Leadership in the Animal Kingdom

Human beings can spend a lot of time asking questions like "What is good leadership?" All other animals, on the other hand, have to just "do" leadership, without the pained, searching discussions. And the quality of that leadership greatly impacts their quality of life, and even survival.

I've been reading a lot about leadership in the wild, particularly amongst chimpanzees and gorillas. I'm finding valuable lessons from how leadership works in these primate groups, and getting much more comfortable with some of the realities of human leadership that I see around me.

There is an amazing documentary called "A Family of Chimps" which follows a group of chimpanzees living in the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands. What makes this group unique is that they are allowed to interact together as a large group during the day, and thus they form social structures similar to what they'd create in the wild. It is a premier place to observe chimpanzee group behavior.

In the course of the documentary, many key leadership responsibilities are shown.

• enforcing the rules of the group. Groups members are always observing one another, and noting who is doing what to whom. Thus when one group member harasses another "without cause," he is punished by the leader.
• distributing resources. When the zoo keepers provide a windfall of lettuce, the leader watches who is getting what, and makes sure the lettuce is shared according to the power structure of the group.
• being the boss. When his leadership is challenged, the leader stands up to show "I'm still the leader here," which gives the group confidence that someone is in charge. Animal groups know instinctively that when nobody is in charge, they are in great danger, and thus they instinctively rush to fill that vacuum.

It has been documented that in primate groups, the level of stress for all in the group is highest during a leadership transition, especially at that point where it isn't clear who is in charge. Thus the group seems to benefit greatly from an "executive function" to see to it that rules are carried out, and in general that order is kept.

Yes, leadership matters.