The Leadership Quarterly, Volume 30, Issue 1, published Nicolas Bastardoz and Mark Van Vugt’s paper “The Nature of Followership: Evolutionary Analysis and Review” in February 2019.
Leadership, leadership, leadership… Today, the word leadership floats around the business, political, defense, and educational communities, just to name a few, at a rate similar to the “infectious crud” that inhabits schools the first three weeks after summer and winter breaks. The topic of leadership is debated, discussed, invested in and purported to be the answer too many group ills. But for every leader there must be at least one follower right? So why is it then that followership is of little discussion or research?
Nicolas Bastardoz and Mark Van Vugt attempt in their article, “The Nature of Followership: Evolutionary Analysis and Review” attempt to break that cycle. They argue that human tendency is to follow rather than lead. They argue, “Leader-follower ratios have changed from say a 1:5 ratio (hunting parties) in ancestral groups to 1:1000 or even 1:1,000,000 in large, modern organizations.” I do not believe that this argument takes into account all the mid-level leadership that exist in many formations however, the point is clear. The leader to led ratio has changed. In the 1990’s, the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed a correlation between brain size and the average social group size, ~150 people. While not an exact equation, I find it interesting to the proposition of a social group limitation this also sketching out a possible leader to led balance.
While this article is written in more of an academic style, I would encourage those of you interested in bettering leadership, to take some time and explore the proposed side of followership.
