When I reflect on leadership, what first comes to mind is the clang and bang of a stick in hand smashing against a metal garbage-can lid. It’s the story of a chimpanzee in the wild who gets his hands on that cymbal-like object — something not of his world, but belonging to the humans observing him — to create a sound-spectacle that led to his artificial rise in the group’s dominance hierarchy. In a sense, he was a fake “alpha animal.” He made a ruckus and harassed other chimps, but didn’t do anything in the service of the group.
Such artificiality is in contrast to normal chimpanzee life, in which an Alpha’s primary function is to provide a direction for achieving group security and for establishing a relatively peaceful coexistence between members. For the most part, chimpanzee life is occupied with foraging, grooming each other, taking care of the young and relaxing. Yes, an approach by the Alpha can spatially displace another, usually without a serious confrontation. However, the assumption of chimpanzee life — unlike, say, in hamadryas baboon societies — is not that every approach by another is a potential do-or-die threat. Of course, chimps have minor skirmishes and, as we now know, in rare instances also exhibit cannibalistic behavior when winning a fight with a chimpanzee from a rival group who threatens territory. Normally, however, everyday life is not one of defensive hyper-vigilance. There is not a great deal of spectacle surrounding the dominant one. More typical is to see group members checking in with an Alpha simply by orienting to him. His power is more assumed than constantly tested, and that power is expected mostly to benefit the group. If he fails at establishing this regard, it’s typical that beta-males and high-status adult females will eventually act to usurp or rehabilitate him. Continue reading.