Leadership and the Cue See Model

Abstract

Leadership is about creating value with, through, and for people. It has been studied systematically for more than 100 years. Leadership even emerges in other species (Van Vugt, 2011, p. 141)! Human leadership evolved in the Pleistocene where our ancestors cooperated to hunt large game and share meat that enabled superior levels of survival and reproduction (Boehm, 2007; Van Vugt, 2011, p. 142). At the origin of our species, there were asymmetrical power dynamics among an authoritarian leader and followers. Forms of abusive and economically parasitic leadership were held in check then as they are today with our closest primate ancestors (Boehm, 2007). Since the beginning of our species, leaders and leadership had both economic and social exchanges, for mutual benefit. In this chapter, I review current leadership theory in the context of parasitism and the Cue See model.

We propose that greater clarity in understanding leadership can be developed from addressing one fundamental issue: How do subunit inputs and processes combine to produce unit-level outcomes and how does leadership affect this process?

—Robert Lord & Jessica Dinh, 2011

There can be no useful theory of leadership … without an accompanying theory that specifies what is required for systems to achieve their main purposes.

—J. Richard Hackman, 2010