Managing Groups and Teams/Poor Leadership

Introduction
When studying the topic of leadership as a whole, academic thinkers have generally ignored the concept of poor leadership. This was, in fact, a major obstacle to our research. The death of poor leadership research is in stark contrast to the numerous volumes of books that have been written on how to be an outstanding leader. This presents a bit of a paradox—how can we hope to teach good leadership without explaining the pitfalls of bad leadership? To exclude bad leadership from the "conversation and curriculum is misguided, tantamount to a medical school that would claim to teach health while ignoring disease" (Kellerman, 11). Modern leadership literature is biased towards a positive representation of leadership: "[the literature] assumes that people can learn to be leaders and that to be a leader is to be a person of competence and character" (Kellerman, 4). Further, this bias is a recent one. Before the twentieth century, leadership was viewed more as a question of how to control bad leaders than how to create good leaders. For example, Machiavelli did not consider morality in his treatise on leadership. In fact, he stated that “A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise” (Machiavelli). He assumed that brutality was simply a part of leadership and the world. The U.S. Constitution and the protections built into it were primarily designed to stop bad leadership and protect people from it (Kellerman, 6). Nowadays, however, we tend to look for the good in our leaders rather than dealing with the reality of bad leadership. Leadership studies, therefore, reflect the positive associations that modern American business and cultural thinkers have attached to the term rather than the more neutral view that might also be applied. Almost all contemporary work focuses on this as well. The implicit assumption in most leadership literature is that we can learn to be leaders if we try hard enough.

Well, what happens if your leader has not learned to be a good leader? Our goal in this chapter is to expose readers to the varieties and signs of bad leadership, and in so doing better prepare them for the inevitable time when they have to deal with poor leadership in their own lives. Since there are many, many shades of gray to leadership (both good and bad), we cannot hope to address all possible situations in this paper. What we can do, though, is provide the reader with a sense of what to be aware of and on the lookout for, and how to take preventative measure to curb the spread of bad leadership. Ultimately it is up to each individual how to approach a bad leader or deal with an instance of poor leadership.

What Is a Leader?
For the purposes of our discussion, leaders are people who are making decisions on behalf of a team or group. Followers are everyone else in the affected group that gives at least limited deference to the decision maker. This broad definition can encompass small and well defined groups such as sports teams as well as large groups like major corporations. Regardless of the size of the organization there is almost always a leader somewhere in it. In this context, leadership requires followership. Leaders simply do not happen if others fail to follow them. Further, good leadership can be undone by bad followership and good followership is useless without good leadership. Bad leadership and bad followership often go together although the former is often a catalyst for the latter. To understand the bad leader/follower relationship, first we must define what a bad leader is. According to Kellerman, there are seven different types of poor leadership.

Types of Poor Leadership

 * Incompetent
 * “The Leader and at least some followers lack the will or skill (or both) to sustain effective action” (51).
 * An incompetent leader may, for example, not be comfortable with technology or may not have the foresight to see challenges on the horizon. Whatever the issue, this leader’s lack of ability will have a negative affect on the team.  Some followers may take advantage of the leader’s incompetence while others may not perform optimally simply because the leader is incapable of challenging them to do their best.  The end result can be a dysfunctional team where few goals are accomplished.


 * Rigid
 * “The leader and at least some followers are stiff and unyielding” (75).
 * Rigid leaders, unlike incompetent leaders, are capable of doing all that is necessary for the team to succeed. In the case of a rigid leader, the problem lies in the fact that the leader is unwilling to do the things required in order for the team to succeed. “[T]he key to the leader’s evolving role always lies in understanding what the team needs and does not need from the leader in order to perform” (Katzenbach, 133), so leaders that are not willing to adapt and evolve pose a significant threat to their team’s success. An unwillingness to change can be an attractive attribute to some followers and can lead the entire team towards solutions that are unimaginative and even counter productive.


 * Intemperate
 * “The leader lacks self-control and is aided and abetted by followers who are unwilling or unable to effectively intervene” (95).
 * Even the most talented leader can lead a team to foreseeable disaster due to a lack of control. An intemperate leader is like a gifted child who is incapable to controlling his or her basic desires, and thus cannot achieve the higher goals of the team.  The leader’s position of power may be used as a tool to satisfy the leader’s personal desires.  The end result can be devastating to the group through the loss of time and effort on things unrelated to the end goal.


