66 LEADER TO LEADER THE HUMAN FACTOR THE ENTERTAINING LEADER, THE INTOXICATED FOLLOWER by Jean Lipman-Blumen J ust when we think we have studied, perhaps over- studied, every aspect of the leader’s hold on fol- lowers, it may be impertinent to suggest we have overlooked one critical way by which leaders keep us in their thrall. I am speaking of our need for enter- tainment—that is, fun, delight, thrills, and controlled terror—a need that plays a key, but often unnoticed, part in the leader-follower connection. Entertainment as a Socially Induced Need The primary purpose of entertainment is to create fun, to delight, enthrall, and perchance to thrill its audience. The leader as entertainer is tapping into a need induced by our parents and other early caretakers, who bonded with us by entertaining and delighting us, teaching us the sheer joy of fun—and a little bit of terror besides. From our earliest moments, parents smile, coo, tickle, and sing to us. Before we can walk, they hold us in their arms and dance around the room with us. They go to great lengths to amuse us, to coax a smile from our infant faces, to spark our delight even before we can respond. Before long, however, usually somewhere around three months of age, we learn to react by smiling and laugh- ing. Later, our parents keep us entertained by reading to us, even when we are too young to understand much beyond the colorful pictures in those books. Develop- mental research suggests that children not entertained and cuddled, like many whose early months have been passed in orphanages, grow up with various deficits, often including an inability to bond with others. But entertainment also holds terror, a controlled ter- ror from which parents repeatedly rescue us. For ex- ample, parents play peek-a-boo, a game that mildly frightens but also delights us with the revelation that the hidden terror is no terror after all, only our fun- loving parent. Even before we become toddlers, our parents entertain us by gleefully tossing us up into the air, where momentarily we are suspended in fear and delight, and finally relieved when they catch us. This is one way in which we learn that the same parent who