Ben Rader's Letter

Dear Chancellor Wrighton,

Over the past couple of months I have learned a lot about leadership. I have learned what the difference between a good and a bad leader and who would fall into what category. A good leader needs to fit a couple criteria. First of all, they need to have followers. Without followers one is not a leader. Secondly, they need to take their followers interests into account. Thirdly, they need to keep their objective in mind. Lastly, they need to do everything in their power not to alienate certain followers even at the cost of completing their objective. According to what we have read bad leaders can develop based on a couple of issues. Groupthink, intemperance, ignorance, arrogance and over-identification can all lead to bad leadership. Most of all, a good leader needs to take responsibility for their actions. Bad leadership can be prevented by a leader understanding his job, doing it to the best of their ability, and always keeping what their followers want in mind. Effective leadership is therefore fostered by effective followership.

In order for you to be an effective leader you must make a couple of changes in your actions. You must realize that alumni givers and administrators are not the only ones affected by your decisions, students are as well. Even though it is not in your job description to respect student’s wishes, you must hear them out. Students are the most effected by your decision, and, even if not by their own choice, they are effectively followers of yours. In order for you to be a good leader you must understand this and take it into account.

Sincerely,

Ben Rader

dear chancellor...

Dear Chancellor Wrighton,

This past semester I, Jack J. Sun, studied a course titled “Bad Leadership”. As its name implies, the course highlights the negative side of leadership. We explored failures in leadership through a variety of fields, such as business, politics, and education. The class has allowed me to see leadership from new perspectives.

One of the fundamental questions in the class is the definition of leadership. What is good leadership? What is bad leadership? There is no definitive answer; everyone in the class held unique positions to the question. I define good leadership as the process in which leaders harness the desires of their followers in order to reach a commonly desired goal. Bad leadership is a failure to reach that goal.

The course has shown me various ways in which bad leadership occurs; in other words, there are many ways in which a group fails to accomplish their objective. For example, leaders may suffer from the effects of narcissism, incompetence, or intemperance. Any of these traits can hamper a group from reaching its goals. Additionally, there are many ethical issues that leaders should consider in guiding their groups. For instance, leaders should consider how their actions affect the people who are not explicitly in the group. This phenomenon is the most interesting concept I learned in the course. It is often too easy for leaders to neglect the well being of non-members.

Thus, I recommend you to avoid practicing insular leadership. When making future decisions, consider how it will affect the larger community of St. Louis, of Missouri, or the United States. Stay classy, Chancellor Wrighton.

Sincerely,

Jack Sun

Father Cornello in Fullmetal Alchemist

In the first two episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist, the series’ protagonists Edward and Alphonse Elric come across the desert town of Lior. The people there are deeply religious and insular. Their leader, Father Cornello, performs “miracles” that have allowed them to survive the harsh desert conditions. When the brothers visit Father Cornello, however, they discover he is using alchemy, but breaking its fundamental law, the Law of Equivalent Exchange (for a real-world analogy, think Enron’s mark-to-market accounting scheme). The people of Lior, however, are not keen to hear the brothers criticize their leader.

Ed and Al eventually discover Father Cornello’s motives, which identify him as a very toxic leader. The people of Lior are archetypal benign followers – both types A and P that were discussed in The Allure of Toxic Leaders– and depend on Father Cornello for everything. Father Cornello recognizes this, remarking to Edward, “as long as I’m bringing them happiness what do they care where it comes from?” He also, as evidenced by his referral to them as his “mindless pawns,” does not care one way or another about what happens to his followers, they are only a means to an end. That end, as it turns out, is world domination. Promising the people that he can resurrect them and their loved ones if they die (which is impossible and forbidden to attempt in alchemy), Cornello seeks to raise an “army . . . with a holy call” to conquer the surrounding areas and eventually the world. Of course, since he cannot really resurrect them, this will lead to the deaths and suffering of his followers, but Cornello does not seem concerned by this. Moreover, when his most faithful follower, a girl who has lost her family and fiancée, befriends the brothers and disobeys Cornello, he attempts to have her killed, demonstrating further his lack of regard for his followers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRNRNma9pXs&feature=fvsr