 * Callous
 * “The leader and at least some followers are uncaring or unkind” (119).
 * Compassion and empathy towards fellow team members is what leads to trust. Trust is essential if a team is to “be comfortable being open, even exposed, to one another around their failures, weaknesses, even fears” (Lencioni, 14). Teams must be able to make progress; a good leader must “put team performance first” (Katzenbach, 131). A callous leader will destroy any good will that exists amongst team members leading to a fundamental breakdown of trust.  The result is often that nobody will be willing to take risks or put forward new ideas for fear that the leader (or the entire team) will react with contempt or scorn.


 * Corrupt
 * “The leader and at least some followers lie, cheat or steal” (147).
 * Leaders lead by example. The result of corruption is going to be more corruption.  Different team members will react to this in different ways.  Some may feel alienated, others may take advantage of the situation.  The worst case scenario is that other team members will want to resort to similar behavior as the leader.


 * Insular
 * “The leader and at least some followers minimize or disregard the health and welfare of people outside of the team” (169).
 * This can result in the team becoming the needless enemy of people who could otherwise make valuable contributions to the work of the team. While the team may have a great working relationship internally, members are always going to feel as though they are “under siege.”


 * Evil
 * “The leader and at least some followers commit atrocities” (191).
 * Regrettably some of the most evil people—such as Hitler—have had some of the best leadership skills. Evil leaders present a whole different problem and motivational scheme, and we do not address evil leaders in this paper.  If you are working under an evil leader, we suggest you focus on your own welfare and get out immediately, if possible.

Why Is There Bad Leadership?
Bad leadership can be divided into two main categories; leadership skills and character traits. A leader's character traits will often determine his or her skill set. Leadership skills might include things like communication skills, organization, or responsiveness to others. Character traits would include things like intransigence, intelligence, or anything that is integral to the person and cannot be changed through education and reasonable effort. A leader can enroll in a workshop to improve a skill; on the other hand, extensive counseling might be required to change a character trait. This division of skills and traits has many shades of grey, but is useful for analyzing what is going wrong in a team.

Good followers are distinguished by traits such as being self-directed, independent, and reliable. In this sense good followers make up integral parts of the teams they are involved in. Bad followers, by contrast, "are weak and dependent, and they refuse in any significant way to commit or contribute to the group" (Kellerman, 33). How followers act can be analyzed through Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In essence, every follower is constantly weighing the benefit of following against the benefit of not following. For every person there is a point when the benefit they derive is outweighed by the harm that is caused to them from their current course. At this point followers are likely to try to change their situation.

This reality is encompassed in the behavior of followers. Followers will go along with bad leaders who fulfill their needs. If safety is the primary concern and a greedy tyrant can provide it, then followers are likely to consider that situation an acceptable one. But why would people in less extreme situations fail to act? They might not want to rock the boat. "Getting along by going along" (Kellerman, 23) is the primary goal in these cases. Someone with a steady job—under a terrible leader—who needs the job would have an incentive not to risk his career. Going along with bad leadership sometimes simplifies our lives and makes things easier. This may be the case even when we know something is wrong in the abstract (Kellerman, 24). We might look at the political decisions of many people across the world as an example of this type of thinking, such as those who have chosen in the past to follow leaders such as Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, or Saddam Hussein. Following bad leaders may help to "quell our uncertainty" as Kellerman puts it (24). Leadership can help to eliminate the dissonance that we might otherwise encounter, even if leadership is flawed. Bad leaders may provide benefits to the group as well, such as order, work, or identity (Kellerman, 24). These are in addition to the benefits that the individual receives and in some cases might override them. We as groups are dependent on leaders to organize us. It may therefore be inconvenient to throw them out, and risky to everyone involved (Kellerman, 25). The interdependence we see in teams also occurs more generally between leaders and followers. It is bad followers that allow, and even encourage, bad leaders. If we are to stem the tide of poor leadership, we must exert effort at the follower level as well.

Cost-Benefit and Skill-Trait Analysis
At the core, we as followers make decisions based on a simple analysis of the costs and benefits. Everyone will follow to a certain point beyond which they are unlikely to continue to do so. This point is different for everyone. As followers, therefore, we need to keep in mind how well the team is doing and how it affects us. Almost everyone is engaged in a continual cost-benefit analysis of their actions. We suggest bringing this analytical perspective to the forefront when analyzing groups and teams. When analyzing the leader, it is appropriate to ask whether the problem stems from character traits or leadership skills. Followers should question what their commitment to the team is, what rewards it brings, what potential costs exist, and what the likelihood of success is. Finally, a follower needs to have a good sense of his or her relative power within the organization. Followers are capable of making informed decisions about their own future and their current situation, but only if they are armed with all the relative information about the situation.

