When was the last time you searched Google for "leadership" and "leadership and management"? Well, I did it the other day. I got 166 million results for leadership alone and 195 million for leadership and management. Although not all these millions of articles may be useful, undoubtedly some are.
Now how many leaders do you know ; or rather how many people do you know who claim to be or want to be leaders? Probably a lot! and how many are actually DECENT leaders, probably only a very few or none!
Sometimes bad leaders are harmless, but often they are harmful and they come in different flavours. I believe the worst type are bureaucrats who have made it to leadership position. These people are not only petty, but also lack any sign of creativity. They stifle innovation and new ideas and often are terribly insecure. As bureaucrats they want to please the boss, be it the CEO or the Board.
Any organization that has this kind of person in leadership position will suffer and risks not doing well, mainly because its good human assets will soon be disenchanted and leave or worse still take a back seat driver posture.
How can we circumvent these types of people from killing the creative and dynamic spirit of an organization? How can we prevent that these people enter organizations in the first place?
