How people lead people
This article is about how people lead people, but starts out with a more fundamental question: Why do people lead people? Indeed why do leaders exist? To answer this we must go further back and ask why there are even any groups of people to be led. The simple answer is that is what works. Specialisation of roles emerged long before Henry Ford and Adam Smith - as soon as hunter-gatherers settled in villages and discovered agriculture, there were some people out in the fields digging, some people making tools or clothes, some raising children and others inventing the wheel. Specialised roles are more efficient because people have different talents and, with practice, can get good at one thing. They can use the tools appropriate to the job and stay in one place to carry it out. And when you have specialised roles, you need a team. Whoever is making the clothes still needs food to eat, and if they are not growing it themselves they must cooperate with someone who is. So groups of cooperati...