Too good to be true?

Abstract

work. We should not however forget that Leaders will be good and bad, smart and dumb, ethical and unethical, so the more that can be done to acknowledge and work with such human vulnerabilities and frailties the better. For the interested reader, the following would provide excellent follow-up material: ‘The Leadership Hubris Epidemic’ (2018) edited by Peter Garrard; ‘The Intoxication of Power’ (2016) edited by Peter Garrard and Graham Robinson; ‘Human Frailties’ (2013) edited by Ronald Burke et al. ‘The Leadership Mystique’ (2001) Manfred Kets de Vries, and ‘Understanding and Recognising Dysfunctional Leadership’ (2017) by Annette Roter. So howmight this varied collection of chapters be of practical value to action learning practitioners, you may well be asking yourself. In many ways is my response because action learning is all about enhancing the potential for constructive, ethical and sustainable organisational change. This involves engaging with, and influencing, others who may well be antagonistic to action learning initiatives. ‘Bad Leadership: Reasons and Remedies’ offers insights into some of the underlying reasons for such resistance. Resistance may have morphed into the varying varieties of toxicity, counter-productive and ‘bad’ leadership profiled in this book. Hopefully understanding – and appreciating more fully – the bases of bad leadership and toxicity outlined will heighten the awareness and sensitivity of the action learning practitioner to such ‘dangers’ both (i) when building action learning relationships with others and (ii) of their own latent susceptibilities towards bad and toxic behaviour. To conclude this, work should be of considerable interest and value to those involved in action learning because of the range and variety of leadership perspectives presented and from the insights it offers into the often convoluted dynamics of executive behaviour.