all of the Lancers were blessed with the same combination of skill and luck. When the charge ended, minutes after the attack was launched, they had lost almost one quarter of their force. Nearly ten thousand Dervishes had been killed or wounded by the time the rest of their ranks broke and ran. When the dust cleared, twenty thousand British and Egyptian soldiers had won the battle against sixty thousand of the khalifa’s men.
After facing such an extreme form of “natural selection” at such a young age, it’s no wonder that Churchill was able to remain centered and thoughtful in the conflicts to come. As Blassingame emphasized at the end of his breathtaking narrative, “without the leadership of Churchill, World War II might quite possibly have had a different ending.”
From a Darwinian perspective, Lieutenant Churchill not only won the right to breed by surviving that pivotal battle, he demonstrated all the right stuff to lead: during a single cavalry charge, he exhibited poise in the midst of chaos, the capacity to negotiate massive amounts of sensory input, split-second accuracy in reading the nonverbal intentions of others, and — most important when your survival depends on remaining glued to a charging, skidding, twirling, leaping polo-pony-turned-warhorse — an advanced aptitude for coordinating movements with other team members.
The latter ability has a neurological component — namely, oscillators, cells that attune two or more beings physically by regulating how and when their bodies move together. Researchers see oscillators in action when people are about to kiss. These special neurons also help the cello section of the New York Philharmonic play in unison: if you could peek inside the musicians’ heads, as scientists have figured out how to do, you’d see that the performers’ right brain hemispheres are more closely coordinated with each other than are the left and right sides of their individual brains.
Optimal use of mirror neurons, oscillators, and other social circuitry allows leaders to engage what Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee call resonance. Biologically speaking, a manager who worships objectivity, outlaws feeling, and hides in his office while handing down written policies and procedures, expecting followers to mirror his dissociative, stoic presence, is, at the very least, not using his brain properly — and preventing employees from reaching their potential as well. To activate the optimal team-building power of resonance, you have to actually care about others, sensing and coordinating with their feelings and motivations while, at the same time, turning destructive emotional feedback loops around by modulating your own empathic physical responses.
Two thousand years ago, people had no idea how many thousands of specialized neurons were firing during the complex social interactions of gifted leaders, but they recognized true talent when they saw it and even managed on occasion to write about it. The Greek historian Plutarch was particularly impressed with the exploits of a young prince named Alexander. Student of Aristotle, son of Philip of Macedon, the boy obviously had the opportunity to balance his rigorous intellectual studies with extensive equestrian training: at age ten, the future conqueror proved to be the only person in his father’s entourage capable of riding an unruly horse named Bucephalus.
No one could mount the black stallion, and even the grooms were afraid to lead him. In one of the first historical reports of “horse gentling,” Alexander noticed that Bucephalus seemed to be spooking at his own shadow. The young Macedonian prince took hold of the bridle and turned the quivering, snorting stallion into the sun. The boy spoke softly, stroking the horse for a while. Then, at the right moment, Alexander the Great leaped onto the stallion’s sturdy back and took off at a gallop, reveling in the horse’s phenomenal vitality rather than trying to rein it in. The connection between the two deepened over the years. Plutarch wrote that “in Uxia, once, Alexander lost him, and issued an edict that he would kill every man in the country unless he was brought back — as he promptly was.”
Bucephalus died at the age of thirty, a long life for a horse even by today’s standards. “During the final battle in India,” observed Lawrence Scanlan in Wild about Horses, “the horse took spears in his neck and flank but still managed to turn and bring the king to safety before dying. Alexander was overcome with grief, and later named a city after Bucephalus.” The legendary king relied on his mount’s sensitivity, vitality, quick wits, and subtle warnings to help him survive many a battle. And Bucephalus relied on Alexander’s ability to not only understand and respond to the horse’s concerns but also interrupt the debilitating effects of escalating arousal, transforming the energy of fear into a power that neither member of this legendary team could have tapped on his own.
The Sociopath’s Advantage
Arousal and relaxation — and the various emotions that arise from these autonomic nervous system cues — are the building blocks of a sophisticated, nonverbal language. Instantaneous, arguably telepathic, this feature of the “other 90 percent” (the nonverbal dimension of interpersonal communication) enhances relationships with coworkers and loved ones while offering protection from liars, thieves, and other malevolent characters. Yet there’s always a shadow side to remarkable powers of communication and influence. By design, our natural empathic abilities sometimes cause us to defer to a peculiar feature of the sociopathic nervous system, allowing charismatic leaders like Adolf Hitler and Jim Jones to wreak havoc, especially among desperate populations.
The American Psychiatric Association considers sociopathy and psychopathy obsolete synonyms for the official clinical term antisocial personality disorder. Even so, the Psychopathy Checklist, developed by Dr. Robert D. Hare in the early 1990s, remains the diagnostic tool most commonly used to assess this condition. Major symptoms of antisocial personality disorder include the tendency to be glib, superficial, deceitful, and manipulative while also showing a lack of empathy, lack of remorse or guilt, and shallow affect.
In sociopaths, it seems, key emotional- and social-intelligence circuits are missing, while cognitive abilities remain intact. This high IQ–low EQ combination is confusing for the individual and toxic for those in his or her social circle. Hare reports that “psychopaths are often witty and articulate. They can be amusing and entertaining conversationalists, ready with a quick and clever comeback, and can tell unlikely but convincing stories that cast themselves in a good light. They can be very effective in presenting themselves well and are quite likeable and charming.” However, they also “seem to suffer a kind of emotional poverty that limits the range and depth of their feelings. While at times they appear cold and unemotional, they are prone to dramatic, shallow and short-lived displays of feeling. Careful observers are left with the impression that they are play-acting and that little is going on below the surface.”
People with antisocial personality disorder exhibit a severely impaired capacity to feel, let alone use emotion as information. Laboratory experiments employing biomedical recorders have shown that sociopaths actually lack the physiological responses normally associated with fear. Yet psychologists studying this troublesome profile have grossly underestimated the significance of this strange anomaly, which becomes a particularly dangerous talent in those with leadership ambitions.
For most people, Hare explains, “the fear produced by threats of pain or punishment is an unpleasant emotion and a powerful motivator of behavior. Not so with psychopaths; they merrily plunge on, perhaps knowing what might happen but not really caring.”
From a personal-safety perspective, the disability is clear. But once you understand the importance of affection contagion in social interactions, the implications become downright disturbing. Cult leaders, for instance, prey on people who are easily overwhelmed by their feelings — from abuse survivors to highly sensitive adolescents to adults who’ve suffered a recent, debilitating loss. The ability to exude calmness, focus, and charisma in situations others find stressful — while telling them whatever they want to hear in a most charming, articulate, intelligent way — is matched by an equally ruthless impulse to whip followers into states of fear and anger whenever they show signs of regaining independent thought and will. With a bit of clever
