Nurture your mind with great thoughts…" - Benjamin Disraeli
Followers and the situation operate on a continuum. Followers grow (at various rates) and what they are looking for in their relationship with the leader changes with time. A good way of looking at this is using Maslow's pyramid.
From http://steves.blogharbor.com
Basically, Maslow's hierarchy of needs states that if your physiological needs aren't met, you are not going to care as much about your safety needs. Basically, if you are gasping for air, you won't care too much about someone stealing something in your house. To link this with Churchill and Qin Shi Huang, the first needs people had were low within the pyramid. The British citizens were looking for safety during World War II, but after 1945, people wanted to give more meaning to their lives. The idea there is that the people that fulfill needs of a certain level are not necessarily able to help people looking for different things.
One of the things that changes is the level of involvement of a leader with their followers. People looking to fulfill needs at the bottom levels are usually highly predictable and are easy to influence. They don't usually take complex decisions and their leaders are very "hands-on". As you get up the pyramid, the needs get more personal. To Influence someone looking to self-actualize (self-esteem 2) you will need to know what their values and their goals are. It's much more complicated for a leader to influence one person who has fulfilled all the needs from the four lower levels than to influence many people looking for food. This is better shown using the Situational Leadership theory.
From http://www.jerry-cao.com/blog/
The Situational Model states that one leader must adapt their style of leadership to that of their followers. In a company setting, this means that depending on the level of knowledge (or experience) and the level of commitment of the employee the leader will either be dictating his instructions, delegate the tasks to the followers, providing a more supportive role, or a combination of both. Adapting this to a society, you get a leader who is directing in war time, where quick actions are needed to curtail an eager enemy. The same is true in times of crisis such as famines or drought. This is linked to the two lower levels of Maslow's pyramid. When the basic needs of the population are met, the leader should then start to let his constituents govern themselves, taking a less active role.
In the case of societal leaders, the problem is that, unlike within companies, the state at which they should be directing the people is nearly always undesirable. They are directing to initiate change and basically destroy the situation that prompted them to use this style of leadership in the first place. From this, to initiate lasting change, a person must believe in the change, nearly believing that the world will end if this change does not come. The leader gets emotionally involved with the change and publicly becomes the avatar of that change. When the change occurs though, it is now the time of the leader to change. Because of the constant motion of the situation the leader is in, the change he worked so hard to bring forth will become obsolete and another type of change will need to occur. The leader might think this is not the case and keep on going with his ideologies. This was true for Winston Churchill when he tried to keep the colonial British Empire alive. This was also true for the Parti Québécois within the last few years1. From a societal point of view, it is simpler to choose another leader, one better suited for the task.
I will post about the leader's evolution in the last part… soon I guess…
1 Yes, they haven't achieved sovereignty, but thanks in part to their actions, the standard of living of French Quebecers and place of the French language within the Canadian landscape have increased considerably.
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