ABSTRACT
The isolation-attack dynamic described in some detail the rigid, destructive processes that can operate around the role of leadership and which make little sense in any rational way. Often, these processes are taken for granted as either normal or inevitable aspects of the job and people are encouraged to learn to live with them – “if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen”. The effects, however, as we saw in the last chapter, can damage leaders and leave them much less effective than they would otherwise be. Attacks on the leader, especially, can be extremely stressful and draining. Although pervasive and a major factor in determining how successful leadership will be, these dynamics have not received a huge amount of attention in the literature and certainly not within the mainstream writings on leadership. In this chapter, I want to examine in more detail the way leaders get attacked and how these attacks can be handled. Before looking at this, however, let us see what has been written generally about these processes.
