Introduction

Influence has been called “the essence of leadership” and the one skill “most crucial to the leader’s success”. Scholars in leadership studies have long pointed to excessive self-interest as the source, usually as the sole source, of unethical leadership. But selfishness hardly explains all cases of morally problematic influence—any more than it explains all cases of unethical leadership. Charles Manson and Jim Jones are considered case studies in the use of charisma, and charisma is exalted in theories of transformational leadership, which includes both “idealized influence” and “inspirational motivation”. In the early twentieth century, Dale Carnegie famously wrote that leadership success requires knowing the “fundamental techniques in handling people”. The hard side of leadership sometimes encourages “looking through” people on the way to goal achievement. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.