Ben Rader's Response

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMgyi57s-A4

I chose this video because it is an exaggerated example of incompetent leadership. Phil Davison is doing a few things to make an absolute lunatic of himself. First of all, he is making the race for the Stark County Treasury Republican Nomination seem like it is the race for control over the entire world. Secondly, he claims to have a degree in communication, but is instead screaming at people without a logical flow. His attempts at connecting with his audience go as far as making up an audience member and pretending they finished one of his sentences. The excess he takes in this clip is so excessive that it is comical. He is clearly a great example of an incompetent leader. If he was to win in this race it is clear that his term may not be the most successful. He is far too self-confident, thinking that he has all the answers. He thinks that he can dominate the political atmosphere in a “winner take all” attitude. He also seems to say that he is one with the Republican Party and is not separating his own personal beliefs from that of the political party. While Davidson does not have power yet, assuming he was to win the election, it seems as though he would go ahead and follow with the 7 habits of spectacularly unsuccessful people. Most of all, Phil Davison is a bad leader because he is an absolute nut job that is unable to communicate with people on the most basic level.

The Life and Leadership of Brian

Brian: No, no. Please, please please listen. I've got one or two things to say.
The Crowd: Tell us! Tell us both of them!
Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!
The Crowd: Yes! We're all individuals!
Brian: You're all different!
The Crowd: Yes! We're all different!
Man in crowd: I'm not...
Man in crowd: Shhh!
Brian: You've all got to work it out for yourselves.
The Crowd: Yes! We've got to work it out for ourselves!
Brian: Exactly!
The Crowd: Tell us more!

In this famous scene from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, the titular character Brian is mistaken for the messiah and followed home by a crowd. Brian with the crowd to think for themselves, not seeing the self-contradicting nature of his demand.

Throughout The Life of Brian, Brian serves as an unwilling but benign spiritual leader. His “teachings”, while far from profound, generally are sensible and harmless. However, Brian’s leadership is undermined by the nature of his followers. According to the document “The Allure of Toxic Leaders”, Brian’s followers classify as “Benign type A”. These are followers seeking a vision, any vision. Because they want to be part of some grand scheme, they push the leader into making radical decisions and changes, even when no such changes are called for. Because they believe that Brian is the Messiah, they refuse to question his ideas and continually push him towards “greatness”.

There’s also a lovely moment of groupthink present in the scene: When one man speaks up to say that he’s not different, the man in front of him turns and shushes him. A subtle nod towards bad followership, perhaps?

Jim Jones: Super Bad Leadership

Jim Jones the infamous cult leader of the People’s temple is an example of evil, corrupt, and intemperate leadership. He was corrupt because as a cult leader in the United States he robbed people of their livelihoods and quashed dissent within his flock by weaning people from their blood relatives. He was intemperate in his abuse drugs and numerous affairs with cult members. Jones was evil because after leading 900 of his followers into the jungles of Guyana he didn’t allow them to leave. When reporters came and quickly discovered that people were being kept prisoner he ordered his followers to drink Kool-Aid poisoned with cyanide so that the dark secrets of his community would never to come to light and he would never meet justice for his crimes. Self-interest ruled his decision making. Even though Jones portrayed himself as a man of God and led his followers to believe that he was providing them spiritual guidance he was at best profoundly delusional or at worse sociopathic. Either way he was a skilled manipulator, able to attract and control a large amount of followers. In believing that he was the second coming of Christ Jones also exhibited one of the seven characteristics of unsuccessful people in that he identified too much with his organization.

Jones also demonstrates the fact that even the most promising leaders are susceptible to becoming bad ones. In his youth he was heavily involved in the desegregation Movement in Indiana, supporting Black families and talking to the white families in the neighborhoods where blacks moved to try and convince them not to move away. Jones adopted children of many races as well. His adoptions don’t automatically make him a better person but inter-racial adoptions were unheard of at the time that he did it. Although Jones was a man with promise, he didn’t live up to it, at least not in a positive way. All of his accomplishments have been overshadowed by the mass suicide he presided over in Guyana. Yet without the early accomplishments to establish Jones as a morally good and capable leader he may not have been able to become an infamous one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMlzzymawC0&feature=fvst

Montgomery Burns: Intemperate Leader

If there ever were a Bad Leaders’ Hall of Fame, I would most definitely include none other than Montgomery Burns of The Simpsons. This man exudes intemperate leadership with his despicable nature, feared persona, excessive greed, and poor habits.

