Could any sociologists/psychologists answer the following?:
When attempting to move into a leadership position within the a group (not forming another group and becoming it’s leader), will an organism (most likely human) do better by taking a follower’s position and thus imitating the leader and submitting to them, or will they do better by acting as a leader themself?
I believe it is possible to act as a follower and slowly move into the leadership position by the process of the group members accepting you, but I’m not sure. If anyone could think of examples or reasons to support either theory, I would be grateful.
That’s a bit to vague to answer. Different types of groups have different succession rules, and there are different types of leadership. I seem to recall Max Weber distinguished between bureaucratic leadership and charismatic leadership, for example. It would seem that your first strategy would be best to achieve the first, and the second to achieve the second. A shot in the dark on my part. Details?
According to Leadership theory - the latest stuff is all about being a follower and giving service. See Robert Greenleaf and Stephen Covey references, they are the ‘leaders’ in this area.
It really depends on what your goal is - if it is to take over the group and change it to what you want, you need to get the group following you first and the best way to do this is by being a follower too. You also need to help them develop themselves etc.
However, if your ultimate goal is at odds with the group members values, it will be difficult to get them to accept you.
I couldn’t provide any specific details as I wasn’t thinking of any particular situation. I was more or less just interested in that topic. I somewhat enjoy sociology, but won’t have much of a chance to study it because I’ve got a couple other subjects that I’m getting into.
I guess I was thinking more along the lines of a loose social group of friends that just “hangs out” together without any formal structure. It seems to me that in these types of groups at least one person comes to the head of it. That person usually seems like a natural born leader type.
Your thread title started me thinking about corporate/military leadership first, and then political leadership. There’s a dynamic hierarchy that operates there.
But your second post, though, has me thinking of voluntary social groupings where there is a leader, possibly but not always, a lieutenant, and pecking ordered followers, as well as those I’ve been party to where, for the sake of group cohesion or continuity, multiple leaders manage to exist.
Bare in mind that there may be some differences between ‘managing’ and ‘leading’. Where these differences are discussed, the concepts of transformational and transactional are seen as the major differences but how you go about achieving these and who the person is who does this, may be the somewhat similar.
It seems the number of leaders in a voluntary social grouping depends on the number of people who require coordination/cohesion/coninuity. I think it also depends on the “strength” of the leader, where strength does not necessarily mean ability to lead but the weight that (s)he holds as far as directing the group. I guess now, the more I think about it, it really varies with group size, the personality of the group as a whole, the personality of the group members, and the personality of the leader. So I guess in retrospect it was a rather vague and almost pointless question. Though I would be happy if it caused some more discussion on this topic.
Well, if it’s a small voluntary group that just hangs together, I can’t see the issue of leadership coming up. That’s not really a group, since it has no boundaries and will change all the time. There may be, at some point, a dominant force, but I don’t think the form allows for leadership, let alone succession.
Depends also on whether the “position” if a formal one or if instead you mean “positioning oneself so as to exhibit the quality of leadership”.
For the latter, a mixture of charisma, being a good listener, having a gift for summarizing positions in simple form and recognizing differences and ways of reconciling them, and otherwise conveying to the group a sense that most of your actions embody what they want will get you there nicely. For the former, it can be those things or it can be seniority, or a gift for formulating loose ties of minor indebtedness and building up subgroup loyalties, or a dagger placed between the ribs of the current reigning chieftain, depending on the political structure and atmosphere.
The process that leads to someone becoming the guy to whose house the rest of us go to party and around whom the party life revolves is not necessarily akin to the process that leads to someone becoming head of the accounting department or senior patrol leader of the Boy Scout troup.