encountered out-groups. When
they did… those groups looked a lot like themselves and were mostly friendly.
If either group felt threatened, group leaders probably chose to move to
another location rather than risk a lethal confrontation.
At least some groups of early homo sapiens
emerged out of Africa, and therefore, for millions of years, those humans
looked and acted alike. However, over millions of years, human population
groups began to migrate into different environments and physically adapt to
those environments, and developed different physical attributes such as skin
color. Henceforth, charismatic political leadership became linked to “group
identity,” which is comprised of a host of contextual physical attributes,
which were later associated with gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, and
socioeconomic class. Worldwide there is still strong propensity for various immigrant
groups to live together based on group identity. In democracies, there is still
a strong propensity for voters to elect leaders based on gender, race, ethnicity,
and/or nationality.
After the Agricultural Revolution those
essential leadership contexts (migration, hunting, warfare, and gathering) were
replaced by the emergence of a host of new opportunities for leadership. Those
emerging contexts were spawned by fast-paced, cultural evolution initially associated
with animal husbandry and agriculture. As the size of human communities grew,
and food production was collectivized, communities became increasingly reliant
upon technical knowledge and skills. As the size and population of stationary
communities increased, food was stockpiled, which created opportunities for
invasion by outside groups. This motivation contributed to the cultural
evolution of both offensive and defensive military leadership and rapidly
evolving military technologies. Thus, over the last 12,000 years or so human
politics evolved (or devolved) from informal democratic meritocracies to into
formal authoritarian regimes. At first these Post-AR communities were led by
military authorities, later by religious authorities, eventually business
authorities. Modern humans are still charismatically attracted to those tall, fit,
male leaders. However today, given the rapid pace of cultural evolution as
compared to the slow pace of biological evolution. There is a rapidly growing “mismatch”
between our natural propensity for democratic, contextual, merit-based
leadership and our more recently acquired cultural attraction to leaders who
promise to save us from an endless stream of emergencies, both real and
imagined.
While human biology evolved slowly over
millions of years; human culture has been shaped by fast-paced, revolutionary
change. Information technology has expanded and accelerated the growing
mismatch between charismatic political leaders and the sustainability of
political organizations. Aspiring charismatic leaders who were able to adapt to
this rapidly changing cultural environment survived, while those who could not
evolve, suffered extinction.
For at least 3.5 million years, charisma
was a reliable indicator of effective/efficient political leadership. Throughout
the Pleistocene Era the primary leadership opportunities were associated with
hunting and gathering. For those small groups of hunter-gatherer societies,
charismatic leaders tended to be tall, strong, healthy males; who tended to be
the most effective and efficient hunters, warriors, and migratory leaders.
Thus, for millions of years, charismatic leadership; as signified by tall,
strong, healthy males contributed to the survival of the human species.
However, subsequent to the Agricultural Revolution,
tall, fit, males no longer signaled effective/efficient leadership. As the size
and population of Post-AR communities increased, other skills, including oratory
prowess, became an increasingly important components of charismatic leadership.
Henceforth, political leadership became monopolized by tall, fit, articulate
males. Revolutions in information
technology, transportation technology, and weapon technology accelerated that
process. Ironically, although large-scale leaders, today, have become
increasingly ineffective and inefficient, marketing technology has become
increasingly effective and efficient. Thus, it has become increasingly
difficult to determine exactly what large-scale, charismatic leaders do; and whether
their stated goals have been effectively and efficiently achieved.
Since the dawning of the Agricultural
Revolution, 12,000 years ago, political organizations have been increasingly vulnerable
to male-dominant, charismatic attraction. Even today, military organizations,
religious organizations, and business organizations remain male dominant. All
three leadership contexts required specific traits and skills that allowed them
to remain in power.
Even today, large-scale military,
religious, business, and political organizations are still led by those “tall, fit,
articulate males. Charismatic leaders not only look the part, but also claim to
possess technical knowledge of value to followers and the community at large.
Military leaders claim to know how to effectively/efficiently win wars.
Religious leaders know how to effectively/efficiently please God? Business
leaders know how to effectively/efficiently earn a profit. And political
leaders claim to know how to effectively/efficiently run government.
Charisma and Distress
Max Weber observed that followers are most
vulnerable to the lure of charismatic leaders when they find themselves in
“moments of distress.” (Weber 1978).
