Good Ninja - Bad Ninja

Saturday, 22. May 2010 by Ronald T. Brown, Ph.D.

History is full of good and bad leaders - and both types of leaders have provided their own kind of lasting impact. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Winston Churchill all made positive contributions through their leadership.  Others had profound negative effects – Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler each consigned millions of people to their deaths.

** So who has more impact… those who deliver poor leadership, or those who deliver exemplary leadership?

The evidence suggests that the poor/bad leaders “win.”  Researchers routinely find “that 60 to 75 percent of the employees in any organization – no matter what occupational group was involved – report that the worst, or most stressful, aspect of their job is their immediate supervisor.” (American Psychologist)

In addition, research shows that poor leaders drive skilled and motivated people out of their organizations and into the arms of competitors, or perhaps even worse, cause employees to withhold their best efforts while remaining in their current job. For example, a senior Executive was so demoralized by his boss’s stubbornness and poor decisions that he gave up trying to argue, and instead carefully implemented every decision exactly as his controlling and detail-oriented superior instructed.  This Executive learned to take pleasure in how badly things turned out – he called it “engaging in malicious compliance.”

** So what does this mean? All this suggests that avoiding the hiring, or promotion, of a bad leader may be a much more critical/important goal than finding a great leader to head your organization or department. Of course, great leaders offer substantial value – but hiring a bad leader can (and even innocently so) severely damage an organization to such a point that the cost of repairing the damage will be quite extensive – and hard to accomplish – after many of your most effective employees (volunteers, members…) have long since left, or lost their motivation to contribute.

Therefore, choose wisely…