Understanding leadership – Part 9: Leadership as social construction
When I think my boss is "great", they are not great as such—I interpret them as "great". I follow interpretation patterns imprinted since birth through my social environment. In our company we share many such patterns, living in the same culture and social system with its "belief systems". We construct our boss as "great". This has consequences: we feel like employees of a "great" boss and cultivate the feeling by finding and sharing new attributes—"…cares for us…", "…speaks boldly…", "…develops brilliant solutions…", "…knows the way…" etc. We do not want to lose working for such a boss. We filter out situations when we find them less great, gladly submit to their authority, and ask the boss first before deciding—then share this and their advice with colleagues, tirelessly building the boss's greatness.
With our behaviour we grant power and legitimise it by (unconditionally) following. Legitimised power is "domination". If we experience our boss as "charismatic", they exercise "charismatic domination" per Max Weber (Weber 2014, Ch. III, § 10).
Our boss, who always saw themselves as "(better-)knowing" and a "doer", learns from our behaviour that they really are a great leader who always acts rightly, and develops competences to satisfy employees' salvation expectations.
Thus we have constructed a great boss, perhaps a "charismatic leader". Both sides work hard to maintain and socially confirm the relationship—both benefit.
How interpretation and construction of social reality works can be read in social-pedagogical family therapy (e.g. social-pedagogical family help project, Germany):
"What we find in consciousness—this unified, orderly world—is the end result of long perceptual work by the brain. We are not conscious of that work itself. What becomes conscious is the brain's interpretation of reality—the world as the brain finds plausible. The brain does not mirror the world; it constructs it, using rules of thumb useful in evolution: it presents the world as simply, clearly and consistently as possible. We cannot decide what the world 'out there' really looks like; we only know the world our brain constructs. All we know is that this construction suffices to navigate the 'real world'—otherwise we would have died out." (Saum-Aldehoff 1998: The myth of parental power. Psychologie Heute, issue 8).
We all construct our world to change it as little as possible, keeping everything unified and orderly.
Leaders construct their employees and vice versa! See social construction of leadership with a distrustful boss in the model Human Behaviour in Social Systems (Part 8):
Consider how "circles of angels" can be produced this way too!
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