By: Maggie Pohl

The article highlights how changing societal values throughout history change employee and employer expectations, changing leadership styles. In my opinion, the most prevalent time of societal change when it came to employee rights was during the industrial revolution. Before this time, leadership was rigid, and decisions about worker rights were left to individual leaders, often to the detriment of employees. The industrial revolution marked a shift, with growing public concern over issues like child labor, working hours, and safety, leading to laws and regulations. I hypothesize that this shift in societal values was driven by the increasing number of people working, regardless of their class, and by the more dangerous working conditions. Despite these changes, many industries still resisted adopting these new standards, revealing the gap between evolving societal values and leadership practices. 

As mentioned in the article, historically leadership has been a “my way or the highway” approach, while in modern times there is a focus on team goals and commitments. Many of the tycoons of the industrial era were hesitant to move from a leader based workplace to an employee one. Giving employees rights slowed down production and applied rules to the way employers lead their employees. While today, we do not often think about how these laws and regulations revolutionized leadership styles, during the industrial revolution this was a prevalent concept. The focus shift from employer comfort to employee comfort is an important aspect to analyze when we look at leadership throughout history.