Followers must start by figuring out if the offending action on the part of the leader is caused by a character trait or poor leadership skills. Often the direct cause of the problem may be a poor leadership skill while the underlying cause of this poor skill is a character trait. The answer to this question is likely to determine how the problem can be addressed. A character trait is almost certainly beyond the ability of a follower in a group to address. In this case, followers need to simply continue to a basic cost-benefit analysis of the situation to decide what to do. Some problems may be possible to manage or avoid, but others may be so egregious that the follower is compelled to leave the team or organization.

A problem stemming from poor leadership skills may have a more manageable solution, but followers must be realistically aware of what is required to change the skill. As in the case of problems stemming from character traits, there are no clear answers. Followers must simply evaluate the situation to the best of their abilities and continue from there. For example, a follower may be faced with a manager who constantly questions them about their use of time. While this is a direct problem with a specific way of managing people, it is probably caused either by a lack of management training or the manager’s insecurity about his or her position and the work of the other members of the organization. The follower in this case should attempt to ascertain where the problem is originating from.

After figuring out exactly what the problem is, followers can continue with a cost-benefit analysis. Followers in an organization need to ask themselves what benefits they are getting and what they might lose if they choose to change their behavior. When contemplating change, followers should also be willing to look at the new situation and recognize that there is a point where they will no longer participate. These situations vary among people and contexts, but each follower should make a conscious effort to define his or her own limits. For example, a player on a recreational soccer team will probably stop playing if she breaks her leg, but not if she skins her knee. In the case of a broken leg, it is more important to get to a doctor than to finish out the soccer game. The employee in the previous example might decide that the real issue is that the manager has no leadership skills and is insecure about this. In this case the employee would be forced to evaluate the manager’s possible reaction to suggestions that they get more training or change responsibilities. These situations both illustrate the type of analysis that must take place.

Followers may decide that the current situation may be unsatisfactory but they are unwilling to walk away. In this case, the goal changes from effecting change on the part of the leader to simply finding a balance where the situation is acceptable in some sense. This boils down to simply asking if the situation is tolerable—at least for the time being—and managing oneself and others to minimize damage or discomfort. Followers should also be looking to do things that will increase their relative benefits or decrease the costs for other actions. This will increase power relative to other people in the organization.

This is only a framework for analyzing choices. Each situation will be different, but this type of cost-benefit analysis will give team members a good sense of how things really are. Followers, especially good followers, should be continually evaluating other people’s actions and their own place within a situation, group or organization.

What Should You Do if You Encounter Bad Leadership?
Working in a situation dominated by poor leadership can be frustrating and intimidating. If team members are not confident in their leader, what should they do? This is one of the most difficult questions to answer, since there are no easy or clear answers. The best we can hope to do is provide a framework for thinking through these complex issues and devising an approach that is likely to be effective. Hopefully you have already begun to understand what sort of thinking must take place in these complex and delicate situations.

Perhaps the most proactive stance to take is to hold our leaders responsible for their actions and/or misconduct. Followers should “seek to effect institutional changes that will make leaders more responsible and accountable” (Kellerman, 242). This could include implementing a system of checks and balance (restrictions on the leader’s power), and should probably also include—if the team is a corporate one—strengthening the board of directors. In order to ensure that the board exercises sufficient oversight, boards should “consider reforms such as: establishing a governance committee; …dividing the responsibilities of the chair of the board from those of the chief executive officer; and opening regular channels of communication to those on the outside” (Kellerman, 242). Followers can also act as watchdogs themselves, reporting fraud or negligence when they see it. It should be noted here that employees should watch out for themselves in the case of fraud—if an employee is involved in fraud, even at a minute level (such as knowing about it and not reporting it), he or she is likely to be brought down with the major players; this is an added incentive to monitor leaders and report illegal activity immediately (Maher, lecture).

In addition to taking action, followers can help prevent bad leadership simply by being aware and prepared. Followers should be skeptical of what their leaders say and do. Leaders are real people, and subject to the same human downfalls and errors in judgment we all are. Followers must empower themselves, so that if the time comes they will be able to take a stand and halt or deter bad leadership. According to Kellerman, “people who think of themselves as followers don’t usually think of themselves as powerful. But they are or…can be” (239).

