No Stupid Questions

Everyone can identify bad leadership

Even this I think is a little questionable. People frequently mistake their failures as failure of leadership.

Got my first taste as a kid leading the pack, alpha nerd.

Summer mornings I'd pick up the phone and school phone book and start dialing, or I'd get called first. It was on me to decide what we would do that day and get it together. Herding nerds is a hella chore. If we had fun, great! If the day didn't work out? All on me. And guess who was the default dungeon master?

It quickly got to the point where I was responsible for our fun. Now translate that into leading a company's success.

Lemmy: "CEOs are useless and should die in a fire!"

For sure, and I failed to really get at this more in the OP, but it's because of those difficulties that in part made me wonder, "Well, what's an alternative look like?"

Individual leadership in particular seems primed for either abuse from above or below (i.e. a scapegoat for people's avoidance of responsibility).

Yep, well said. For OP's question... It's pretty common to see a leader bring his whole group with him/her wherever they go and people follow because having a good leader is pretty tough to come by. I know a lot more people loyal to a particular person than a particular company.

Equally important is that, depending on context, leading or forging your own path is hard.

Just to add to this: there is, although seeing it thuroughly implemented is comparatively uncommon, there are the practices of 'democratic education' and 'self directed education'. The sudbury valley school in massechusets is one, relatively well known, example of thiese.

In those context, the trends are, in many ways, turned on their head. They, sudbury valles school as an example, havee a website, and a a youtube channel(, accesible vía That froendly alternative frontend that I can't rember just now) , with intervies with some alumni of the school, and some published books listed with accounts from other svs graduates.

Just wanted to add, that the phenomenon described with in the comment replied to, although all too common, are not universal., nor always are they the only option.

edit: this page gives n OK overview of the self directed edu things : https://www.self-directed.org/sde . Pretty sure it can be seen as related to the question and the above reply.

edit:spelling and grammar.

I may be an animal, but I am NOT social.

How might you put the question otherwise?

A lot of people don’t really understand how things work. Rather than try to understand, they latch on to someone who does understand.

Wouldn't it be more apt to say that a lot of people latch on to someone who appears or acts as if they understand how things work, given the thinking that a lot of people simply don't understand to begin with?

This is the best answer so far in my opinion

A great example is when you're in elementary school and you get that one really athletic kid on your team for some team sport in gym class. You know you're not on that level and never will be, so you tie yourself to them, knowing that them succeeding is good for you.

Likewise, we like to attach our fortunes to a designated person, and they become greater than just a person in our mind. Like, that athletic kid is not longer simply a kid who's good at sports; they're the athletic kid. Our favored 19th-century political thought leader is no longer just some person who had opinions on society and wrote them down; they're a political messiah.

Asking why like this has the implicit flawed premise that human behaviors like this are products of conscious thought.

This is not generally a flaw. We can ask "why?" questions about lots of natural processes that don't involve conscious thought. For example, a lot of plant growth follows mathematical patterns; the "why?" is that this optimizes the use of space or of sunlight, so it's favored by evolution.

I’d answer this by saying it is human nature.

I would actually disagree with that statement to some degree. I think it is largely learned behavior to follow in the context of modern society. We spend 15+ years of our life having to follow authority in some way via the school system and that conditions us to follow more than lead on a society wide scale.

There is certainly an element of nature too via mirroring. Mirroring is when people subconsciously imitates the gestures and body language of another person to help build trust. However, I believe that our cultures way of nurturing obedience via its institutions is a bigger factor in how we treat leaders.

I’d answer this by saying it is human nature.

I follow where you're coming from, however I'm quoting this little part as I always find arguments to "nature" suspect, especially regarding conscious entities which complicate this observation/thinking. You can probably guess where I'm going with this, that being, "Well, what is human nature?" which as you say isn't a criticism/dig at you, it's more of a personal quibble with the "nature" line of thinking.

Nevertheless, I lean towards agreeing with you in the sense that it may be more related to an unreflective/unconscious social predisposition of humans specifically (possibly other social species as well in their own forms).

For sure. Humans are super social and our big brains enable so much verbal, nonverbal, and written communication that we became more efficient as a group. All the greatest things out there, bridges and sky scrapers and roads were built by teams, not an individual, because of our strong communication skills.

There‘s nothing more annoying than a group of „individuals“ on a night tour. Each move, either in this or that club, to the right or to the left, stay or lesve this place, as to be discussed in deep detail and from every micro perspective. Until a shared view emerges.

It’s simply a better way to be a group of people to have a leader who hs a say. Good leaders care about the group members and might even have more experience than the groups individuals. I‘m quite happy to have a guide in a museum who can tell stories about the images. I‘m happy to have a leader to follow in the mountains. And I‘m happy to have someone leading a group through new fields of anything, so I learn from an experienced and might do my own steps in this s field alone.