Backed by a wealth of empirical evidence, Evolutionary Leadership is based on the premise that the human brain comes equipped with an inborn conception of good leadership. However, this conception is mismatched with the prevailing leadership structure at modern workplaces, directly contributing to poor levels of employee engagement and, conversely, high levels of leadership failure. The conundrum can be solved by meeting three innate follower needs succinctly captured by the timeless values of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!

1. Letting Nature
Run Its Course:
The Powerful
Paradigm of
Evolutionary
Leadership
©thconsulting.org

2. Evolutionary Leadership analyses leadership (and followership) from the
perspective of natural selection. Specifically, it looks into the added value
ancestral groups gained from evolving a leader-follower structure and
how concomitant adaptations within the human brain impact
modern workplaces.

3. In so doing, Evolutionary
Leadership presents a
scientific, evidence-
based explanation for –
and solution to – a range
of persistent problems
in the corporate world
that are implicated in
poor bottom-line
results, including
staggering
rates of employee
disengagement.
©tHConsulting 2018

4. In fact, Evolutionary Leadership offers a blueprint for successfully meeting the core
task all leaders face: building and maintaining an effective, high-performance team.
©tHConsulting 2018

5. Let’s start at the
beginning …

6. Evolutionary Leadership
incorporates state-of-the-art
insights from a range of fields
– including psychology,
anthropology, and the
cognitive sciences – which
have combined to deepen
our understanding of human
behavior.

7. Most importantly,
Evolutionary
Leadership is
based on firm
empirical evidence
that at birth the
human mind is
emphatically not a
‘blank slate’.

8. Rather, our brains come
equipped with myriad
highly specific
information-processing
devices that would have
enabled our ancestors to
effectively deal with
situations crucial to their
survival and reproductive
success. (As Adam Smith
famously observed:
specialization yields
efficiency gains.)
©tHConsulting 2018

9. Known as psychological
adaptations, these innate
information-processing
devices can be understood
as unconscious ‘if-then’
decision rules that govern
our beliefs and behavioural
motivations.

10. For example, if you spot a
large spider, the
ubiquitous, naturally
selected decision rule is:
make sure to be wary in
order to avoid a potentially
lethal bite.

11. In this way, our inborn
psychological adaptations
give rise to universal
behaviours which taken
together constitute
human nature: what we
are all like deep down
regardless of individual
and cross-cultural
differences.

12. Importantly, human nature comprises an array of social adaptations for effectively
regulating our behaviour as members of groups – including the twin phenomena of
leadership and followership.

13. Against this
background,
Evolutionary
Leadership offers
novel insights into
barriers to effective
leadership – insights
that elude and
cannot be explained
by conventional
paradigms such as
agile leadership or
transformational
leadership theory.

14. Take, for example, the question of who is
going to win the next U.S. presidential
election. Anybody’s guess? Not really.
Statistical analysis shows that the answer is
predicted with astonishing accuracy by the
candidates’ physical height. Over the past
100 years (1916 – 2018, actually), winners
have averaged 3.81 centimeters taller than
their opponents, with the tallest candidate
gaining the popular vote in 88 percent of
presidential elections, and the presidency
84 percent of the time.

15. Height, in fact, is
broadly associated
with leadership:
research shows that
high-authority people
are viewed as taller
than they are, and the
actual selection of
executives in both the
public and private
sector to a significant
degree is determined
by physical stature.

16. From an evolutionary
perspective, the link between
height and leadership is fully
straightforward:
a͢ Ancestral leaders
undoubtedly led by example
and from the front.
b͢ Key group tasks included
such physical activities as
hunting and warfare.
c͢ Consequently, there would
have been a preference to be
led by tall, powerful individuals
with an imposing stature.
©tHConsulting 2018

17. d͢ Owing to the critical importance of following the right leader,
Darwinian processes gradually ‘hard-wired’ our ancestors’
leadership preferences into the brain of Homo sapiens.
©tHConsulting 2018

18. And here’s the rub:
because evolution by
natural selection is an
exceedingly slow, trial-
and-error process, our
innate psychological
adaptations remain
tailored to life in ancestral
small-scale societies.