The first clip shows us Mr. Burns’ experience with ether on the job. He is anesthetized at the workplace, allowing personal problems and conditions to intersect with his work, which does not bode well for workplace productivity. Then again, when is the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant ever productive? Homer arrives on the scene, prompting even more hallucinations for Burns, and Homer takes this opportunity to get Burns to sign a check sponsoring his newly formed bowling team. As Kellerman states in her article, “Intemperate Leadership,” “it’s not a matter of work being derailed but of work not being done at all.”

The second clip features an insider look into the Burns gubernatorial campaign. Based on the excessive amount of advisers for transforming both Burns and his political opponent, we can assume that he has spent a lot of money on the campaign. Also, based on the numerous episodes demonstrating Burns’ personality, we can also safely assume that no work is being done whatsoever. This election is only an excuse to satiate Burns’ ever-increasing greed for power, a major distraction from the nuclear plant that he supposedly runs.

SUPERBAD and Incompetence

I chose to present a clip from the film SUPERBAD. This clip clearly illustrates a supreme example of incompetent leadership. In this film, to say these police officers perform poorly on their jobs is an understatement. They are just utterly clueless and seem to do everything wrong. In this clip, the police officers do not have the faintest idea of how to properly be a cop. They abuse their power, lack expertise, and the ability to focus. As enforcers of the law, they themselves openly commit offenses. They lie, destroy property, drink and drive, allow someone to utilize their firearms as toys, and even go as far as forcing the bystander, McLovin, to lie in the name of the law in order to save themselves. It is almost unreal how clearly these two men emphasize the characteristics of incompetence.

In the article describing incompetent leadership, it is stated that incompetent leaders can be incompetent in many different ways: “miscalculation to mismanagement, from silliness to stupidity, [and] from careless to callousness.” However, these government workers seem to be incompetent in every way possible. It leads to audience to question how they were able to assume this leadership role in the first place. Even though, they movie is made for entertainment and is meant to be taken as a joke, it brings forth an important issue. Incompetent leaders, like Juan Antonio Samaranch, “lack the skill or will (or both)” to be leaders, but at the end of the day they have assumed these great positions of power and something has to be done to fix not only the problem, but the system that allowed them to climb the step ladder in the first place.

Though I chose to highlight on the intemperance of these characters, they are also prime examples of intemperate and insular leaders. They lack any and all self-control and they have complete disregard for the safety of their followers. All in all, these police officers display numerous characteristics of bad leadership.

Analyzing Bad Leadership in V for Vendetta

I chose this clip from V for Vendetta because it so clearly demonstrates multiple aspects of a bad leader. The man on the screen, Chancellor Sutler, is about as nasty a person as you can find, and bears a striking resemblance to Hitler in both attitude and policy. He runs England with an iron fist, giving people very little freedom and removing anything that may be seen as a threat to his government. In the clip, this comes in the form of the song, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Since it now serves as a reminder to the explosion of the Old Bailey, it may cause people to question the government, so he blacklists it. Additionally, he treats his subordinates poorly, demanding results from them and getting angry at one follow for even mentioning his opinion about the situation. Sutler also delves into the seven habits of unsuccessful leaders, as he believes that he is irreplaceable, and tries to use the media to show that the country needs him for their survival. On a different note, he also shows that he is willing to, and probably often does, blatantly lie to his followers in order to retain their support. This clip furthermore demonstrates the results of having a leader like this. Throughout the clip, the camera pans to each member of Sutler’s cabinet. Almost all of their faces show a look of subtle contempt or anger directed towards the Chancellor.

Media Clip: The Departed

For my media presentation, I chose a clip from The Departed, directed by Martin Scorcese. In The Departed, Jack Nicholson plays Frank Costello, the head of the Irish mafia in South Boston. He is the sole leader of the gang scene in Southie, and exhibits several of the characteristics of a bad leader outlined by Sydney Finkelstein in her “Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful People”.

