The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson,

and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

Seven Primal Ways to Be a Better Leader.

Everywhere you go these days, it seems like there's big talk about leadership.

Schools build curricula around it.

Businesses feel the need to train their employees in it, including those who aren't in management

roles.

Whereas leadership used to be seen primarily as a function, it's now touted as a virtue. We're told everybody

should want to be one and is, of course, in need of whatever XYZ leadership program is being

sold that day. I guess I see both sides of the coin here. While I think pushing leadership

ad nausia demotes other equally valuable skills and roles like the specialist

and artisan, among others. I also believe there's purpose in cultivating a deeper command of one's

own life and in understanding how to bring self-management to bear in leading others. The thing is,

most rules you'll read for improving your leadership skills focus on other people,

how to understand them, how to persuade them, how to manage them, how to move them the way you want them to go.

While modern social organization is a far cry from our hunter-gatherer roots,

and at times requires different skills, there's something essential

and timeless in the model of primal-era leadership. It's a case where cutting-edge management

strategy can add to but not replace enduring principle. See what primal leadership principles speak

to you. As I often mention, most experts believe that true,

i.e. simple, hunter-gatherer groups mostly lived in small egalitarian-style bands, which were

ever shifting in their memberships at any given time. People moved within and without at will,

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