Go into a bookstore, look online, and you’ll see many, many, many books on leadership – online they’re available by the thousands. However, the word “evil” virtually never enters the leadership literature. As if leadership that is evil, as if the conception that leadership can be evil, never crosses our collective mind.
In my book Bad Leadership, I identified seven different types of bad leadership – of which Evil Leadership was one. I defined it this way:
The leader and at least some followers commit atrocities. They use pain as an instrument of power. The harm done to men, women, and children is severe rather than slight. The harm can be physical, psychological, or both.
I cannot say that since Bad Leadership came out our reluctance to explore leadership that is evil – to consider carefully this pox on the human condition – has subsided. We do see evil leadership. We do lament evil leadership. We do condemn evil leadership. And sometimes we even intervene to stop evil leadership. But nearly never do we call it out for what it is – leaders and some of their followers using pain as an instrument of power. And nearly never do we treat or attack it as we should – as a social, or societal, or sociological disease that can be and often is as lethal as some of our physical diseases.
To the general rule that the word “evil” is nearly never a modifier of the word “leadership,” nor nearly never applied to a particular leader, are rare exceptions. One such was a few days ago, in New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s column titled, “I Saw Firsthand How Much Is at Stake in Ukraine.” I was gratified to read that he used the word “evil” because there is no better word in the English language to describe Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked attack on Ukraine – or Putin himself.
I want to be clear. Friedman does not call Putin evil, refer to him as an evil leader or evil man. Rather he writes this: “What Putin is doing in Ukraine is not just reckless, not just a war of choice, not just an invasion in a class of its own for overreach, mendacity, immorality, and incompetence, all wrapped in a farrago of lies. What he is doing is evil.” Later Friedman adds that “what is so evil beyond the death and pain and trauma and destruction… is that the last thing humanity needed was to divert so much attention… to respond to Putin’s war.” (Italics added.)
There is a distinction between saying that a person is evil – and saying that what a person does is evil. They are not the same. The first is a blanket indictment of a person’s character – an indictment of the whole. The second is an indictment only in part – a judgement rendered of what someone does, not of who someone is.
Leaders cannot be understood except as part of a system – the leadership system. This system has three parts, each of which is of equal importance – leaders, followers, and contexts. Putin’s war against Ukraine cannot therefore be separated from the man himself. Or from his followers – ranging from close aides and acolytes to tens of millions of ordinary Russians. Or from the contexts within which the war was launched – for example the historical context within which Russia and Ukraine have been entwined not for decades but for centuries.
Still, the systemic approach does not let the leader – in this case the aggressor, Putin – off the hook. While a word such as “evil” must be used judiciously, very, very sparingly, on occasion it’s apt. We have no trouble calling out flat out past leaders who were evil – leaders such as Hitler and Stalin. We should do no less in the present. If American leaders more directly labeled Putin “evil,” American followers would more unanimously support President Biden’s endgame. Defeating President Putin without question.