Leadership, a Soap Opera of Genes-Memes Interaction

The drama of leadership evolved around its definition, what kind is wanted, what processes conduct it, what institutions channel through or around it, what values measure it, and what results test it. Leadership scholarship suggests the hypothesis of a soap opera of genes-memes interaction. The lens of metasynthesis was used on the literature. We used the biopsychosocial approach to include papers from animal and human literatures and from biology, psychology, and social sciences. We included in this review papers that were deemed most relevant. Papers were analyzed using visual methods. Leadership is an old topic with an ever-growing interest. Work on leadership has grown steadily from year to year. Since its emergence in pre-humans, leadership was imitated by humans, and adapted to the development of societies. Leadership is a universal concept in animal and human literature. It was studied by more than twenty (20) academic disciplines. Anyone can become a leader if genes and memes offer him a morphological, physiological, or behavioral trait that increases his propensity to act first in coordination problems. Leading requires touching people's heads and hearts. To achieve this, the leader, like a scientist, craftsman, and artist, uses the fundamental human values that he packs into a project for the future. Leadership is an ability. This study offered an opportunity to visualize leadership. Experiments on leadership development will quantify the impact of mirroring