Leadership: Leaders, Followers, Environments

Leadership versus goodness

What is the difference between leadership and goodness? Were Mao, Stalin, and Hitler “leaders” or were they “rulers”? Is toxic leadership an oxymoron? Does leadership refer only to positive or ethical situations?¹² Some writers believe that dictators cannot, by definition, be “leaders.” One puts it this way: “Hitler ruled the German people, but he did not lead them,” because he failed to create “lasting, meaningful opportunities for the pursuit of happiness.”¹³ But this non-neutral, or value-laden, definition is not without problems: just how “lasting” and “meaningful” do the opportunities have to be in order to qualify? As discussed earlier, all leadership is temporary, so “lasting” is a relative concept. A broader, more neutral definition might regard Hitler, Osama bin Laden, Roberto Goizueta (highly regarded, former CEO of Coca-Cola), and Mother Teresa as leaders because they all built constituencies and influenced others to pursue objectives.

To complicate the discussion further, many constructive or positive leaders are not always good, and toxic leaders often do some good things for some of their followers. For example, Mother Teresa, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who worked for the world's poor and was beatified by the Catholic Church, also accepted over $1 million and the frequent use of a private jet from financier Charles Keating. Keating was the principal figure in the U.S. savings and loan scandal of the 1980s.¹⁴ Although Keating was convicted ...