The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians--And How We Can Survive Them

by Jean Lipman-Blumen

Book Overview

Toxic leaders--such as Ken Lay at Enron or Al Dunlap ("Chainsaw Al") at Sunbeam, or Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia--have always been with us, and many books explain what makes them tick. But in The Allure of Toxic Leaders, Jean Lipman-Blumen explains what makes the followers tick, exploring why we tolerate--and remain steadfastly loyal to--leaders who are destructive to their organizations, their employees, their nations, and their constituents...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195166345
• ISBN13: 9780195166347
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 303 Pages
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 9.3" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Another Essential Book on Leadership by Lipman-Blumen

Not content with having revolutionized how we think about leadership with "Hot Groups" and "Connective Leadership," Lipman-Blumen has now set her sights on why "toxic leaders" can be so successful and why they can be so hard to remove. Almost all of us can relate to these leaders, ones whose toxicity is unquestioned even as their hold on their followers is intense. Often, their followers can even seem nostalgic when these leaders are finally chased out. Certainly this book is as timely as it is insightful. Read this one and her two other books.

Highly Recommended!

This intriguing, intellectual study of disastrous leadership offers a courageous interpretation of corporate scandal and political folly. Amoral leaders are not entirely to blame, Jean Lipman-Blumen argues. Rather, followers enable misguided leaders to rise to power and stay there. Her analysis applies psychological principles to Adolf Hitler's Germany and Jeff Skilling's Enron (not exactly parallel, but you get the idea) and concludes that toxic leaders' followers are willing victims who allowed misguided bosses to appeal to their basest instincts. While Lipman-Blumen's assertions are startling, she makes a compelling case written in dense but readable prose with intriguing detail. We suggest this book to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the relationship between leaders and their followers, particularly given the swath cut by today's toxic leaders.

HOW TOXIC LEADERS GAIN AND KEEP POWER, BUT CAN BE CHECKED.

Toxic leaders leave their followers worse off than they found them. A few of the many other ways toxic leaders act are they: violate basic standards of human rights; feed followers illusions; stifle criticism; maliciously set constituents against one another. The book shows how these leaders win people over by playing on their fears and self-esteem, only to ultimately use their power against their own followers. The book explores, in depth, how people are drawn into accepting, even embracing toxic leaders, and how these leaders retain power. This is an enlightening probe into the psyche of people and how their culture, situation, deepest fears, and dysfunctional personalities, make them vulnerable to toxic leaders. The book also explores ways of dealing with these leaders: counsel them to change; undermine them; join with others to confront or overthrow them. The book closes with a chapter on how to be freed of toxic leaders, by facing up to our anxiety and the accompanying pain, as well as by bringing nontoxic leaders to the fore. The author's insights apply to leaders of all kinds, political and business. This brief review does no justice to the breadth and depth of this work.To read this book is to help become aware of, and armed against, toxic leaders of all types. Required reading for all who yearn and strive to live free of domineering, destructive leaders. Our highest recommendation.

First time, shame on them but the next time....

Those who have read Lipman-Blumen's previously published Connective Leadership and/or Hot Groups can correctly assume that she again offers brilliant insights, eloquently expressed, in her newest book. She responds to two especially interesting questions: "Why do so many people follow destructive bosses and corrupt politicians?" and "How can we survive them?" In fairness both to her and to those who have not as yet read this book, I will resist the temptation to reveal what her responses are. However, I hope the remarks which follow create sufficient interest in this book because it eminently deserves and richly rewards a careful reading. She organizes her material within Four Parts: The Big Picture (Chapter 1) in which she explains why toxic leaders are so plentiful; Leaders, Leaders, Why Do We All Want Leaders? (Chapters 2-6) in which she examines psychological needs, angst and illusions (e.g. about life, death, and immortality), global instabilities, creation of potentially dangerous deities, and the urge for heroic men and women; How [and Why] We Create Willing Followers and Toxic Leaders (Chapters 7-9) in which she discusses various myths which help to explain the appeal of toxic leaders and the rejection of non-toxic leaders; and finally, Liberating Ourselves from the Allure of Toxic Leaders (Chapters 10-13) in which Lipman-Blumen proposes a number of mindsets, values, strategies, tactics, and initiatives which can -- at least in some instances -- protect mankind from toxic leaders or expedite their loss of power and even influence. In this volume, Lipman-Blumen demonstrates all of the highly-developed skills of a world-class cultural anthropologist whose cutting-edge thinking about effective leadership and productive teamwork has earned for her the eminence she now enjoys. In my opinion, she has far greater and much more challenging ambitions in this book than she did in either of the two which preceded it. Consider this brief excerpt from the first chapter: Toxic leaders "first charm but then manipulate, mistreat, undermine, and ultimately leave their followers worse off than when they found them. Yet many of these followers hang on. I do not speak merely of the leader's immediate entourage -- the leader's close-in staff and advisors. I am speaking also of the larger mass of supporters (employees, constituents, volunteers) who only glimpse their toxic leader through a glass darkly -- perchance through a window of the executive suite or on the television screen. More surprisingly perhaps, even those groups charged with keeping leaders under the microscope and on the straight and narrow -- the media and boards of directors -- fall under they sway." How to explain the "allure" of toxic leaders? How do they sustain, if not increase their domination of others? Even when exposed as toxic leaders, why do they continue to retain so many loyal followers? Realistically, to what extent (if any) can one individual or even a group remove such lead

Sometimes It's Worse Than Smoke and Mirrors

I have been studying leadership for over a dozen years and this is by far and away the best book on the subject. It goes deeply beneath the hype and glorification and shows how we followers can be suckered by sociopaths and even be complicit in pushing benign con artists into a more toxic behavior level. Our culture is built with great tolerance of greed and manipulation at the top and we have to laboriously train ourselves to be on the lookout for toxic tendencies in our leaders by keeping an ironic and skeptical corner of our eye ever open. Lipman-Blumen's book explains this in sparkling language and good grace.