Leadership: Leaders, Followers, Environments

Evolutionary antecedents

Frederick Taylor has been called the father of modern management.¹⁶ He performed experiments that he called time studies, also known as time and motion studies. A stopwatch was used to time a worker’s sequence of motions, with the goal of determining methodically the best way to perform a job. But Taylor obsessed over efficiency and generally ignored human nature: One worker is not necessarily interchangeable with another in every job.¹⁷ Today, theories of organizational leadership depend on assumptions about the nature of people, and there is recognition that individual differences affect behaviors and motivations.¹⁸ Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was among the first to try to understand human motivation. He believed that to fathom human behavior one had to appreciate the evolutionary origins of humans at the genetic level. Some human tendencies, according to Freud, are unconscious and beyond our ken or awareness without the help of a therapist; humans often will not know why they do what they do. Freud credited naturalist Charles Darwin for his decision to enter medical school. Freud’s theory of psychosexual development had clear biological and Darwinian evolutionary influences.¹⁹ Freud’s theories were incomplete in implying that at the root of all human motivation were just two basic instincts: eros (including sex, self-preservation, love) and the destructive instinct (aggression, the death instinct, hate).²⁰ Robert Wright, whose work on ...