A good way to achieve empowerment is to band together; as we all know, there is strength in numbers. Followers should seek information from people other than the leader in order to gather “correct and complete information” (Kellerman, 241). If a follower (or group of followers) does decide to take action, collective action is best. Collective action could come in the form of a meeting to discuss strategies or “getting a small group of people together to talk to the boss” (Kellerman, 241). This is far preferable to speaking with the boss alone (at least regarding the poor quality of his or her leadership), and will help to prevent bullying or coercive groupthink. In some organizations, going over the boss’s head is seen as politicking and inappropriate—we leave it to followers to decide what is appropriate and manageable in their own group or corporation. If nothing else, having a group of people who are in agreement aids in getting complaints heard and in substantiating claims of bad leadership. It also reduces a single employee’s chances of getting hung out to dry, so to speak.

As you may have experienced (or may be experiencing now), it can be extremely difficult to resolve these states of affairs (and improve or oust bad leaders) once the team or situation is already underway. If your organization does not have guidelines or conflict management channels in place, it can be near impossible to even approach your leader regarding his or her behavior—let alone change it. With this in mind, we recommend that every organization employ some sort of ombudsman, employee rights activist, or conflict manager for just such occasions. This position—or positions—would be responsible for handling disputes, especially those involving management. They could provide guidelines for approaching a problematic leader, and could even mediate the discussion. This position would ensure that employees would not be punished for bringing these situations or problems to light. There should also be clear lines of communication, so that followers and leaders know who to talk to regarding any concerns they do have. If we are to eradicate bad leadership, followers must be able to feel safe addressing their concerns. If your organization does not yet have an ombudsman or a similar position, we suggest you strive to implement one—before you need one.

While there cannot be an exact prescription of what to do in any given scenario, we hope that this chapter provides new and comprehensive ways of analyzing and approaching the problem of ineffective or bad leadership. We cannot tell you exactly what to do, because every leader, every follower and every situation is different. The main thing to remember is that “once they’re entrenched, bad leaders seldom change or quit of their own volition. This means it’s up to us to insist either on change—or on an early exit” (Kellerman, 243). While it is of course best to prevent bad leadership from occurring in the first place (if possible), there are a number of ways to slow or stop it. If your efforts to improve poor leadership meet with blank stares—or worse yet, retaliation—it may be time to perform another cost-benefit analysis and decide if this organization is really right for you.

Conclusions
Every person who joins a team makes a decision to be a part of that team and has at least some form of commitment to the team’s goals. Teams frequently have complex dynamics that team members need to be aware of from the beginning. It is useful for people to ask clarifying questions of themselves, of other team members, and of the leader—at the inception of the team and as the team progresses. Some or all of these may seem like common sense, but they need to be asked nonetheless.


 * Is there a clear and elevating goal? Can the team leader express it?
 * To what degree are other team members and I committed to the goals of the team? How has the leader influenced this?
 * Do I get along with other team members? Are poor relationships a result of poor leadership?
 * Have team rules been created, and are they being followed? Is the team leader supporting this?
 * What methods of conflict resolution are in place? Does the leader act as a mediator between team members, does the leader defer to another mediator when there is conflict between a member of the team and the leader?

The answers to these questions should provide clues as to where any dysfunction is occurring. Followers can then choose to act as they see fit for the situation at hand. We advise all team members to analyze their teams and their leaders frequently and, if possible, to institute measures early to control and prevent bad leadership. If frameworks and communication channels are in place early on, it will be much easier to address concerns if and when they do occur. We regret that we are not able to offer conclusive advice for specific situations or types of poor leadership, but there is so much room for interpretation that we would not feel comfortable doing so. We hope to have given the reader an idea of what to expect from a poor leader, and ways to approach the situation and the leader to determine the most appropriate course of action.

Definition of a bad leader: A bad leader is someone who, through either character traits or leadership skills, is preventing the group from achieving its goal.
=Introduction= In doing our research for this paper, one of the major obstacles that we faced was the limited amount of literature available on the topic of poor leadership. The dirth of poor leadership research is in stark contrast to the numerous volumes of books that have been written on how to be an outstanding leader. This presents a bit of a paradox--how can we hope to teach good leadership without explaining the pitfalls of bad leadership? To exclude bad leadership from the "conversation and curriculum is misguided, tantamount to a medical school that would claim to teach health while ignoring disease" (Kellerman, 11). Our goal in this chapter is to expose readers to the varieties and signs of bad leadership, and in so doing better prepare them for the inevitable time when they have to deal with poor leadership in their own lives. Pemarino 03:52, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

What is a Leader?
Leaders are, for the purposes of our discussion, whomever is making decisions. Followers are everyone else in the affected group. This broad definition can encompass small and well defined groups such as sports teams as well as large groups like major corporations. Irrespective of the size of the organization there is almost always a leader somewhere in it. In this context, leadership requires followership. Leaders simply do not happen if others fail to follow them. Further, good leadership can be undone by bad followership and good followership is useless without good leadership. Bad leadership and bad followership often go together.

