Comment on Why do many folks play follow the leader even into adulthood?
hightrix@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Leadership is hard. Really hard. It is very easy to be a bad leader, hence the common perception of bad managers. Everyone can identify bad leadership, but ask someone what makes a good leader. It is hard to define and hard to do.
Leadership also requires taking responsibility for others. Many people do everything they can to avoid responsibility.
Put these two factors together and it becomes pretty obvious why most people shy away from leadership. It is hard and when something goes wrong it is your fault.
For sure, and I failed to really get at this more in the OP, but it’s because of those difficulties that in part made me wonder, “Well, what’s an alternative look like?”
Individual leadership in particular seems primed for either abuse from above or below (i.e. a scapegoat for people’s avoidance of responsibility).
Yep, well said. For OP’s question… It’s pretty common to see a leader bring his whole group with him/her wherever they go and people follow because having a good leader is pretty tough to come by. I know a lot more people loyal to a particular person than a particular company.
whofearsthenight@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Even this I think is a little questionable. People frequently mistake their failures as failure of leadership.
hightrix@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You’re absolutely right. That’s a third point that I could have mentioned. Very good point.
whofearsthenight@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Word. I think you’re correct and I think a big part of things is that leadership truly requires taking responsibility. So they often mistake their own failures as bad leadership because people have a much easier time blaming the problem on anyone but themselves. Talk to just about anyone about why they didn’t get a good review or got fired or got passed by for a promotion, and very rarely do they take ownership of the problem and instead blame just about anything else.
This is also I think tying into your idea that it’s easy to be a bad leader and the common conception of bad managers (especially middle managers.) Bad leaders blame the team or the market or the next level up in management, and rarely take ownership for the failures of the team because again, people just aren’t wired to do that very well.
These sound sort of contradictory, but I think that the ideas can coexist. A person might fail that has a good leader, but if they really are a good leader, they’re going to be asking themselves if they could have done something differently to help that person under them succeed. And if they are a good leader, that person’s failure won’t be allowed to become the team’s failure.