Despite perhaps being past his prime as a mob leader, Frank refuses to step down, or to look to anyone else for help in his leadership role. This failure as leader and bad “habit” is reminiscent of Finkelstein’s “Habit #3: They think they have all the answers” (Finkelstein, 223). Even when Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) challenges Frank’s status and says that he is becoming washed up and replaceable, Frank refuses to admit weakness or failure.

In addition, Frank clearly exhibits the fourth habit: “They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t 100 percent behind them” (Finkelstein, 226). In my clip, Frank talks about a “rat” in his unit of men, and explains that normally in this situation, he would kill everyone who might be questionable, or who challenged him. Thus, Frank is ready to literally eliminate (by killing) anyone who does not stand behind him.

Frank Costello demonstrates several characteristics of a bad leader in The Departed, including his immense overconfidence, his stubbornness to get help or to step down, and his automatic elimination of any men who do not back him completely.

SOURCES:

Finkelstein, Sydney. "Chapter 9: Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful People." Why Smart Executives Fail: and What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes. New York: Portfolio, 2004. 213-37. Print.

The Departed. Dir. Martin Scorcese. Perf. Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jack Nicholson. Warner Bros., 2006. DVD.

Lex Luther- A Bad Leader

For my movie clip, I chose a scene from Superman Returns. In this clip, the villain of the film, Lex Luthor, displays many of the characteristics of bad leadership. For example, he shows intemperate leadership in that he lacks any form of self-control. He plans on using a stolen Krytponian crystal, which he has combined with Kryptonite, to create a new continent in the Atlantic Ocean. This new continent will cause sea levels to rise drastically, killing billions of people in the process. Then, he plans on selling the land of his new continent for incredibly high prices. Thus, Luthor lacks self-control, as he is willing to do anything for money and power. Moreover, his followers do not intervene to try to stop his destructive plan, instead choosing to help him for personal gain. Also, Luthor displays an extreme form of insular leadership by completely disregarding the health and welfare of any people outside of his small group of followers. Furthermore, he exhibits several of the characteristics of bad leadership revealed in Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful People. For instance, he sees himself as dominating the world. When Lois Lane asks him what he will do when the world reacts to his evil scheme, Luthor simply replies that the world will be unable to stop him due to the advanced alien technology that he possesses. In this manner, he also illustrates another habit of bad leaders: he underestimates major obstacles. Not only does he seem to underestimate the power of the world, but he also underestimates the power of Superman. He believes that Superman will be unable to stop him because his new landmass will be filled with Kryptonite. However, Superman ultimately pushes the landmass into space before it grows to a catastrophic size, almost dying in the process. Thus, Lex Luthor serves as a classic example of bad leadership as his huge ego and intemperance eventually lead to the failure of his “flawless” plan.

Bad leadership in Film and Media: Malory Archer

For the bad leadership in film and media assignment, I chose a clip from FX’s comedy, Archer. The show is set at the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS) in New York City, and the main character is Sterling Archer, the most dangerous spy in the world. He must deal with global espionage; a domineering, hypersexual, late middle-aged mother and boss, Malory Archer; and his ex-girlfriend, Agent Lana Kane.

The character that consistently displays bad leadership is Malory Archer, who is the head of ISIS. She is a comical character: she is a self-centered alcoholic who consistently hatches poorly thought out plans, and she frequently uses the agency’s resources to her personal advantage. She is representative of many of the bad leaderships we studied in classed.

In the video clip, she agrees to allow Hollywood actress Rona Thorne to spend a week shadowing ISIS agents. Thorne’s presence at ISIS compromises the agents’ missions and causes much trouble for ISIS. However, Malory agrees to the request in order to gain a favor from the movie studio; she wants a leading role in a movie. Malory’s action is clearly an example of bad leadership because she is abusing her position of power for personal gain. Additionally, she constantly engages in excessive drinking and inappropriate sexual relationships with her subordinates. These actions show that she is an intemperate leader. At the end of the episode, we discover that the actress Thorne is actually a Russian spy. Malory’s careless mistake of allowing Thorne access to ISIS demonstrates that Malory is an incompetent leader as well.