''I think we should come up with a clearer definition of leadership here. There are teams were someone with higher authority decides to create the team, endows some individual with authority and that person becomes the official team leader. In other cases you have a sitution where there is no individual who is endowed with that authority and the leader evolves through a combination of things (situation, persuasiveness, power, etc.)'' Aburda 22:19, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

What seperates a team leader from other members of the team?
Every team has different roles that its various members assume. Often times within those roles individuals will 'commit' acts of leadership even though they are not the designated leader. For the purpose of this paper, we are concerned with teams that have a designated leader who has been granted formal authority and accountability for the team. In this sense, everyone who is not vested with that authority can be considered a "normal" member of the team.

This section needs a good deal of work Aburda 22:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Non-Leaders - Motivated and Unmotivated towards change
By nature, followers (or non-leaders) compose the majority of any team. Followers "range from those who are apathetic to those who are deeply committed," so it is important not to lump them into one homogeneous grouping.Pemarino 04:24, 3 June 2006 (UTC)] On a team where there is poor leadership, we classify the other members of the team into two categories. There are those who are not motivated for change, i.e. those who are attempting to maintain the status quo, and there are those who are going to be proactive in trying to change things. This paper is intended for those who are motivated for change, those team members who, for whatever reason, are in a position of neither being able to walk away from the team nor to ignore (or taking advantage of) the poor performance by the leader. The motivations of the two different types of team members in either case can be a result of many different factors. A team member may be complacent with the existing state of things simply because he or she has already made a strong attempt to reform the leader's behavior and has been severely "punished" as a result. In contrast, a proactive team member may be entirely motivated by the fact that he or she has too much money riding on the success of the team to be complacent. For the practical purposes of this paper, we do not concern ourselves with the nature of the motivation--only the fact that an individual is trying to improve the team's performance.

Leadership Traits (or lack of them)
Bad leadership can be divided into two main categories; leadership skills and character traits. Leadership skills might include things like communication skills, organization, or responsiveness to others.  Character traits would include things like stubborness, intelligence, or anything that is integral to the person and cannot be changed through education and reasonable effort. A leader can enroll in a workshop to improve a skill, on the other hand, extensive counseling is required to change a character trait. This division of skills and traits has many shades of grey, but is a useful paradigm for starting to analyze what is going wrong in a team. A leader's character traits will often determine their skill set.

we need a new example here, didn't like the one about stubborness and disorganized Aburda 22:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

16 Positive Leadership Traits (Lorber)

 * Strong personal discipline
 * High self-esteem - accepting and learning to like yourself
 * Unwavering integrity
 * The art of persistance
 * The will to finsh stronger than you start
 * Decisiveness -- results oriented
 * Focus on priorities
 * A sense of urgency
 * Still listening and learning
 * A risk taker -- not afraid to fail
 * A feeling of being lucky
 * A commitment to excellence
 * enthusiastic -- not "grown up"
 * A sense of greatness
 * A dedication to making the world a bit better
 * A strong and active faith in god or some other power

The Positive Bias in Leadership Studies
Modern leadership literature is biased towards a positive representation of leadership. As Barbara Kellerman notes "(The literature) assumes that people can learn to be leaders and that to be a leader is to be a person of competence and character"(Kellerman, p.4) Further, this is a recent bias. Leadership studies have been driven by the ascendence of business education in the United States over the last 100 years. Before the twentieth century, leadership was viewed more as a question of how to contral bad leaders than how to create good leaders. Machiavelli did not consider morality in his treatise on leadership. He rather assumed that there would be brutality and dealt with the world as such. The U.S. Constitution and the protections built into it were primarily designed to stop bad leadership and protect people from it. (Kellerman, p.6) We, however, tend to look for the good in our leaders rather than dealing with the reality of bad leadership. Leadership studies, therefore, reflects the positive connotations that modern American business and cultural thinkers have attached to the term rather than the more neutral view that might also be applied. Almost all contemporary work focuses on this as well. The implicit assumption in most leadership literature is that we can learn to be leaders if we try hard enough.

Patrickward 03:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Why do followers go along?
Good followers are distinguished by traits such as being self-directed, independent, and reliable. In this sense good followers make up integral parts of the teams they are involved in. Bad followers, by contrast, "are weak and dependent, and they refuse in any significant way to commit or contribute to the group" (Kellerman, 33). How followers act can be analyzed through Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In essence, every follower is constantly judging the benefit of following with the benefit of not following. For every person there is a point when the benefit they derive is outweighed by the harm that is caused to them from their current course. At this point followers are likely to do something to change their situation.

