Interest in leadership dates back to ancient times. Despite the abundant academic literature generated over such a long period of time, the richness and complexity of the term makes it difficult to provide a clear definition. In this sense, Fiedler pointed out that there are almost as many definitions of leadership as there are leadership theories. As Jiménez, Chinchilla, and Grau explain in their new publication, leadership has generally been associated with a positive bias. In fact, we read books about good leaders, not bad ones. In this sense, we could consider bad leadership as an oxymoron.
Unfortunately, today we continue to witness the influence of bad leaders and their mismanagement in public and private spheres, such as politics, the corporate world, the media, science, as well as in our homes. Bad leadership can take many forms, from the more explicit, visible and illegal such as fraud, corruption, environmental degradation, or bullying, to much more subtle, silent and non-punishable forms such as indifference.
We might think that bad leadership is a minor issue. However, according to a study published in the Journal of Leardership Studies, one third of the participants considered their superior to be a bad leader. These are big words. They felt that they showed favouritism, took an employee’s idea as their own, or admonished a colleague in the presence of others.
Misuse of power results in bad leaders
The nature of the dark side of human action has been a theme consistently addressed throughout the history of thought. Two clear examples are Leviathan by the English philosopher Hobbes (1588-1679) and The Prince, written by the Italian political theorist Machiavelli (1469-1527). Understanding the dark side of human action, however, remains a contemporary theoretical challenge, as Salvador Giner points out in Sociología del Mal (Sociology of Evil).