Leaders Who Self Destruct The Causes and the Cures
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Theories of the psychodynamic approach to leadership were developed from theories of personality development and from techniques used to treat emotionally disturbed people. It thus becomes an easy tasks to describe and analyze faulty and self-destructive behaviors of organizational leaders using concepts from dynamic psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Kets de Vries describes several case studies based on real-life instances of self-destructive behavior exhibited by failed executives using psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic approach to leadership.
Often new organization leaders experience a quick and sometimes shocking change of lifestyle and change of position within the organizational culture. All too frequently the new executive finds that he or she is either unable to adapt to the new situation or chooses an improper response to the situation. Some of these new sensations include a feeling of "isolation from reality" where new executives are sometimes overcome by the "loneliness at the top" and are unable to meet their employee's needs. Other executive pitfalls described include the dangers of transference, the fear of success, and feelings of "promotion guilt". In this study, Kets de Vries describes methods of avoiding and overcoming these pitfalls as well as the responsibilities of both leaders and followers in the quest for organization harmony.
Popper describes the emergence of charismatic leaders through psychodynamic models. Using Bowlby's attachment theory as a theoretical basis, this study describes leadership as a function of potential and motivation and details the processes that lead to the formation of personalized charismatic leaders and socialized charismatic leaders...