Fear, often increases followers’ willingness to follow charismatic
leaders who promise to alleviate those fears. However, given the fact that it
is often much easier to “promise” to alleviate distress than it is to fulfill
that promise, we should not be surprised to learn that many (if not most)
charismatic leaders fail to alleviate the various forms of distress that
followers experience. Therefore, throughout most of human history,
ineffective/inefficient political leaders have lost followers via political revolutions.
In
democratic political regimes, charisma still serves as a necessary initial
condition for acquiring political leadership. The hallmark of modern leadership
has been the cultural evolution of a set of skills that now enable charismatic
leaders to create and/or manufacture “moments of distress,” and the belief
among followers that they, alone, can alleviate those real or imagined sources
of distress.
Even back in the Middle Ages, Nicolo Machiavelli
observed that, charismatic leaders must possess human management skills; which
include skills that enable them to manipulate the feelings and emotions of
followers, and skills that enable them to manipulate information. Thus,
historically, the most enduring autocratic leaders have always been highly-skilled
at flaunting their effectiveness and/or disguising their ineffectiveness. Machiavelli
also noted that charismatic leaders, survive by effectively manipulating the
fear of followers. “It’s better to be feared than loved.” (Machiavelli 1532).
In today’s large-scale modern democracies,
charismatic leaders also manipulate information by arguing that their policies
serve “the greater good,” and that self-sacrifice by distressed followers is
necessary, over the short term, in order to bring about thee “greater good”
over the long-term. This strategy can often placate those who remain in
distress, at least temporarily. Indeed, that’s how ineffective/inefficient charismatic
leaders can maintain political power for a long time, even though, objectively
speaking, they accomplish very little of substance.
It is also worth noting that advancements
in organizational psychology and behavioral economics, have made political
leaders and business leaders more effective and efficient at marketing themselves
and their ideas. Cass R. Sunstein and others have decoded much of the brain
science that underlies charismatic influence. They base their findings on two
cognitive operations of the human brain. System
1 operations are “fast, automatic, and intuitive.” System 2 is slow, calculative, controlled, and deliberative.” (Sunstein 2017) Unfortunately, as behavioral
economics continues to advance, both “good leaders” and “bad leaders” will be
able to more effectively and efficiently “nudge” followers. (White 2018)
Gender, Age and Charismatic Politics
Since the 1960s, there has been growing debate
over the role that women “in fact” play in democratic politics, and the role
they “ought” to play. As noted above, since the Pleistocene Era, political
behavior has been male dominated. However, women gradually acquired a variety
of skills related to gathering food. These skills were passed on to subsequent
generations via teaching and learning. The degree to which hunter-gatherer
societies relied on hunting v. gathering for their long-term survival has been
a lively area of discussion among scholars.
Today, aspiring female political leaders, are
rarely (if ever) described in charismatic terms. Even in modern democracies,
it’s been only in very recent times that women have been legally empowered to
vote, let along run for political office. Today, when women do run for office,
they often compete with those charismatic men. This raises the obvious question
of whether charisma is merely a remnant of post AR sexism, and whether male
political dominance has been sustained by biology, culture, or both.
Human survival has been shaped and
reshaped by both natural selection and sexual selection. Both involve both competition
and cooperation. Natural Selection most often emphasizes
competition/cooperation in the quest for food and protection. Sexual Selection
focuses on competition/cooperation in the area of reproduction. Early research reduced
human reproduction to the “battle of the sexes” metaphor, which focused on dating,
mating, and child-rearing. For many years, scholars embraced the “standard
narrative,” which argued that “men are cads and women are whores.” (Ryan and Jethá
2010). That is to say: males promise to share their resources with the most
beautiful females with “hourglass figures” in exchange for resources; and that
those females promised to exchange exclusive sex for those resources. In short,
human reproduction was reduced to competition between horny males, competition
between willing whores, and cooperation between two in producing and raising children
that survive long enough to reproduce. Of course, “whores” were attracted to the
most effective and efficient “breadwinners” and the cads were attracted to whores
that were the most effective and efficient “child bearers” and “child
nurturers.” Those early scientists also believed that monogamy is the natural
strategy for bearing and caring for children.
However, more recent ethologists now agree
that there are no monogamous primates and that hunter-gatherer societies were
polygamous. Given the reality of multiple sexual partners, no one really knew
who was their daddy, children, they argued survived thanks to groups of
cooperative mommies and daddies. And, of course, women were sexually attracted
to those tall, fit male leaders, who tended to be the most effective/efficient
hunters, warriors, and navigators.
