I read Bill George’s Discover Your True North (George & Gergen, 2015)a couple years ago, while emerging from a time of crisis, and found it a timely reminder of the need for introspection, thoughtfulness self-analysis, and people who could speak honestly into my life. However, I was surprised to see that Northouse (2016) included it as a major approach to leadership; it seemed more common-sensical than scientific. For instance, what operational definitions clearly separate hope and optimism as leadership factors? And defining ethical behavior as moral and good simply begs the question.
However, I wouldn’t be surprised if neuroscience may help provide an explanation for why authentic leadership works. Authentic leadership is based on consistent, disciplined modeling of core values to followers who are in a relationship based on trust Northouse, 2016) —authentic leadership is teaching by example.
Economists studying factors related to child development have consistently found what adults do is more important that what they say. For instance, the number of books a family has in the home is more closely correlated with childhood academic success than the amount of television a child watches. A parents’ involvement in PTA is more relevant that how much time the parent spends reading to the child at home (Pagani, Fitzpatrick, Barnett, & Dubow, 2010). A family’s religiosity when a child is young is more influential than direct instruction when the child is older (Bartkowski, Xu, & Levin, 2008). Findings such as these by the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of 20,000 students over five years were popularized in the best-seller, Freakonomics (Levitt & Dubner, 2009):
| Factors that don’t matter: | Factors that matter: |
| Child watches TV regularly | Highly-educated parents |
| Mother at home from birth to kindergarten | High-income parents |
| Regular trips to museums | English spoken by parents in the home |
| Attended Head Start | Parents involved in the PTA |
| Child is spanked at home | More than 50 kids’ books in the home |
Figure 1: Factors correlated with high test scores by 5th Grade (Dubner & Levitt, 2005).
What’s the common thread for the factors that matter? Consistent, disciplined role modeling in a relationship of trust. It turns out that parents are authentic leaders in that their children develop behaviors by 5th-Grade that follow their parents’ habits. Special programs and events designed at “teaching” children have relatively little effect compared to observational learning from an authentic leader.
Although the fact of observational learning has been established for years (Myers & DeWall, 2015), neuroscience has only in the last fifteen years or so identified the mechanism for this learning: mirror neurons. There are specific neurons that fire when observing another human experience. These mirror neurons, also called empathy neurons, are what make an amputated phantom limb itch when watching ants crawl on someone else. They make you feel cold when engrossed in a movie about a snowstorm. They make pornography addictive. Autistic people seem to have fewer of them, making it neurologically difficult for them to visual social cues (Gallese & Goldman, 1998; Giudice, Manera, & Keysers, 2009; Oberman, Pineda, & Ramachandran, 2007; Ramachandran, 2009)
It seems likely that learner/follower mirror neurons may be the biological basis for the effectiveness of authentic leadership. If so, then leadership is not just a matter of being passionately articulate about a vision or having the right combination of personality and physical traits; it’s about being actively present. Leaders may be able to improve their effectiveness as simply as by consistently showing up and engaging with their work and followers.
This has several obvious implications for people wanting to become leaders in educational technology. First, ed-tech leaders should consistently let other see them engaging positively with educational technology. I don’t mean that they need to be early adopters of every emerging tech, or that they need to be able to handle every tech problem that comes up, but they should provide their followers’ mirror neurons with lots of chances to feel positive about using technology for education. Second, they should seek colleagues, mentors, and experiential learning opportunities that keep their own mirror neurons firing (i.e. seek out authentic leaders for themselves). Third, they shouldn’t underestimate the power of social presence. From the leadership point of view, social presence increases the likelihood of a relationship that allows authentic leadership. From a neurological point of view, the sense of community, increased likelihood of communication and collaboration, and even sense of play that a strong social presence (Lowenthal, Bauer, & Chen, 2015; Lowenthal & Dennen, 2017; Lowenthal, Dunlap, & Stitson, 2016) increases the likelihood of a sense of human connection, and that’s when the mirror neurons get going. Finally, if mirror neurons are involved in the becoming a follower of an authentic leader as it is in observational learning from a teacher, it would be worth remembering that the most memorable lessons may be not be the stated goals. From a neurological viewpoint, actions speak louder than our words.
References
Bartkowski, J. P., Xu, X., & Levin, M. L. (2008). Religion and child development: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. Social Science Research, 37(1), 18–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2007.02.001
Dubner, S. J., & Levitt, S. D. (2005). USATODAY.com – Do parents matter? Retrieved from https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-05-03-parents-edit_x.htm
Gallese, V., & Goldman, A. (1998). Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind-reading. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2(12), 493–501. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(98)01262-5
George, B., & Gergen, D. (2015). Discover Your True North (2 edition). Hoboken, New Jersey: Jossey-Bass.
Giudice, M. D., Manera, V., & Keysers, C. (2009). Programmed to learn? The ontogeny of mirror neurons. Developmental Science, 12(2), 350–363. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00783.x
Levitt, S. D., & Dubner, S. J. (2009). Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (1 Original edition). New York: William Morrow Paperbacks.
Lowenthal, P. R., Bauer, C., & Chen, K.-Z. (2015). Student perceptions of online learning: An analysis of online course evaluations. American Journal of Distance Education, 29(2), 85–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2015.1023621
Lowenthal, P. R., & Dennen, V. (2017). Social presence, identity, and online learning: research development and needs. Distance Education. https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2017.1335172
Lowenthal, P. R., Dunlap, J. C., & Stitson, P. (2016). Creating an intentional web presence: Strategies for every educational technology professional. TechTrends, 60(4), 320–329. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-016-0056-1
Myers, D. G., & DeWall, C. N. (2015). Psychology (11th ed.). Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-11th-David-G-Myers/dp/1464140812/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1498731782&sr=1-1&keywords=myers+psychology+11th+edition
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice, 7th Edition (7 edition). Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Oberman, L. M., Pineda, J. A., & Ramachandran, V. S. (2007). The human mirror neuron system: A link between action observation and social skills. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2(1), 62–66. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsl022
Pagani, L. S., Fitzpatrick, C., Barnett, T. A., & Dubow, E. (2010). Prospective Associations Between Early Childhood Television Exposure and Academic, Psychosocial, and Physical Well-being by Middle Childhood. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 164(5). https://doi.org/10.1001/archpediatrics.2010.50
Ramachandran, V. S. (2009). Mirror neurons and imitation learning as the driving force behind “the great leap forward” in human evolution. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/59c6/7e5522e7c7c75f059f3281962635fac5fb58.pdf
