End of Leadership: Post #6--Social Contract

Social Contract: Evolutionary leadership holds that tribes (teams) of people do better with a leader than without one. The leader’s job is to hold the balance and control the action. Traditionally, the followers’ role was to follow the leader as long as s/he did the job effectively and ethically. However, Americans (and now many others like Egyptians, Libyans, and others) want a more active say in decision making. They also have access to media 24/7 that exposes their leaders to a new level of scrutiny. Peeling back the façade of leadership has exposed leaders’ “humanity” and inevitable flaws—and such has made for disenfranchisement. The author offers the example of the devolution of the Catholic Church due to the pedophilia rampant among priests. No single circumstance has undermined the Catholic Church’s authority and subjected the Church to the wrath of followers more than this issue. And American politics fares not much better. Less than 50% of eligible voters in fact vote and only a humble 11% are satisfied the “way things are going in the United States at this time.”  This 11% figure has been tracked by Gallup since 1979 and was still accurate in 2011 at the date of the book’s publication.