Need to insert a picture of Maslow's Hierarchy here I have one, if Aaron knows how to get it in herePemarino 05:38, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

This reality is encompassed in the behavior of followers. Followers will go along with bad leaders who fulfill their needs. If safety is the primary concern and a greedy tyrant can provide it, then followers are likely to consider that situation an acceptable one. But why would people in less extreme situations fail to act? They might not want to rock the boat. "Getting along by going along" (Kellerman, 23) is the primary goal. Someone with a steady job--under a terrible leader--who needs the job would have an incentive to manage in such a way that he does not risk his career. Going along with bad leadership simplifies our lives and makes things easier. This may be the case even when we know something is wrong in the abstract (Kellerman, 24). A good example of this is the Milgram experiment at Stanford. Should we describe the experiment? It may help to "quell our uncertainty" as Kellerman puts it (24). Leadership can help to eliminate the dissonance that we might otherwise encounter, even if leadership is flawed. Bad leaders may provide benefits to the group as well, such as order, work, or identity (Kellerman, 24). These are in addition to the benefits that the individual receives and in some cases might override them. We as groups are dependent on leaders to organize us. It may therefore by inconvenient to throw them out. It may also be risky to everyone involved (Kellerman, 25).

The interdependence we see in teams also occurs more generally between leaders and followers. It is bad followers that allow, and even encourage, bad leaders. If we are to stem the tide of poor leadership, we must exert effort at the follower level as well. Pemarino 05:38, 3 June 2006 (UTC) I want this in this section, but need to rework some things to make it fit.

Problems with Leaders--can we solve them?
Patrickward 05:25, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Character Flaws--Take a look at Kellerman, p.19. She would view these as traits, such as greed for something.
 * Politically Motivated
 * Greed and Corruption
 * Andy Fastow discussion by Kellerman is a good example of this. She discusses how Fastow was both corrupt and how he had surrounded himself with others who were corrupt and profited personally. (Kellerman, p.151-155).  Especially interesting is the notes about whistle-blowers, where she points out that doing this puts personal safety at risk and exposes people to social pressure(Kellerman, p. 154)
 * Juan Antonio Samaranch, as noted below, might fit in here as well.
 * Malice
 * These are all tendencies that do not reflect the actual skills of the leader but rather the underlying motivation behind what they are doing. Patrickward 03:26, 31 May 2006 (UTC))
 * Bad Leadership Skills
 * Unclear Vision
 * Example of Juan Antonio Samaranch, who lost the vision of the olympics.(Kellerman, p. 58-67)
 * In this case, the IOC Chair failed to provide a clear and elevating goal after the Olympic Movement had been rescued from its financial problems. This, combined with an unwillingness to manage the organization, eventually lead to the scandals we associate with the olympics.
 * In this example, Kellerman notes on pages 67-70, how the followers in this case misbehaved as well. In general, people remained loyal because they had been appointed and didn't want to make a fuss.Patrickward 04:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Kellerman suggests that this was a strategic rather than tactical failure. The IOC became obsessed with only one goal and forgot the others.  (Kellerman,p.73)
 * "If the ideal leader is able to communicata, mobilize, collaborate, and make good decisions, leaders who are unwilling or unable to employ such skills are less likely to perform well than their better-disposed and better-endowed counterparts."(Kellerman, p.33)
 * Bad People Skills
 * Giuliani described as "distant, cold, and callous" (Kellerman, p. 120)
 * problems with african-american community
 * central problem of Amadou Diallo shooting and his response to it.
 * Leona Helmsley anecdotes (Kellerman, p. 125)
 * Al Dunlap and Sunbeam
 * discussion on pages 137-142. Comments about Price on 141 are most interesting.

What to DO about bad leaders
Working in a situation dominated by poor leadership can be frustrating and intimidating. If team members are not confidant in their leader, what should they do? This is one of the most difficult questions to answer, since there are no easy or clear answers. The best we can hope to do is provide a framework for thinking through these complex issues and devising an approach that is likely to be effective.

Perhaps the most proactive stance to take is to hold our leaders responsible for their actions and/or misconduct. Followers should “seek to effect institutional changes that will make leaders more responsible and accountable” (Kellerman, 242). This could include implementing a system of checks and balance (restrictions on the leader’s power), and should probably also include—if the team is a corporate one—strengthening the board of directors. In order to ensure that the board exercises sufficient oversight, boards should “consider reforms such as: establishing a governance committee;…dividing the responsibilities of the chair of the board from those of the chief executive officer; and opening regular channels of communication to those on the outside” (Kellerman, 242). Followers can also act as watchdogs themselves, reporting fraud or negligence when they see it. It should be noted here that employees should watch out for themselves in the case of fraud—if an employee is involved in fraud, even at a minute level (such as knowing about it and not reporting it), he or she is likely to be brought down with the major players; this is an added incentive to monitor leaders.