In sum, for 3.5 million years, leadership
was contextual. Although charismatic males that exhibited strength and health
were often initially selected as contextual leaders, in the end sustained political
leadership was contingent upon demonstrable contextualized effectiveness and
efficiency. Hence, throughout most of
human history, leadership was contextual based on demonstrated competence in hunting,
warfare, and migration. And, females were sexually attracted to these strong
healthy males. This contextualized, merit-based democratic political system
worked for about 3.5 million years.
However, a mere 12,000 years ago the
Agricultural Revolution changed all that, as those small, itinerate, communities
began to live in stationary settlements, which grew larger in terms of
population and occupied territory. As these settlements grew, the need for more
food led to the cultural evolution of ever-increasingly effective and efficient
food production. Thus the cultural emergence of agriculture and husbandry, and
the technical knowledge and skills required for the large scale production of food,
facilitated the creation of increasingly larger stationary settlements. This
led directly to a meteoric increase in human occupational diversity and new opportunities
for leadership. As food production in some communities became increasingly effective
and efficient, so did the knowledge and skills associated with theft and lethal
raiding by both insiders and outsiders. Thus, political leadership changed as
our natural democratic instincts were undermined by the cultural emergence of self-defense
mechanisms, especially police, military, religious, and business institutions.
As men gravitated toward this growing number of employment and leadership
opportunities, women were culturally restricted to home life and child care via
both morality and legality.
The question of whether age plays a role
in charismatic male leadership remains a puzzle, especially in light of recent
advancements in human health and healthcare. To what degree are organizations
predisposed to select “older, tall, fit, articulate males?” During the
Pleistocene Era, age was certainly a reliable indicator of experiential
knowledge in both hunting and warfare, but also an indicator diminished
physical fitness. Of course, today much depends on what we mean by “older,”
especially in Western cultures where both males and females can expect to live
into their eighties? Some older leaders possess knowledge from past
generations, but lack detailed knowledge of the most recently culturally
evolved technologies, skills, and knowledge.
Information Conveyance Technology
ELT acknowledges that throughout human
history, charisma played at least an initial role in the empowerment of male
political leaders. Throughout the Pleistocene Era, charismatic leadership was
contextual and merit-based. “Tall, fit, male leaders” tended to be successful
in the contexts of hunting, warfare, and migration. But ultimately, merit, in
the form of effectiveness and efficiency, trumped that initial charisma.
If it is true that we in the United States
are now suffering from a contagion of bad political leadership, how and why did
that come about? One likely explanation is that leadership and followership have
been profoundly reshaped by the cultural evolution of information conveyance
technology. The history of information conveyance includes both travel and
communication technologies. Early travel technologies included the wheel, cart,
saddles etc. More recent transportation technologies include trains,
automobiles, and airplanes; and recent communication technologies include
telegraph, telephone, radio, television. Throughout the Pleistocene era,
information was communicated face-to-face via gestural language and later the
spoken word. The earliest information technologies included writing on clay
tablets and papyri. The most recent communication technologies are digital and computer
related, including Internet, e-mail, and social media. So how has the rise of digital
technology effected charismatic leadership? Gregg Murray put it, most
succinctly. We now live “in a digital world with a stone age brain.” (Murray
2019)
The most profound consequence of the rise of
digital technology has been the increased opportunity for charismatic leaders
to instantaneously display their charisma (real or manufactured) on a manifestly
larger scale. Correspondingly, those “tall, fit, males” also rapidly adapted to
the digital environment by developing a new set of skills designed to initially
attract and retain targeted classes of followers. However, as noted above, at
least historically, charismatic political leaders must (eventually) fulfill
their campaign promises to followers with an acceptable level of effectiveness
and efficiency, and communicate information to followers. But the transmission
of information has always been variably effective and efficient. And (of
course) communication technologies can be deployed in order to transmit both
Truth and Falsehood. Thus followers, increasingly relied upon their “trust,” of
leaders, which, over time, has also become more easily manipulated by those techno-savvy
leaders.
The most puzzling question for today’s
democracies is whether followers can still effectively and efficiently resist
the initial lure of charismatic leaders, at least long enough to determine whether
those leaders are (in fact) trustworthy, and whether they are effectively/efficiently
fulfilling their promises. Given the recent explosion of information,
misinformation, and disinformation which is now spread via digital technology, it
has become increasingly more difficult for Americans to decide who to vote for.
