Social groups vary in the extent to which they designate one or more members as leaders, with responsibility to direct the activities of all members. Some friendship groups grant no one the clear status of leader, while others do. Within families, parents generally share leadership responsibilities, although husband and wife sometimes disagree about who is really in charge. In many secondary groups, such as business office, leadership is likely to involve an established status with clearly defined roles.
There are several different ways in which a person may become recognized as the leader of a social group. In the family, traditional cultural patterns confer leadership on the parents, though more often on the male as a head of the household if two spouses are present. In other cases, such as friendship groups, one or more persons may gradually emerge as leaders, although there is no formal process of selection. In larger secondary groups, leaders are usually formally chosen through election or recruitment.
Although leaders are often thought to be people with unusual personal ability, decades of research have failed to produce consistent evidence that there is any category of “natural leaders.” It seems that there is no set of personal qualities that all leaders have in common; rather, virtually any person may be recognized as a leader if the person has qualities that meet the needs of that particular group.
Furthermore, although it is commonly supposed that social groups have a single leader, research suggests that there are typically two different leadership roles that are held by different individuals. Instrumental leadership is leadership that emphasizes the completion of tasks by a social group. Group members look to instrumental leaders to “get things done.” Expressive leadership, on the other hand, is leadership that emphasizes the collective well-beings of a social group’s members. Expressive leaders are less concerned with the overall goals of the group than with providing emotional support to group members and attempting to minimize tension and conflict among them. Group members expect expressive leaders to maintain stable relationships within the group and provide support to individual members.