A week ago, most people did not know the name Bashar al-Assad. Since then, the man who was president of Syria for almost a quarter century is known to almost everyone everywhere who follows the news. The overthrow of him and his regime, which had ruled Syria with unmitigated brutality, has been cause for cautious celebration both at home and wherever else in the world repression is reviled. Among other sins against Syrians, Assad tortured tens of thousands in brutal prisons and used poison gas as punishment for going against him. He was, as I wrote in an earlier post, “the worst of the worst.” A totalitarian tyrant.
This brings me to my present point – which is that the leadership industry ignores nearly entirely the Assads of the world. Nearly all leadership courses and programs, centers and institutes, books and videos, focus on developing good leaders. Nearly no leadership courses and programs, centers and institutes, books and videos, focus on precluding bad leaders. On coming to understand how bad leaders happen – Assad was able to subjugate more than 23 million people – so that we can learn how to stop or at least slow them.*
I have been studying bad leadership – and bad followership – for over a quarter century. My most recent book, published earlier this year, is titled, Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers. This year I also published an article in a journal, Leadership, titled as is this post, “Bad Leadership – Why We Steer Clear.” Anyone curious to know why the leadership industry has for the entirety of its approximately 50-year history avoided the dark side, should click on the link below.
*The fact that Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, ruled Syria for almost thirty years is relevant to the reign of his son, though not to the point of this post.