Chimps Lead Through Fear. You Have Another Option.

I once watched a head counselor run a staff meeting by going around the room and asking every person what they could have done better that week. Not what went well. Not what they learned. What they could have done better.

The room was quiet. Not the good kind of quiet, where people are thinking. The bad kind, where people are calculating. Figuring out the safest thing to say. Trying not to be noticed.

One counselor gave a careful, vague answer about time management. Another said something about being more organized. Nobody mentioned anything real. Nobody talked about the camper who had been struggling, or the activity that fell apart, or the conflict between two staff members that everyone knew about but nobody wanted to name.

The head counselor thought this exercise built accountability. What it actually built was a room full of people who had learned to protect themselves.

That meeting reminded me of a chimpanzee troop.

Two Paths, One Species

Harvard anthropologist Joe Henrich has spent decades studying how humans gain influence. His research, published across journals like Evolution and Human Behavior and The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, proposed something that changed how scientists think about leadership: humans have two completely separate systems for earning status.

The first is dominance. This is the older system, the one we share with other primates. In a chimpanzee troop, the alpha gains power through intimidation. He makes himself look large. He controls access to food. He punishes anyone who challenges him. The troop follows because they're afraid of what happens if they don't.

second is prestige. This one, Henrich argues, is uniquely human. It evolved because humans are a cultural species. We survive not through physical strength but through accumulated knowledge, passed from person to person, generation to generation. The prestige leader earns influence by being skilled and generous with that skill. People follow because they want to, not because they have to. They gravitate toward prestigious individuals because proximity means learning.

Here's what makes this more than academic theory. Henrich and his colleagues ran studies where they tracked people's eye movements during group interactions. In dominance dynamics, people looked away from the dominant individual. They averted their gaze the way a subordinate chimp would. In prestige dynamics, people looked toward the prestigious individual. They leaned in. They wanted to watch, listen, and absorb.

Same species. Same room. Completely different body language depending on which system was operating.

What This Looks Like at Camp

You've seen both systems at work, even if you didn't have names for them.

The dominance approach sounds like "Because I said so." It sounds like public corrections. It looks like a director who runs meetings by telling people what they did wrong. It works, in the short term. People comply. They follow instructions. They stay in line. But they also stop thinking for themselves. They stop bringing ideas. They stop taking risks. They do the minimum to avoid getting called out.

The prestige approach sounds different. It sounds like a unit leader who sits with a struggling first-year counselor after dinner and says, "Tell me what happened today. Walk me through it." It looks like a program director who shares a mistake she made in front of the whole staff, not to be dramatic, but because she knows vulnerability is a form of teaching. It looks like a waterfront director who says "Watch how I do this" and then, the next day, says "Now you try."

People follow prestige leaders because they want to become better at what they do. They're drawn to them the way Henrich's research subjects were drawn to skilled individuals in a group. Not out of fear. Out of aspiration.

The Quiet Test

Here's one way to tell which system you're running. Think about what happens in the room when you leave.

If people relax, exhale, and start talking more freely, you might be leading through dominance. Your presence creates tension that your absence relieves.

If people keep working, keep problem-solving, keep holding each other accountable, you're probably leading through prestige. Your influence persists because it was never about fear. It was about the culture you helped them build.

That head counselor I mentioned? She wasn't a bad person. She cared deeply about her staff and her campers. But she had inherited a model of leadership that confused accountability with pressure, and she didn't know there was another way.

One thing you could try: the next time you run a meeting, replace "What could you have done better?" with "What did you learn this week?" It's a small shift. But it changes the room from a courtroom into a classroom. It moves you from dominance to prestige.

Chimps don't get to choose. They only have one path to the top.

You have two. And the one you pick determines whether your team follows you out of obligation or out of belief.

About the Author

Matt Kaufman has spent 40 years in summer camp as a camper, counselor, and director, studying what makes people belong, grow, and thrive. He writes about intentional community, leadership, and the intersection of technology and human connection.

Connect with Matt:

• Instagram: @mattlovescamp

• LinkedIn: Matt Kaufman

• Website: ilove.camp

Books by Matt Kaufman:

• The Campfire Effect: How to Engineer Belonging in a Disconnected World

• The Summer Camp MBA: 50 Leadership Lessons from Camp to Career