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In a time like the present of rapid change in cultures and economies, a time of extreme threats and promising opportunities, leadership will determine the future of countries, organizations, the environment, and our lives. To increase our ability to find and follow good leadership, it is essential to understand the leader-follower relationship and the personality of would-be leaders.
Eleven students of leadership present their views in these articles. They view leadership through different lenses. What they have in common is the view that, as Michael Maccoby puts it, leadership is a relationship in a context. Although the personality of leaders determines their behavior, they only become leaders if they have followers. And people follow someone for different reasons. These reasons depend on the needs and values of followers as well as the qualities of leaders. Cultural values and historical challenges also shape leader-follower relationships.
The complexity of leadership relationships and personalities requires analysis by different academic disciplines, and we have included essays that view leadership from psychoanalytic, social psychological, sociological, evolutionary, developmental, anthropological, and historical points of view. Some of the essays include personal observations and experience of leadership.
The material in these essays can be grouped in two main themes. One is the leader-follower relationship and how it is formed in different contexts. The other focuses on the personalities of leaders and how their motivation and philosophies are expressed in their leadership behavior.
Leadership is a relationship in a context.
Mauricio Cortina describes egalitarian and antiauthoritarian leader-follower relations in pre-history reporting that leadership among illiterate prehistorical nomadic hunter-gatherers was unobtrusive and antiauthoritarian as it is with contemporary nomadic foragers around the world. Social hierarchies and author