Twisted Leadership

Leadership in a Tangle

Traditional hierarchical, centralized leadership creates organizational quagmires. Most suggestions for improving or replacing it come from so-called thought leaders who lack sufficient grounding in the discipline of leadership. Often, senior executives believe that becoming leaders makes them instantly smarter than their colleagues. Because of their position, they believe their ideas and intentions should take precedence over everyone else’s.

Over time, employees come to see these executives’ true character as bosses rather than as leaders. At that point, these executives – the embodiment of autocratic “leadership disease” – often move on to afflict new organizations. The typical business school curriculum helps these patterns recur. Professors teach their students how much influence those in authority wield over those below them. Many academics support “agency theory,” a paradigm suggesting that most people abuse whatever privileges they enjoy. As a result, people in authority feel they must keep a tight rein on their subordinates.

Other leadership theories – “transactional, transformational, visionary” and “charismatic...