19. Our evolutionary legacy, therefore,
is in many ways mismatched to how
we live and work together today.
More to the point, there are serious
incongruities between the people
management practices of modern
organizations and the dramatically
different environments in which our
psychological adaptations evolved.

20. Backed by a wealth of
empirical evidence, the
framework of Evolutionary
Leadership thus allows us
to understand why the
majority of employees are
detached from their jobs …
Only 13% of employees
worldwide are engaged
Source: Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report 2017

21. … why there is an
ongoing “global
leadership crisis” …

22. … how and why that
leadership crisis is
inextricably linked to a
“communication gap” …

23. … and why, finally, there is
plenty of truth in the old
adage that people leave
bosses, not companies.
Indeed, “quitting is almost
always a statement against
the immediate superior.”¹
Adapted from: PayScale Whitepaper, "The Formula
for a Winning Company Culture.“ 2015-2016
n= 501,796
¹ Gallup Business Journal, 25 November 2009
-15
-10
-5
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Managers’ Impact on Employees’ Intent to Leave
“I have a good relationship with my manager”
Strongly agreeStrongly disagree
Intenttoleave(percentagechange)

24. Against this background, the
challenge for corporate leaders
is to either work with or work
around the constraints of our
evolved psychology. Working
against it, ignoring it, playing it
down, let alone denying it,
simply amounts to a recipe for
poor organizational outcomes
and personal leadership failure.
©tHConsulting 2018

25. Let’s dive a
little deeper …

26. A Darwinian perspective
on leadership and followership
commences by considering the
fitness enhancing properties of
these twin strategies back when
they evolved (in what is known as
the environment of evolutionary
adaptedness).
©tHConsulting 2018

27. In line with the rest of our
universal human nature,
leadership and followership
are the product of adaptation
to hunter-gatherer life on the
African Savannah, where the
vast majority of human
evolutionary history unfolded
over a period of some 2.5
million years.
©tHConsulting 2018

28. ©THConsulting 2018
In the extremely hostile
environment of the Savannah,
independent living amounts to a
virtual death sentence. This
created selection pressures for
our ancestors to effectively
coordinate activities such as
resource attainment, intergroup
warfare, and defence against
predators.
©tHConsulting 2018

29. ©tHConsulting 2018
In other words, individuals who managed to quell Darwinian self-
interest and successfully streamlined their actions had a selective
advantage over the members of less well-organized groups.

30. Natural selection thus
drove the evolution of
psychological
adaptations fostering
social cohesion and
group coordination, the
final best practice
outcome being the
closely concerted effort
of an effective leader-
follower structure.

31. However, leadership
clearly is not a panacea
for organizational
problems. In fact,
leadership can – and
frequently will –
undermine group
cooperation and
performance.
©tHConsulting 2018

32. The main culprit: autocratic,
command-and-control
leadership, which tends to
give rise to …
©tHConsulting 2018

33. ... so-called toxic leadership behaviours – which in turn undermine the
interpersonal relationships that are the basis of any well-functioning team.
©tHConsulting 2018

34. This is to say that employees tend to walk out on
overbearing leaders …
©tHConsulting 2018

35. … either by leaving the
organization or, if they lack exit
options, by quitting mentally,
that is resorting to a state of
inner resignation, renouncing
personal ownership and working
little more than the bare
minimum required to continue
receiving their paychecks.

36. It is important to
realize, in this context,
that in the small-scale
societies in which
humans evolved over
millions of years,
power does not reside
in a dominant ‘alpha
figure’. Instead, it is
distributed among all
group members, who
collectively give the
leader power by
voluntarily choosing
follow.

37. In fact, all known
tribal societies have
proved to be highly
egalitarian, i.e. they
are governed by
consensual, fluid,
and informal
leadership (rather
than by one
individual known as
‘the boss’).

38. For example, when researchers
confronted members of an arctic
tribe with the notion of leadership,
the response they got was this:
“Nobody ever tells an Eskimo what
to do. But some people are smarter
than others and can give good
advice. They are the leaders.”

