Desire for cohesion is the enemy of real leadership

The two poles of a group/societal building are finding similarities and differences. My experience tells me that the former is the easy path and the former is the difficult one. I recall my experience in both academic and professional setting when it comes to building a group or simply put choosing team members for a particular project. Often, similarities provide comfort to the team as similar character and way of thinking allows smaller amount of friction in the team. On the contrary, differences often lead acrimonious disagreements. Cohesion seems to gravitate closer to group whose team members have “similarities” rather than differences.


 Leadership is not about working a group of people who are similar in characters and thoughts. It is about working with differences and different people. I think it roots in the fundamental/biological nature of humanity. Humans are blessed with the gift (or maybe the curse) of freewill. I believe, as a consequence, humans have the ability and desire to be different, to find their original values and beings. Once we accept this assumption, it is impossible to conceive that we live in a world of similar people. Is it not the scientific discovery that not even twins are similar in every respect? How can one then possibly expect that in a diverse society, a leader will be working with people of great degree of similarities?

In addition to the factual situation, I further believe/argue that similarities do not help us progress. Similarities provide comfort and precisely for that reason we become lazy. One view in evolutionary biology (Richard Dawkins in the “Selfish Genes if I am not mistaken) postulates species which dread a novel situation (such as unknown environment) will be more likely to be drowned into extinction rather than species which are comfortable with a novel situation. Most existing species are the results of physiological or biological evolution when they encounter novel situations. These species develop self-defense mechanism which includes poisonous organs and mimicry. Likewise, differences in human’s group organization will allow each member of the group to evolve further and faster. Real leadership is not just about being popular (or likeable). That will be selfish.


Leadership is about developing a group (and of course the leader himself) despite the many discomforts and pains one has to go through. This is against our biological “wants”, i.e. comfort (an euphemism of cohesion) and therefore is generally avoided. However, the reality is that humans are different (in many aspects) and in the context of leadership, one will inevitably have to deal with a huge number of people. To be able to develop the group/community as a whole, leaders have to be able to take an uncomfortable position because no else will naturally/biologically wants to. Therefore, the attitude of avoiding differences/conflicts is the enemy of real leadership.