Why do we instinctively look to a confident, dominant figure in a crisis, only to resent their micromanagement once the storm has passed? Why does office politics so often resemble the tribal dynamics of our hunter-gatherer past?
In evolutionary psychology and organisational science, questions like these are explored through Evolutionary Leadership Theory. Researchers such as Mark van Vugt argue that leadership and followership are not purely cultural inventions, but psychological tendencies shaped over a very long human past to solve problems of coordination, conflict and survival. On this view, when we lead or follow in a modern company, a political party or a family, we do so with something of a Stone Age mind. It is a framework rather than settled fact, but it offers a useful lens for why modern management so often runs into friction.
Followership came first
Leadership probably did not emerge because ambitious individuals wanted power. A more common argument is that followership gave early humans an advantage: groups that could coordinate hunting, settle disputes and defend territory tended to out-compete groups that could not. Leading and following are two halves of one shared strategy.
Two roads to influence: dominance and prestige
The anthropologists Joseph Henrich and Francisco Gil-White described two ways people gain status. Dominance is the older route, shared with other primates, and works through intimidation, control of resources and the threat of punishment. Followers defer to avoid loss. Dominant leaders can mobilise people quickly in an emergency, but over time they tend to produce chronic stress, silence and hidden resentment. Prestige is a more distinctively human route: it is freely given to people who have useful skill, knowledge or generosity. Followers defer because they respect the person, which tends to bring open communication, psychological safety and genuine commitment. In a team, the difference shows up in how people behave. Under dominance, people are guarded, information flows downwards and is filtered, and the long-term result is often turnover, quiet quitting and burnout. Under prestige, people speak up, learn from mistakes, and tend to stay.
The problem of mismatch
For most of human history we lived in small, mobile bands of perhaps 50 to 150 people. Leaders were visible and accountable every day, and selfish or tyrannical behaviour could be checked by ridicule, ostracism or plain confrontation. Decision-making was relatively flat. A modern organisation is a very different setting: thousands of people, layered hierarchies, remote communication and abstract numbers. Our old instincts can misread surface signals, such as height, a confident voice or even narcissism, as signs of real competence, so organisations can end up choosing leaders who look the part rather than leaders who are good at the work.
The strongman trap
When a team is anxious, whether through restructuring, economic uncertainty or a crisis, our ancestral threat circuits tend to fire, and people gravitate towards whoever projects absolute certainty. That may have helped a group fleeing a predator, but most modern problems need creative thinking and collaboration, which tight, top-down control tends to suffocate.
The myth of the flat hierarchy
Some organisations respond by trying to abolish hierarchy altogether. Yet people naturally form status rankings, and when the formal ones are removed without clear guidelines, informal and unexamined ones tend to fill the gap, often producing passive-aggressive power struggles and confusion about who decides what.
One step to try this week: the leadership audit
Whether you lead a team, a project or just a family weekend, spend three days noticing how you gain cooperation. Are you relying on dominance, such as pulling rank, withholding information or applying subtle pressure, or on prestige, such as offering value, showing competence and listening? Notice moments of silence, passive compliance or hesitation in the people around you, and ask whether your authority might be triggering an old threat response. Then try opening one meeting with a “campfire” round, in which everyone, whatever their rank, shares one observation or idea without immediate evaluation.