In addition to taking action, followers can help prevent bad leadership simply by being aware and prepared. Followers should be somewhat skeptical of what their leaders say and do. Leaders are real people, and subject to the same human downfalls and errors in judgment we all are. Followers should empower themselves, so that if the time comes they will be able to take a stand and halt or deter bad leadership. According to Kellerman, “people who think of themselves as followers don’t usually think of themselves as powerful. But they (we) are or…can be” (239).

A good way to achieve empowerment is to band together; as we all know, there is strength in numbers. Followers should seek information from people other than the leader in order to gather “correct and complete information” (Kellerman, 241). If a follower (or group of followers) does decide to take action, collective action is best. Collective action could come in the form of a meeting to discuss strategies or “getting a small group of people together to talk to the boss” (Kellerman, 241). This is far preferable to speaking with the boss alone (at least regarding the poor quality of his or her leadership), and will help to prevent bullying or coercive groupthink. If nothing else, having a group of people who are in agreement aids in getting complaints heard or in substantiating claims of bad leadership. It also reduces a single employee’s chances of getting hung out to dry, so to speak.

While there cannot be an exact prescription of what to do in any given scenario, we hope that this chapter provides new and comprehensive ways of analyzing and approaching the problem of ineffective or bad leadership. The main thing to remember is that “once they’re entrenched, bad leaders seldom change or quit of their own volition. This means it’s up to us to insist either on change—or on an early exit” (Kellerman, 243). While it is best to prevent bad leadership from occurring in the first place (if possible), there are a number of ways to slow or stop it. Pemarino 07:28, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Cost/Benefit Analysis of Following the Leader
Patrickward 03:02, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

At it's core, we as followers make decisions based on a simple analysis of the costs and benefits. Everyone will follow to a certain point but beyond that point they are unlikely to continue to do so. This point by definition will be different for everyone.Patrickward 02:53, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Preparation for Team Membership
Every person who joins a team makes a decision to be a part of that team and has at least some form of commitment to the teams goals. Teams frequently have complex dynamics that team members need to be aware of from the beginning. It is useful for people to ask clarifying questions of both themselves, other members and the leader at the inception of the team and as the team progresses. Some or all of these may seem like common sense, but they need to be asked nonetheless.
 * Is there a clear and elevating goal? Can the team leader express it?
 * To what degree am I and other team members committed to the goals of the team? How has the leader influenced this?
 * Do I get along with other team members? Are poor relationships a result of poor leadership?
 * Have team rules been created, are they being followed? Is the team leader supporting this?
 * What methods of conflict resolution are in place? Does the leader act as a mediator between team members, does the leader defer to another mediator when there is conflict between a member of the team and the leader?

''I changed this from an analysis of what you ask before you join a team, to what a team member sho ask while on a team. I could imagine having a section on each of these questions where if the answer the person finds is bad then what to do about it, particularly if somehow the problem lies with leadership'' Aburda 23:00, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Conclusion
=Referrences=

"Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense" by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 2006

