The scientific approach to managing groups of people at the turn of the 19th-to-20th century fit well with classical mechanics: analyze the elements of a job, divide it into small units, then assign workers to perform each unit over and over in order to maximize efficiency. In this assembly-line process, someone had to keep the big picture in mind and make sure that all the elements came together as a complete product in the end. Rather like a general on a battlefield, those in command had to control the overall production. The support of the populace for the military during World Wars I and II probably contributed to the acceptance of this command-and-control bedrock.

But as early as the 1940’s, veins of democracy began to appear more widely and deeply in North American bedrock. Social psychologist Kurt Lewin compared the effects of democratic, authoritarian, and laissez-faire leadership (Lewin, 1947). Alfred Adler’s student, psychiatrist Rudolf Dreikurs, taught democratic childrearing in the tenements of Chicago (Dreikurs & Soltz, 1964). Global spiritual traditions were being newly explored in philosophy. Cognitivism was redefining what could be called legitimate scientific inquiry in psychology. Humanism and constructivism were being promoted in psychotherapy. Unrest was brewing that would erupt in the anti-racist and anti-war movements in the late 1950’s and 1960’s.

To a great extent, the new ideas were simply modern expressions of old questions about human nature: Are people basically savages who need to be controlled and made to do what is right? Or are their basic good natures distorted by authoritarian demands, and they need to be free to express their potential? During the last half of the 20th century, command-and-control orthodoxy began to give way to trends that coalesced into what we call “coaching.” What were considered heresies by management at mid-20th century are now coaching orthodoxy.

In part V, we touch on some important contributions to a shift from hierarchical management to participatory leadership. One of these contributions comes from research in social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience that indicates the extent to which our species is systemically interconnected.