39. While leadership and followership are universal aspects of human nature, then,
in the flat, egalitarian world of our ancestors leaders had no authority whatsoever
to issue commands or coerce others to fall in line.
©tHConsulting 2018

40. In fact, innate psychological adaptations bias us to resist domination by those
who lead.
©tHConsulting 2018

41. Seeking dominance, though, is as inescapably a part of human nature as
preventing others from achieving it; i.e. we have inherited from primate
ancestors an inborn drive to jostle our way up the pecking order.

42. Thus, we all strive to lord it
over our peers (arguably,
men more so than women)
but if we cannot, we prefer
to be equal.

43. Hence, as a product of
Darwinian selection, the
human mind has evolved
to seek and accept as
leaders only group
members who act as
primus inter pares …

44. … and who serve the
group through both
task-specific expertise
and the coordination
of collective efforts,
thereby speaking to
the core function of
human leadership:
building and
maintaining an
effective, high-
performing team.
©tHConsulting 2018

45. For their group-beneficial services, leaders have always been granted an elevated
social status. In essence, this means that leadership and followership evolved as a
special form of synergistic, or mutually advantageous, cooperation.
©tHConsulting 2018

46. However, the development of
synergistic leader-follower
relations critically depends on
the distribution of power
within the group. That’s
because the enhanced social
status leaders enjoy need not
necessarily result from the
provision of group-beneficial
services. An alternative route is
dominance – the ability to
inflict harm on fellow group
members – which in the
corporate world is known as
position power.

47. As the balance of power in ancestral societies is tilted firmly in the direction of
the rank and file, leaders have no choice but to base the relationship with their
followers on service rather than dominance.

48. In stark contrast, the highly asymmetric, ‘unevolutionary’ distribution of
power at modern workplaces facilitates a kind of people management that
centers on our innate drive to dominate rather than serve followers.

49. In fact, for most corporate leaders
there is no need to trade group-
beneficial services for an enhanced
social status (and the higher salaries
that go along with it), as they
already possess this status simply
by virtue of being the boss.

50. However, if leadership is
based on the formal
authority of hierarchical
position power rather than
a reciprocal exchange of
service for prestige,
followers will no longer
consider the relationship
with their leader mutually
advantageous. The
cooperative arrangement
underlying a synergistic
leader-follower
relationship is, therefore,
bound to break down.
©tHConsulting 2018

51. Of course, dominance
may produce compliance
– but at the cost of
alienation and
and, consequently, below
par performances. Our
inborn psychological
biases practically rule out
any other outcome.
©tHConsulting 2018

52. And let’s be clear: resentment and alienation aren’t
necessarily the product of overtly toxic behaviours.

53. In fact, managers can unwholesomely
undercut follower cooperation simply
by restraining the flow of information …
©tHConsulting 2018

54. … not to mention applying
unnecessary (and, hence,
unwelcome) leadership, also
known as micromanaging.
©tHConsulting 2018

55. The problem of
managerial
dominance is
compounded by
the way business
leaders are
recruited.
Whereas in tribal
societies aspiring
individuals
emerge bottom-
up through their
ability to benefit
the group …
… leaders today are
typically appointed
top-down by more
senior managers.
Indeed, pleasing
superiors is usually
more important to
career success than
benefitting
subordinates – which
is fundamentally at
odds with our
evolved psychology.
©tHConsulting 2018

56. Thus, the key evolutionary
benefit of leading and
following – a win-win
reciprocal exchange of
service for prestige – is
largely absent in the modern
corporate world with its top-
down appointment of
leaders, rigid reporting lines,
and institutionalized
hierarchies (never mind that
it has become fashionable in
recent years to sell these
hierarchies as ‘flat’).

57. In fact, the dominance-
based ‘strong leader’
model that is still
overwhelmingly the norm
in the corporate world is
in almost every respect the
antithesis of our universal,
hard-wired expectations
of good leadership – and,
therefore, bound to cause
performance-inhibiting
resistance.
©tHConsulting 2018

58. In ancestral times,
the spectrum of
resisting behaviours
disgruntled followers
had at their disposal
no doubt included
ignoring or simply
deserting an
overbearing leader.
Nothing much has
changed, except that
we prefer to call it
disengagement and
employee attrition.
©tHConsulting 2018

