ABSTRACT
Leadership research and writing has previously emphasized qualities and characteristics of what were presumed to be eective leaders. Organizations worldwide spend an estimated $50 billion a year on the development of leaders based on these assumptions (Fulmer & Conger, 2004). Yet many leaders fall short. It has been estimated that over half of the people holding managerial or supervisory positions fail to achieve their organization’s objectives (Hogan, 1994; Hogan & Hogan, 2001). Every reader of this chapter will probably have experienced or observed a bad leader. Although thousands of research articles have discussed traits, styles and behaviors that make leaders eective, many leaders still fail. These failures are attributed to destructive, toxic and dysfunctional behaviors. The fact that so many leaders fail suggests that paying attention to ineective and failed leaders will oer a more complete understanding of leadership and improve the practice of leading (Charan & Colvin, 1999; Clements & Washbush, 1999). This has led to increasing attention being paid to understanding why leaders fail, the dark side of leadership (Hornstein, 1996; Kaiser & Bartholomew, 2014; Kellerman, 2004), including destructive and toxic leadership. Leaders fail because of who they are and how they act, that is, there are normally a number of behavioral issues (Dotlich & Cairo, 2003). It should be noted though that not all failed or awed leaders are necessarily destructive (Finkelstein, 2003). Based on the wide variety of terms used to describe destructive leaders, there are likely to be dierent forms of destructive leadership, conclude Aasland, Skogstad, Notelairs, Nielsen and Einarsen (2010).
