Why are bad leaders so common in politics and business?

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READ: If we accept that good leaders exist and can be developed, we must also accept that bad leaders sadly also exist.

Opinion: if we accept that good leaders exist and can be developed, we must also accept that bad leaders sadly also exist

One sign of a good leader is they apologise when they get it wrong, and our political leaders have done this many times - Enda Kenny about the Magdalen Laundries and Micheál Martin regarding the Mother & Baby Homes - holding themselves and the State to account. Despite decades of research exploring what makes a good leader, the reasons why we get bad leaders such as Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump , are less well understood.

Context matters a lot. Organisations spend significant time and money on identifying and developing talent , placing far too much emphasis on how well that talent has performed as an individual, this is problematic. In 2019, prior to the pandemic, Forbes estimated the global spend on leadership development programmes to be in excess of $360 billion annually.

Conformers show deference and obedience to bad leaders whereas colluders are far more likely to engage with, and support, bad leaders because there is something to be gained from doing so. Understanding how bad leaders emerge necessitates also understanding the interaction between bad leaders and those who follow them within the context of bad leadership.

Authoritarians on the other hand, follow bad leaders because of their adherence to formal power and authority structures . Authoritarians view someone elected to a position of power as having the right to expect their obedience and will behave accordingly. In contrast to the conformers, colluders do not support a bad leader out of a sense of obligation, or adherence to formal authority. Opportunists are politically savvy, ambitious and driven by the rewards that can be accrued from supporting a bad leader who has control over resources be those financial, political or status. For them, it’s about personal gain and the benefits of being an ‘insider’.

 

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