The Dark Sides of Leadership and Followership

Two articles challenged current theoretical thinking at the interface of leadership and followership. One article focused on the conditions under which leaders' positive efforts can in fact backfire, and the other one addressed the relevance of negative followership theories at the group level.

Kipfelsberger and Kark developed a theoretical model to explain the conditions under which leaders' meaning making efforts, despite their good intentions, can "kill" followers' experiences of meaningfulness at work. The authors applied a wide angle taking into account leaders' characteristics, followers' characteristics and the context. They argued that leaders harm followers' work meaningfulness when followers' experiences of coherence, purpose or significance of work are diminished. The six conditions that can affect the reduction of followers' sense of meaningfulness included in the model capture leaders' personality traits, leaders' behaviors, the relationship between leader and follower, followers' attributions, followers' characteristics, and job design. The negative consequences of diminished meaningfulness comprise cynicism, disengagement, and decreased well-being.

Leung and Sy extended the established construct of implicit followership theories to the group level showing that Golem effects can occur as a consequence of negative beliefs held within teams. Golem effects capture a special case of self-fulfilling prophecies, the idea that negative performance expectations result in low performance. The authors studied naturally occurring Golem effects in the form of negative implicit followership theories, specifically incompetency schemas that are shared within groups. Results confirmed showed groups who shared negative group-level Implicit Followership Theories (GIFTs) affected follower performance negatively through decreased self-efficacy and effort.