It serves pride and status and nothing else. Well not exactly nothing else, on the show they're actually competing. So they're all trying to show their supposed leadership skills, which as you can see, they take to mean how well they can shout down somebody else and get their own way. Their bullying skills in other words. That the actual tasks are usually about how well they can get the group working (not show off) is beyond them.

Also you have to remember that the others in the group are trying to compete with them, as the PL in each scenario is only a temporary figure and not a secure post as in reality. So they'll slyly try to undermine the efforts of the PL without being to obvious while trying to get across how much better at it they would be.


This isn't to far from real life. People won't simply do the task at hand as you say because they're not thinking of the task at hand, they're thinking of progression of their own careers and lives and that has to mean pushing for promotions (not waiting for them). That means showing how much better you would be in a leading role and so on. Of course most people are NOT good at such roles, going back to what I said about bullying/leadership and generally end up ruining a team and the task instead of impressing. Politics lol