An Introduction to Leadership

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo (1971) and his colleagues wanted to discover if brutality reported among the guards in American prisons was due to the sadistic traits of some guards or the prison environment. Their research was called the Stanford Prison Experiment. A random group of young men, considerable physically and mentally stable and not involved in antisocial behaviours, were chosen to participate. The participants did not know each other before this experiment and were paid $15 per day to participate. These men were randomly grouped into prisoners and guards in a staged prison. The guards were allowed to do whatever they thought necessary to do their job, except for physical violence. Yet, in a few short days, the mistreatment of prisoners by these guards escalated so alarmingly that Zimbardo, who acted as the prison warden, had to interfere.

who acted as the prison warden, had to interfere. Zimbardo (2008) eventually concluded that reasonable people could turn evil when placed the d in the wrong circumstances. But what is also interesting in this experiment was the importance of leadership. The experiment could be chaotic without their prison warden leading the experiment – Zimbardo himself. The brutality could get even worse. Indeed, if the prison warden did not give explicit instruction before the participation and put the experiment without Zimbardo’s involvement shows the necessity for leadership. Without leaders, tough decisions are not made, and there would be no control, direction, or order. Like children in a school classroom without a teacher, organizations without a leader would turn into chaos.

The prison experiment is not the only observation case demonstrating the importance of leadership. The Kitty Genovese Case is another case that demonstrates what happens in the absence of leadership. 28-year-old Kitty was stabbed outside the apartment block from where she lived. As part of the investigation, the police officers interviewed 38 witnesses. All of them had seen or heard Genovese cry for help as she was chased, stabbed, sexually assaulted, and killed by the murderer.

Given the number of witnesses and the fact that the solo murderer only had a hunting knife, someone could have easily saved her, yet nobody took that bold step to stop him. One apparent problem was presented: one witness justified her passiveness by convincing herself that some other witnesses must have called the police by then. This witness, like all other witnesses, was expecting someone else to act.

Social psychologists (e.g., Latane & Darley, 1968; Latane & Rodin, 1969) were among the first to identify what is coined as the bystander effect. In one study, the findings revealed that 70 per cent of the interviewees would help someone in distress if they were the only witness; however, only about 40 per cent would act when other people were present (Latane & Darley, 1968). In another study, the researchers ushered the participants into a room to supposedly fill in a questionnaire, and instead, smoke was purposely pumped into the room (Latane & Rodin, 1969). When the participants were alone, 75 per cent reported the smoke – a contrast to only 10 per cent of participants who reported the smoke when other witnesses were also present and ignored it collectively (ibid.).

These findings explained how nobody rescued Kitty Genovese; the more people are present, the fewer individuals act. This bystander effect can be attributed to two psychological principles. The first one is called diffusion of responsibility which makes the participants ask: “With this many people around, why should I be the only one to help?” Action and inaction become a shared responsibility. The group makes the decision, not the individual, and a group-based decision-making process is more time-consuming than a decision made by oneself. The second principle is called social influence and states that whenever something unexpected happens, bystanders generally monitor other people's reactions and let them influence their actions. This is alarming and counter-effective to collectivism, a phenomenon where more people working together should achieve better results due to teamwork compared to people working on their own. So, how can this phenomenon be feasible if a bigger crowd would also turn into passive members? As Surowiecki (2004, p. XIII) stressed, the potential of collectivism does exist, but only under the right circumstances: guidelines and the presence of leaders.

Some historians (e.g., Schlesinger, 1999) have speculated how history may have taken another course if specific instances in the lives of leaders had a different outcome. For example, on a visit to New York in 1931, Winston Churchill was hit by an automobile while crossing Fifth Avenue. If his injuries had been fatal, could the Nazis have won World War II? Or if Adolf Hitler had been killed on the Western Front in 1916, would World War II have occurred?

It clearly shows that behind every major event lies a great leader. As Surowiecki (2004) states: “Groups generally need rules to maintain order and coherence, and if they’re missing or malfunctioning, the result is trouble” (p. XIX). Leaders can set such rules. Therefore, as much as leaders need a crowd, crowds also need leaders. People need someone brave enough to break their bystander effect and bold enough to lead others to follow it through.

Leaders are an antidote for the bystander effect and provide the “right circumstances” that Surowiecki (2004, p. XIII) addressed. Leaders transform the diffusion of responsibility principle from “Let’s hope someone else will take action” into “I will be the one to take action”’ and leverage the social influence principle by leading the others with their example. Author John Gardner (1986) remarked that although founders and managers can be in leadership positions, they do not always act like ones. Indeed, entrepreneurial leadership is based upon the premise that the role of a leader is a choice and not a position. One may choose to be an influential and impactful leader by overcoming the bystander effect or not.

Advocates of the leadership-follower theory (e.g., Rost, 1991) argue that leaders find the parade of followers and get in front of it. Such leaders give voice and words to transmit what is needed and mobilize others to follow. Although there is some validity in scholar Meindl’s (1995) proposition that people wrongly attribute the success or failure of their groups to leaders, they do make a difference. As author Robert Tucker (1981, p. 87) put it, “in the beginning is the leadership act. A leaderless movement is naturally out of the question.”

Leadership is often regarded as the single most critical factor in the success or failure of institutions (e.g., Sylvia & Hutchison, 1985). But leaders who change the world go beyond breaking the bystander effect. All world’s masters, including founders of religions or empires, and chiefs of small groups of people, have always been some sort of psychologists with intuitive and thorough knowledge of their crowds, enabling them to establish themselves in leading positions quickly.

When it comes to leadership, people running an organization, or a group of people, often ask important questions. For example, one asks, “Are people born with a fixed leadership style?” “or “Can people acquire certain skills and behaviours to exercise more than one leadership style?” Others may wonder if leaders are born or made. These questions gave rise to some different theoretical approaches to understanding leadership. Equally important to understand leadership is to see the bigger picture and where it fits in this bigger picture. The Bigger Picture of Leadership article provides a valuable framework to gain a comprehensive view of leadership and its links.