Opinion: if we accept that good leaders exist and can be developed, we must also accept that bad leaders sadly also exist
Taoiseach Micheál Martin's recent UN Security Council speech was factual and sincere and he didn’t shy away from calling out the invasion of Ukraine by its 'rogue state’ neighbour. The Taoiseach was unequivocal in his language: ‘we have to name what we are seeing. These actions taken collectively, show Russia behaving as a rogue state’. Arguably, Michaél Martin spoke truth to power and demonstrated his leadership credibility.
But the Taoiseach’s leadership hasn’t always been without missteps. His support of former Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Robert Troy, who resigned over breaches of Standards in Public Office, illustrates that the Taoiseach can, at times, exercise poor judgement. While many might disagree with Irish politicians, they are subject to ethical standards and, generally speaking, exercise their oath of office with honesty and integrity.
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. Just why are bad leaders more common than we care to admit?
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
The Taoiseach’s statement that ‘we have to name what we are seeing’ can be applied to bad leaders across public and private sectors. While much of the discourse on what makes a great leader is often written about, we tend to downplay the role of followers and organisational context. Leaders cannot exist without followers and neither exists in a vacuum.
Context matters a lot. Organisations spend significant time and money on identifying and developing talent (potential future leaders), 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. More recently, McKinsey found that most of these programmes fail to deliver on the promise of developing leaders because they don’t focus on understanding the context of leadership or the practical aspects of leading.
Barbera Kellerman noted ‘one way to increase the probability of good leadership is to encourage as many people as possible to study it, teach it, and practice it. But another way is to encourage as many people as possible to explore bad leadership’. Kellerman concluded by asking ‘how will we ever stop what we refuse to see or study? It is this question that resonates in the context of the Taoiseach's UN speech.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Brainstorm, why do bad people get good jobs?
When we experience bad leadership, do we call it out? Rarely. We say nothing because we fear what may happen to us if we do. Does this make us bad followers? Of course not. There are many types of bad leaders: despotic and destructive leaders, incompetent leaders, unethical leaders, autocrats, and dictators, and equally as many followers: conformers (lost souls, authoritarians, and bystanders) and colluders (opportunists and acolytes).
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.
Researcher Christian Thoroughgood provided a critique of followers and the influence (good and bad) that they have on the leader. The authors provide a nuanced understanding of how and why certain follower-types support their leaders, irrespective of how bad they might be.
READ: 8 reasons why comedians make good leaders
Lost souls and authoritarians for example, engage in behaviour that conforms to what the leader wants but from different perspectives. Lost souls are attracted to charismatic leaders because they provide a sense of community and purpose. Because lost souls are attracted to charismatic leaders (such as Trump), they can be easily manipulated and engage in unethical or illegal behaviour in the name of their leader.
Authoritarians on the other hand, follow bad leaders because of their adherence to formal power and authority structures (e.g., Milgram/Stanford Prison Guard studies). Authoritarians view someone elected (or promoted) to a position of power as having the right to expect their obedience (loyalty) and will behave accordingly.
Bystanders are driven by instrumental needs, ostensibly remaining on-side with bad leaders because they recognise the inherent risk of challenging them. Despite the fact that they may view their leader’s behaviour as unacceptable, they recognise that non-compliance will likely result in punishment and acquiesce to a bad leader’s demands in order to avoid punishment. Interestingly, a sub-group of bystanders who may once have spoken truth to power and experienced punishment for doing so, may ultimately ‘check out’ and in the process may also becoming bystanders, not because they fear being punished but because they actually have been punished.
We need your consent to load this YouTube contentWe use YouTube to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
In contrast to the conformers, colluders (opportunists and acolytes) 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’.
Acolytes on the other hand do not support a bad leader to increase personal wealth, power or status but because they are ideologically aligned with the leader. They are the ‘true believers’ who are unlikely to waver in their support of a bad leader irrespective of any compelling evidence that the behaviour is illegal or unethical. These types of followers are likely to have taken part in the January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
Bad leaders are unfortunately inevitable. Their power and influence, however, are not. It is limited by the degree to which their followers provide support, and the degree to which effective checks and balances (context) limit bad behaviour. Leaders like Putin and Trump have remained in power because they have the support (loyalty) of their followers, either through coercion in the case of Putin, or because they are charismatic in the case of Trump.
READ: 4 unlikely places where Irish political scandals began
This brings us back to the question of why bad leaders are more common that we care to admit? It is for two simple reasons. One, we don’t name what we are seeing nearly as often as we should. When we see or experience bad leaders, we fall into a number of follower-types, and this influences our behaviour. The other reason why bad leaders are more common than we think is because checks and balances on the use (or abuse) of power are not present.
Although Trump has now come face-to-face with the checks and balances The Federalist Papers decreed were critical in ensuring power was not corrupted, the damage caused by his bad leadership remains. If we accept that good leaders exist and can be developed, we must also accept that bad leaders exist. To quote Micheál Martin ‘we have to name what we are seeing’ and if that’s a bad leader, then it is a bad leader, and that’s a very good starting point because unless we name, we can’t fix it.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
