No Stupid Questions

Leadership is hard. Really hard. It is very easy to be a bad leader, hence the common perception of bad managers. Everyone can identify bad leadership, but ask someone what makes a good leader. It is hard to define and hard to do.

Leadership also requires taking responsibility for others. Many people do everything they can to avoid responsibility.

Put these two factors together and it becomes pretty obvious why most people shy away from leadership. It is hard and when something goes wrong it is your fault.

Because it’s easy. You don’t have to think for yourself if you let someone else do it.

Are you just confused on why leaders exist or something

Nearly every organization a person is in from ages 5-25 is hierarchical. There is always a authority figure you have to at least pretend to listen too. And if you tick off that authority figure by doing something they don't like, they punish you in some form.

So people learn to ignore authority figures as much as they can and rarely challenge them directly as there are usually consequences for challenging someone in certain contexts. This leads to everyone pretending to agree and pretending to care about what leaders care about to avoid conflict. It is simply easier to cater to those who can and will make your life miserable than to challenge them successfully without creating grudges that might come back to bite you.

It is also worth noting that we are never taught to lead others, We are just expected to figure it out by trial and error or not figure it out at all.

TLDR; It's learned behavior from the institutions we are exposed to. It's easier and more encouraged to follow than to challenge authority figures.

We are social animals.

This is such a deliberately charged question with so much inherent bias. Please don't let this place become r/nostupidquestions

A lot of people don't really understand how things work. Rather than try to understand, they latch on to someone who does understand. In return for their loyalty, they get a path up where they won't threaten the boss in charge.

Asking why like this has the implicit flawed premise that human behaviors like this are products of conscious thought. They are not. (I don't mean this as a criticism of you particularly, it is inherent in our culture to look at everything humans do as if it were rational and conscious, despite the reality that so much is it is not.)

I'd answer this by saying it is human nature. Most people don't think about it and are not aware they are doing it. Many might even deny it. This is not to say individuals can't stop and reflect and be conscious and rational about. Some do but most don't.

Because it's easier than going on your own

You don't have to "elevate" a person in order for them to be a leader. You just have to recognize that they have a certain organizational skill set that not everyone has. That skill set helps things get done. It's just a job and they're just people.

It's called sheep behavior for a reason. Most people are hard wired to be followers. It's why your best leader will always apply servent leadership. A servant leader shares power, puts the needs of the followers first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible. Instead of the people working to serve the leader, the leader exists to serve the people.

I agree with another commenter that this not something that people consciously think about when they do it. I think the main thing you’re touching on is groupthink. This is the reason that groups of people behave differently than you’d expect individual people to.

Positions of leadership (and therefore power) as an institution are traits passed down to us from Feudalists who organized society in hierarchies. I would say groupthink allows these kinds of social structure to continue long past the point that people realize there a better ways because they assume other members of the group are okay with them.

That’s all not to mention the fact that some people are genuinely skilled leaders or that people in positions of leadership are going to have a bigger influence in what is accepted in the group.

I’ve always wondered this and wish I had an answer. But then again the answer is just that most people are followers. There’s way more copy cats and followers because it’s the easy thing to do. Having original thoughts, ideas, and following through takes actual work.

This thread has a lot of frankly bad takes in it. Lots of people going "the majority of people are just hard wired to love authority" and that's just wrong. Psychological research into authoritarian personalities (the kind of people who are like that) tells us authoritarian follower personalities not rare but by no means are they the majority.

I think you know where all this stuff comes from because the fact that you're asking the question at all makes me think you're on the other side of the authoritarian follower spectrum (anti-authoritarian). What would happen to the person who rejected authority figures? They would be hurt. That does not come about by accident and it's not some innate feature of human psychology. It is intentional. Authority (control) is maintained with violence. Either soft violence (neglect) or actually capital-V Violence.

perhaps, somewhat related, a place to point out the example of tge republic of San Marino. They have, and have had, since an horn't times: a system of co leadership at the highest national level of government.:+. Two people, elected, jointly holding the position, no singular figure, (and even those two, are changed, at most, every six months on a regular basis, and I belive they can't serve more than one term consecutively, if at all).

Theyve had, San Marino, a long and sucequite sucessfully history. Perhaps the only country then known to survive the the conquest of many surrounding regions on the peninsula. No civil wars, and no transitions of power of changes of government in wchich anybody seems to have been so much as killed or seriously injured. And the system hof co government, and rotation aahs lasted a long time, the longest lasting continuous republic to exist today, I think it's supposed to be. San Marino.

Thinking for yourself is difficult. Turning off your brain and doing what you're told is much easier than forging your own path.