59. The way out? Not all
that difficult – once
you have seen the
light.

60. Adopting a leadership style that espouses the insights of Evolutionary
starts with a change of perspective. Any people leader aspiring to build a team
high-performing followers needs to acknowledge the severe limitations – as well
as the massive opportunities – our psychological adaptations present.
©tHConsulting 2018

61. Specifically, leaders who understand that
leadership can only be fully effective if
followership is a rational strategy stand to
reap the profits inherent in the synergistic
leader-follower relationship that has
evolved as naturally selected best practice.
©tHConsulting 2018

62. ‘Evolutionary
Leaders’ thus strive
to maximize the
interests of the led
by consciously
focusing on
providing a
genuine service
and helping team
members achieve
more than they
could on their
own.

63. ‘Evolutionary
Leaders’ also
place a premium
on suppressing
our impulsive
propensity to
dominate.
©tHConsulting 2018

64. Instead, ‘Evolutionary
Leaders’ share voice and
power, acting as catalysts
to drive collaboration.
©tHConsulting 2018

65. ‘Evolutionary Leaders’ thus build teams of dedicated but critical
followers who think and act independently.
©tHConsulting 2018

66. Above all, ‘Evolutionary
Leaders’ form an
awareness that whenever
an organization favours its
leaders at the cost of
followers, something has
to give eventually.

67. Indeed, in the
political arena,
self-centered,
autocratic rule
almost always
gives rise to
upheaval and
violent unrest.
An intriguing
lesson of
history, in this
regard, is
offered by the
French
Revolution …
©tHConsulting 2018

68. … with its three ideals of
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! …

69. … which, intriguingly, match the
ideals of a typical, close-knit
hunter-gatherer community.
©tHConsulting 2018

70. In fact, the rallying cry Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity! is rooted in
ancient human needs that have all
played an important part in the
evolution of leadership:
Autonomy
Democracy
Community
Autonomy

71. These needs directly translate into
three specific leadership tasks:
Direction
Coordination
Protection
©tHConsulting 2018
Direction

72. Direction aims at preserving
followers’ autonomy. It centers
on what is known as enabling
leadership communication …
Direction

73. … which critically
depends on facilitating
the free, unimpeded flow
of information.
©tHConsulting 2018

74. ‘Evolutionary Leaders’ step
beyond mere transparency,
though, by actively
providing employees with
big picture contexts
required to prioritize their
work. They share high-level
goals and metrics, explain
how they are related to
individual contributions,
and help staff apply this
information to improve
independent decision-
making.
©tHConsulting 2018

75. Coordination aims at supporting
cohesion and in-group
commitment. It centers on
fostering competitive
cooperation …

76. … which is a key hallmark of high-performance teams (whose members as a rule
act independently and never cooperate just for the sake of ‘doing teamwork’).
©tHConsulting 2018

77. A competitive mindset drives performance, yet bottom-line outcomes tend to
suffer if employees approach internal competition as a zero-sum game.
‘Evolutionary Leaders’ therefore link individual rewards with cooperative sharing,
while proactively identifying opportunities for synergistic collaboration based on
the potential for tangible business impact.
©tHConsulting 2018

78. Protection speaks to the
universal human desire to
belong to a powerful in-group
that facilitates personal success
(evolutionarily speaking: survival
and reproduction). It centers on
proactively building trustful
connections …

79. … which are indispensable to
any well-working human
relationship.

80. ‘Evolutionary Leaders’ understand that trust – including, importantly, faith in the
leader’s guiding vision – is inseparably interwoven with employee ownership and
performance. And they realize that while trust would have been a ubiquitous
feature of the small, kin-based communities of our pre-historic ancestors, it will
never come naturally at modern workplaces …

81. … nor can it be bought.

82. Meeting these three core tasks is a prerequisite for being a genuine ‘Evolutionary
Leader’ as well as a blueprint for building a high-performance team.

83. Conversely, leaders who fail to direct, to coordinate, and to protect in an
evolutionarily sound way tend to fight a losing battle to secure adequate
rates of team cooperation and, hence, to improve organizational KPIs.
©tHConsulting 2018

84. Learn more about how
Evolutionary Leadership
organizational performance can
boost at thconsulting.org.

85. ©2018 tHConsulting.
All Rights Reserved.