Recent research on voting behavior is a bit disappointing, as most members of the
U.S. congress are still tall, white males, who get reelected year-after-year,
regardless of whether they have (in fact) effectively and efficiently done anything
that followers value. Thus, today’s political leadership scholars must now explain
how and why political leaders manipulate followers via information technologies.
Another area of recent concern explores the
role that information technology plays in the promulgation of follower distress;
especially via warfare. Since the Agricultural Revolution, human communities
have been constantly engaged in various forms of warfare promulgated by those “tall,
healthy male leaders.” Although Post AR charismatic political leaders have
always employed warfare as a means of assuring perpetual distress among upon
followers, the hallmark of recent political leadership has been their ability
to manufacture imaginary forms of “distress” and disguise their effectiveness
and efficiency at relieving those forms of distress. In the United States we
now have an endless stream of declared and undeclared wars, including “war on
poverty,” the “war on drugs,” and the “war on terrorism.” The most important factor
in this most-recent militarization by large-scale political leadership has been
the emergence of fast-paced, effective/efficient information technologies; and
the resulting re-emergence of charisma as both a necessary and sufficient condition
for political leadership, and the skills necessary of organizational leaders to
manipulate charisma to their own political advantage. Thus large scale charismatic
political leaders today have become increasingly effective/efficient at
manipulating follower distress via information technology.
Conclusion
This essay has suggested that charismatic
leaders have always been both “born and made.” During the Pleistocene Era charismatic
leadership was irrevocably contextual; based on the observable possession of the
traits and skills that were necessary group survival. Tall, fit, males signaled
effective/efficient leadership in the essential contexts of hunting, military
activity, and migration. We are still naturally
attracted to those “tall, healthy, older, males” even though those natural
attributes no longer signal competent leadership. Since the dawning of the
Information Revolution, those “tall, healthy, older males” discovered that the
ability to effectively communicate with followers has become an increasingly important
skill that large scale leaders must acquire.
We all hope that that with
ever-increasingly effective/efficient modes of communication technology we
might someday acknowledge the fact that our natural leadership preferences and our
present-day leadership needs are mismatched. Perhaps we will, someday, be able
to transcend our natural preference for those “tall, healthy, articulate male
leaders” and elect political leaders that are more likely to be effective and
efficient, including more female leaders. But despite increasingly effective
and efficient modes of information technology, today’s political leaders, military
leaders, religious leaders, and business leaders are still overwhelmingly “tall,
fit, articulate males.”
Admittedly, charismatic, male-dominant, organizational
leadership contributed to the survival of the human species for 3.5 million
years. However, since the dawning of the Agricultural Revolution other contexts
and leadership opportunities have become essential to human survival, beginning
with the knowledge and skills associated with horticulture and animal
husbandry. Today, it is not clear to what degree cultural education can override
our natural instinct for following those “tall, fit, articulate male leaders”
at the exclusion of less-attractive, less-articulate males and females. As
females continue to prove themselves to be effective, efficient, articulate
leaders in military, religious, business, and political contexts, there is hope.
Finally, we must not underestimate the role
that rapidly evolving mass media now plays in democratic politics. Some of the
most important, unresolved, political issues of today arise from the fact that charisma
can be readily manipulated via information conveyance technologies, especially via
social media. Ineffective and inefficient political leaders can now hide their
lack of effectiveness and efficiency behind a wall of misinformation and
disinformation. Consequently, political leaders today expend an inordinate
amount of time, energy, and resources manipulating information in pursuit of would-be
voters, campaign contributors, and campaign workers. Political skills now
include the ability to look good, and sound good in a thirty-second media
presentation; or in a televised debate with 10-20 other candidates. Global media
outlets, dutifully encourage perpetual political campaigning, while even newly elected
officials continue to pad their “war chests” and run for re-election. So how
might we go about restoring the democratic ideals of organizational
effectiveness and efficiency? Unfortunately, we can’t simply return to our
hunter-gatherer roots. That genie is out of the bottle. As noted earlier, many
leadership scholars now observe, that there is a worldwide epidemic of
ineffective, inefficient leadership. The
apparent inability and/or unwillingness of our corporate media to expose
ineffective, inefficient political leadership has serious implications for the
future of global democracy. Until we as followers demand more out of our
political leaders and the mass media, we can expect little change.
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