Underground hierarchies

“Underground” hierarchies

Clear leadership can help groups act in survival situations and in combat. Under extreme pressure, people often look for someone who can coordinate the group. Even in the US Special Forces, which are designed to be as flat as an organization can be within a military service, hierarchical decision making immediately emerges and takes over in combat or when there are time constraints.

How do hierarchies form and break down? There are, broadly, two components: biological enablers and cultural constraints. These two dynamics influence how our tendency toward hierarchies manifests. To get insight into these dynamics, let’s look at the 2010 Copiapó mining accident in northern Chile, when a cave-in at the San Jose copper-gold mine trapped 33 miners 700 feet underground.

The miners were completely isolated in a physically stressful environment. It was hot, humid, and dark. The ground was unstable, and debris and rocks continued to fall. They retreated to a refuge that had only enough provisions for ten miners for two days.

Luis Urzua was the shift foreman, a position which granted him automatic authority. He “held formal leadership, for in the Chilean mining culture the authority of the shift foreman was absolute.”[11] Urzua, however, had worked at the San Jose mine for less than three months. He hadn’t had time to develop a bond with the miners on his team to back up the authority implied by his title. In the small power vacuum created, two other miners, Mario Sepulveda and Mario Gomez, “rallied the miners to explore escape routes and send signals to rescue workers.”[12] Although these two may have had the right characteristics for leadership, they could not take a place at the top of the hierarchy on account of not having the culture-supported authority. Thus, in the first 24 hours, “most miners felt accountable to no one” and “stayed in sub-groups based on kinship and past friendships.”[13]

For the miners in Chile, days two to five saw the emergence of spiritual leadership by one of the team who had pastoral experience. A democratic process was instituted to make decisions about allotment of the food supply and bathroom rules. Mario Sepulveda worked within the group’s existing expectations of authority; he urged the group to “respect Urzua and suggested that if Urzua were willing to lead, the miners should accept him as their leader. If Urzua were unwilling to lead, Sepulveda would be willing to take charge.”[14] Leadership was necessary not only to get tasks done, but for the comfort it would offer to the group.

By day five, “throughout the day, the miners gave more authority and respect to both Urzua and Sepulveda. Gomez was also widely respected for his experience and wisdom. Sepulveda had started to assign specific tasks to people based on their skills, experience, and mental stability.”[15] Good leadership is about acting in the interests of the group. In The Captain Class, Sam Walker, in one of the most counterintuitive conclusions in his book, explains it this way: “When it comes to competition, most people believe that the leader of a team is the person who does something spectacular when the chips are down.”[16] This, however, is actually not true. Walker’s conclusions about the real qualities of great captains apply to the dynamics of the miners in Chile. “The great captains lowered themselves in relation to the group whenever possible in order to earn the moral authority to drive them forward in tough moments. The person at the back, feeding the ball to others, may look like a servant—but that person is actually creating dependency. The easiest way to lead, it turns out, is to serve.”[17] It’s possible that Sepulveda, by supporting the leadership of Urzua, was doing the most valuable thing he could to serve the interests of the group.

The hierarchy developed in the early days held until day 17. During this time, there was widespread despair about the success of the rescue efforts, with the miners rationed down to one bite of food every 36 hours. Hope was low, but the hierarchy served its purpose of maintaining a structure that supported their chances of survival.

On day 18, a “breakthrough shaft” reached the refuge where the miners were located. Not large enough for rescue, it was used to get items to the miners, including food, medical supplies, letters from their families, and a television. At this point the hierarchy of the 33 miners began to break down, because there was a new top of the pyramid. Control shifted to people above ground. The miners were no longer accountable to just each other. “Fights occurred about which channels to watch,” and “discipline gradually declined alongside their humility as the miners began to digest the news of their celebrity status.”[18]

As the days continued, the hierarchy that had maintained order while they were isolated and scared continued to fade. Miners began developing relationships with doctors and media advisors, fighting for more information from their loved ones. Some miners began receiving drugs in their communications from family, which shifted relationships and allegiances underground. The hierarchy, though, didn’t completely disappear. It was as though they were pulled between two different hierarchies, the one below ground that had gotten them this far, and that above ground which offered promise of rescue. As they passed 60 days underground, “the miners’ behaviors…oscillated between extremes, indulging in petty fights one minute and promising never to break their fraternal bonds the next minute.”[19]

The rescue started on day 70. The miners were lifted out one by one, with Urzua coming up last. They had expressed the desire to leave San Jose as a group, which they did with the world watching.