When I was twelve I watched a documentary series first shown in 1994 and presented by Desmond Morris called The Human Animal. While I suspect the intro of naked people walking through a busy city street did more for the interest of a kid just entering puberty then the promise of the scientific import of the material, I nevertheless loved the series and the way it approached the study of people from a zoological perspective. Something I had never thought of before.

It was my first introduction to linguistic and social anthropology, although it would be some time before I learned that’s what it was.

Over a decade later and I’m now studying leadership development.

The significance of social anthropology to anyone either wanting to either become a leader or develop someone else to become a leader should be obvious. After-all, we’ve already said that one of the purposes of the leader is to forge the team and social anthropology is the study of how humans behave in social groups.

The tales and stories of social anthropologists are full of jungle treks, mountain hikes, paddling between islands in canoes and bumping across rough desert terrain in 4x4s. And although many of them have now moved towards studying modernity rather then… *tires to remember the PC term*… um, people with sticks, they have taken the tools they developed during those expeditions and turned them towards us.

Social anthropologists study how people behave by observing them in their natural conditions. They don’t pull them into labs, in controlled conditions and ask them to give shocks to each other (although they seem to be very fond of sticking needles in people). They are very much interested in how the many facets of human individuality, culture, religion, hierarchy, wealth, gender, lineage, education etc. come together to form behaviors between people.

Social anthropologists are impartial observers (ideally). And one of the best tools that leaders can get out of a study of social anthropology is a healthy habit of observing human behavior and questioning its causes and purpose.

There’s long running joke in the anthropology world comparing those who go out and actually observe people to those who stay at home reading the reports of those who do the field work. The latter often being referred to as “armchair anthropologists”. A leader is never an armchair anthropologist. Sure, go and buy books, listen to courses and watch documentaries. But more then that, whenever you’re with other people, watch how they behave and try to figure out why; Their body language, voice tone, emotions, who they pay attention to and who they ignore, everything.

Understanding people makes you a better leader… duh.

- James