 * "Not only do leaders overestimate their positive effects on followers, the belief that leaders ought to be in control is a dangerous half-truth because when they weild too much influence and control over followers, bad things often happen to their companies and their employees. No leader is omnicient." (198)
 * "Leaders make mistakes--all people do. But to the extent leaders exert tremendous control over their organizations, there are few or no checks or balances to reign in the errors.  Most corporate disasters and financial scandals, including those perpetrated by Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow at Enron, Al Dunlap at Sunbeam, Hank Greenberg at the large insurer AIG, and Dennis Koslowski at Tyco, happened not simply because these people were greedy, immoral, or unethical people, but because such people were in leadership positions with so much control that no one could challenge them or raise questions.  Placing so much control in the hands of a single individual violates the principle of checks and balances, a principle designed to ensure that any single individual, no matter how mistaken or how flawed, cannot do unlimited damage." (199)
 * "Another problem arises when leaders have excessive control. One of the most persistant and powerful social psychological processes is that of commitment--we are more likely to carry through on decisions we have made and are therefore committed to.  When leaders make decisions for us or on our behalf, they think the decisions are better--after all, they made them--but the rest of the people have no investment in actually carrying through on actions and choices they had no part in making." (199)
 * "In a perfect world, leaders would seek out and find the best evidence, and never implement policies and practices that clashed with sound eveidence. But we don't live in a perfect world.  Unfortunately, as we've seen, many managers and other employees face pressures to do things that aren't only untested, but are known to be ineffective.  In such cases, a challenge--a genuine moral dilemma--can arise because if they follow orders from superiors, people can knowingly harm their organizations, colleagues, and customers.  We hesitate to recommend what might be called evidence-based misbehavior.  But a case can be made that when leaders are wrong--and people don't have the power to reverse their commands--that ignoring orders, delaying action, or implementing programs incompletely may be best for all involved." (230)
 * "If you can't openly refuse or discreetly ignore a bad policy, a related practice is to drag your feet as long as possible, and when you can't do that any longer, implement it in as few corners of the organization as possible. Again, it is far better to make and implement sound decisions, but a fact of organizational life is that more powerful people sometimes require their underlings to do dumb things." (231)
 * "We've also seen that great leaders, including George Washington, didn't learn their jobs without making mistakes and that even the most experienced leaders will continue to make mistakes. The difference is that bad leaders make the same mistakes again and again, while good leaders, who create conditions for learning, make new and different mistakes.  And it is the leaders of large companies who admit when they make mistakes, and show that they've learned from it, who help their companies perform best over the long haul, not those who only take credit for good news and blame others or bad luck for setbacks." (233)
 * "The most succinct and useful advice we know about how to handle failure comes from medicine, where the motto is forgive and remember. Forgive, so that people are willing to talk about and admit the errors that are inevitable in any human endeavor, and remember, so that the same mistakes don't occur repeatedly.  Organizations that forgive and forget keep making the same mistakes over and over again.  Organizations thet remember--but blame, stigmatize, and punish losers--create a climate of fear.  So the game becomes avoiding personal punishment and humiliation, not helping others learn or fixing the system.  Forgiving but remembering failure promotes learning without creating a climate of fear.  Remembering also helps because when the same people keep making the same mistakes again and again (and others don't), it is a sign that these people need more training or are better suited for a different job." (233)

"Organizational Perception Management" by Kimberly D. Elsbach. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, 2006

 * "...social psychological research suggests that maintaining such stereotypical images may require people to engage in behaviors that counter what we know about effective leadership (Cialdini, 1984; Greenberg, 1990). That is, our stereotypic conceptions of strong leadership may be inconsistant with what effective leaders actually do.  These paradoxes, or 'stereotype traps' may mean that short-term gains in leadership images (and repair of organizational images) may, ultimately, give way to long-term ineffectiveness in leadership performance." (156)
 * "...leaders who attempt to convince others that they have strong, central control over their organizations may also convince audiences (and themselves) that the views and input of others are neither important nor necessary for decision making. In turn, the expertise of advisors may eventually be withdrawn.  Over time, leaders themselves may begin to believe their own perception management and fall prey to illusions of control (i.e., unrealistically high perceptions of their degree of control over the outcomes of events; Langer, 1975) and overconfidence (i.e., unrealistically high perceptions of their likelihood of obtaining desired outcomes; Oskamp, 1965).  If such perceptions are contradictory to what the public perceives (i.e., the public perceives the leader to lack control based on a scandalous event), then continued expressions of control may be seen as both arrogance and hubris and may ultimately lead to loss of respect and trust for the leader." (157)

"Social Groups in Action and Interaction" by Charles Stangor. Psychology Press, New York, 2004

 * "...a poor leader can lead a group into ruin." (156)
 * "Thus leadership does not represent so much of a power struggle as a mutually cooperative and beneficial relationship in which the goal of the leader is to work with others to reach common goals (Bass, 1985; Tyler & Lind, 1992)." (168)
 * "One approach studies the characteristics of people that allow them to emerge as leaders, under the assumption that some people are born with the personality necessary to be a good leader whereas others are not." (168)
 * "According to this approach, a leader is a good leader if the followers in the group like or respect the leader and feel that he or she is doing a good job. It is useful to consider these two measures separately, because, although they are usually correllated (effective leaders are seen that way by followers), they are not exactly the same." (169)
 * "The leader-member exchange model (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1998) is based on the idea that the leader developes better relationships with some subordinants than with others. and that those who have good relationships with the leader are treated better, get more freedom on the job, and produce high-quality output. The individuals the leader does not get along with, on the other hand, are treated more formally, are given less interesting assignments, and as a result are less satisfied in their positions." (179) -->