Regarding Toxic Leadership - Lessons from King Saul, Part I
11th October 2005
One of the most intriguing aspects of leadership studies is the phenomenon that is known as toxic leadership (old time readers of this blog may remember my references to my toxic ex-boss, the Dragon Lady). It is a study in itself to try to uncover the reasons, motivations and allure of immoral leaders.
Incidentally, I am currently reading a book that examines this issue, written by Jean Lipman-Blumen, the Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, Claremont Graduate University, entitled, “The Allure Of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses And Corrupt Politicians–and How We Can Survive Them.”
In a future post, I hope to review this book as I have just started reading it. For now, I will make some preliminary comments about this puzzling phenomenon - how on the one hand, we deplore and detest the results of harmful leadership, yet on the other hand, we seem to sometimes be mesmerized by the charisma of these strong personalities. As a springboard to my reflections, I would like to look at Saul (the king, not the persecutor turned preacher).
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