McGraw-Hill/IrwinCopyright © 2011 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Chapter Fifteen The Negative (Dark) Side of Leadership

15-2 Reading 36 The Two Faces of Leadership: Considering the Dark Side of Leader-Follower Dynamics  Leadership’s positive face  Two themes emerge from this theory  Leadership involves moral purpose  Followers play a rather passive role  Effective leadership can promote social good and social disaster as well

15-3 Leadership’s Negative Face  A failure to look inside  A leader must take special responsibility for what’s going on inside his or her own self  Mirroring  The tendency to see themselves as perceived by their followers and to feel they must act to satisfy the projections of followers  Narcissism – A distorted view of self  Emotional illiteracy – Inability to differentiate and verbalize emotion  Unwillingness to let go – Knowing they no longer fit the demands of the job

15-4 Followership’s Negative Face  There are two ways in which followers can affect leader-follower dynamics  Through personal traits that followers carry into the influence process  The synergy that emerges through leaders and follower interaction

15-5 The Search for Exemplary Followers  Kelly (1992) classified followers behaviors using two dimensional taxonomy into 5 styles  Exemplary  Conformist  Passive  Alienated  Pragmatist

15-6 Follower Syndromes  Dispositions that, at a relatively pathological level, can have serious consequences for the health of leader-follower relationships  Controlling  Histrionic  Passive-aggressive  Dependency  Masochism

15-7 Rethinking Leader-Follower Relations  Leaders can misperceive and act in inappropriate ways, followers may contribute significantly to those misperceptions and misguided actions  Leadership needs to be treated as influence reflecting power over others  Leaders and followers need to work at:  Understanding themselves  Understanding their own personalities  Being open to all forms of information and feedback  Leaders need to be sensitive to what follower behaviors are really saying

15-8 Reading 37 The Dark Side of Leadership  Three skill areas can contribute to leadership inadequacies:  Leaders’ strategic vision  Communications and impression-management skills  General management practices

15-9 Table 1 The Sources of Failed Vision

15-10 How Leaders Come to Deny Flaws in Their Visions  The denial of flaws can be explained by cognitive dissonance  This prevents the leader from changing his course  Others in the organization who tend to become dependent on a visionary leader may perpetuate the problem through their own actions  Problems with “group-think” can occur where the leader’s advisors delude themselves into agreement with the leader or dominant others

15-11 Table 2 Potential Liabilities in the Leader’s Communications and Impression Management Skills

15-12 Table 3 Potential Liabilities of a Leader’s Management Practices

15-13 Communication and Managing Sideways  Leaders’ aggressive style may alienate many potential supporters  This is common when charismatic leaders are brought in from the outside  The tendency of certain leaders to cultivate a feeling of being “special” among members of their operating units leads to an “us versus them” mentality

15-14 Subordinate Relations and Administrative Skills  At times, there is an impulsive dynamic at work in the way leaders manage  They tend to override subordinates’ suggestions or insights  Another problem can be informal management, which can violate the chain of command  Some visionary leaders are so absorbed by the “big picture” that they fail to understand essential details  Leaders may get so caught up in corporate stardom that they become absentee leaders

15-15 Succession Problems  It is difficult for others with leadership potential to develop fully in the shadow of a true leader  Leaders enjoy the limelight too much to share it; when they depart, a leadership vacuum is created  Under charismatic leadership, authority may be highly centralized around the leader  This arrangement weakens the authority structures that are normally dispersed throughout an organization