Cultural Transformation

Theory of Leadership
In Self-Help and Business Models
A "zeitgeist theory of leadership" has been contrasted with Thomas Carlyle’s great man
theory by Forsyth (2009). In his theory, Carlyle stresses that leaders do not become
leaders by fate or accident. Instead, these individuals possess characteristics of great
leaders and these characteristics allow them to obtain positions of power.
According to Forsyth, Leo Tolstoy disagreed with Carlyle’s perspective, instead
believing that leadership, like other things, was a product of the "zeitgeist", the social
circumstances at the time.
Great man theory and zeitgeist theory can be included in two main areas of thought
in psychology. For instance, great man theory is very similar to the trait approach. Trait
researchers are interested in identifying the various personality traits that underline
human behaviors such as conformity, leadership or other social behaviors. Thus, they
agree that leadership is primarily a quality of an individual and that some people are
pre-dispositioned to be a leader whereas others are born to follow these leaders. In
contrast, situationistresearchers believe that social behavior is a product of society. That
is, social influence is what determines human behaviors. Therefore, situationism is of
the same opinion as zeitgeist theory—leaders are created from the social environment
and are molded from the situation. The concept of zeitgeist also relates to the
sociological tradition that stems from Émile Durkheim and recently developed into social
capital theory as exemplified by the work of Patrick Hunout.
These two perspectives have been combined to create what is known as
the interactional approach to leadership. This approach asserts that leadership is
developed through the mixing of personality traits and the situation. Further, this
approach was expressed by social psychologist, Kurt Lewin, by the equation B = f(P, E)
where behavior (B) is a function (f) of the person (P) and the environment (E).
Examples of Models in Business
Executives, venture capitalists, journalists and authors have argued that the idea of a
zeitgeist is useful in understanding the emergence of industries, simultaneous invention
and evaluating the relative value of innovations. Malcolm Gladwell argued in his
book Outliers that entrepreneurs who succeeded often share similar characteristics—
early personal or significant exposure to knowledge and skills in the early stages of a
nascent industry. He proposed that the timing of involvement in an industry and often in
sports as well affected the probability of success. In Silicon Valley, a number of people
(Peter Thiel, Alistair Davidson, Mac Levchin, Nicholas G. Carr, Vinod Khosla) have
argued that much innovation has been shaped by easy access to the Internet, open
source software, component technologies for both hardware and software (e.g.,
software libraries, software as a service), and the ability to reach narrow markets across
a global market. Peter Thiel has commented: "There is so much incrementalism now."
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