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The character Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s (1851) classic American novel Moby-Dick is in many ways an impressive, even exemplary leader. He was undoubtedly effective in gaining the allegiance of his crew. He convinced them that they were capable of making real his quest to hunt the white whale to his death, and he persuaded them that their joint mission was a noble one. