discussion 3762
Answer this question
Within the unethical leadership presentation, I talked a lot about the dark side of leadership and what causes it. One concept that contributes to the dark side is the romance of leadership (the concept that people love leadership and have a need to put their future in a leader’s “capable” hands). What can we do about this romance of leadership and people’s over reliance on leadership? or should we?
and replay for two student
student 1
Yes, we do love listening to leaders because they have power, we think they are right and we are in love with it, it’s human nature! There are many steps that we can take as individuals to become more aware of our surroundings at work and know that romance of leaderships exists. Many were discussed in the on line video lecture, such as acknowledging our dark side and conducting performance appraisals. The human brain is complex, we all have a dark side and have thoughts or ideas that may come off as deceitful or unethical or whatever you want to call them. We don’t like to verbalize these thoughts, but the actions of these might show through eventually. We need to be aware of our dark characteristics so we can start to recognize the dark side in an unethical leader, if the situation comes about. In the work place, performance appraisals should be necessary, no matter the size of the corporation. This can help establish work behaviors that need attended to and avoid the company from falling into an unethical trap of a psychopathic leader. Overall, be aware of what traps you are most likely to fall into, one ethical leader, creates millions of more unethical leaders if they are not caught.
student 2
The very essence of the word “Leadership” signifies that there is a “Leader”. For someone to be a leader, he or she needs followers, otherwise in the technical sense they aren’t a leader. I think people get infatuated with the idea of being influenced by someone they like or their favorite celebrity. They feel that their celebrity holds some clout and want to follow their ideas and teachings to be like them and influence their own followers. In another sense, people who are down on their luck and looking for guidance will look for inspirational speakers or positive attitude activists to improve their life situation. I have been known to seek the counsel of certain professors that specialize in positive thinking and leading with purpose. Heck, the main reason I even considered attending the University of Toledo was because a professor here by the name of Clint Longenecker came to my high school to talk my senior class about, you guessed it, leadership. From what I learned in that talk, I knew I wanted to learn more about leadership, particularly by Dr. Longenecker himself. It took all of my undergrad and first year of grad school before I finally was able to take Dr. Longenecker’s class. I can honestly say, the wait was well worth it. The class changed my whole perspective on life and how to look at it from a positive standpoint even when it’s not always easy to. A really good thing I learned was that you can rely on yourself and not always on the “leader”. So in terms of combating followers over reliance, I do think that people do tend to go overboard and fall into some weirdness. Just look at the blue koolaid guy, I’m blanking on his name. I’m not really sure on how to combat the over infatuation other than trust that the leader doesn’t abuse their power and influence over their followers and educate people to not fall into the trap of their leader.
