Calling a Stranger to Lead

The classic analysis by Georg Simmel (1858–1918) described the stranger as someone with unusual freedoms, proximate yet distant culturally. As such, the stranger “brings qualities … that are not and cannot be indigenous”; represents a point of contact with a wider world; and holds up a mirror to the community. He or she allows us to know ourselves differently while at the same time bringing novel ideas from the outside and expanding possibilities. In this way, the stranger contributes to group leadership, ordinarily as an outsider. Nevertheless, groups do turn to the stranger for leadership.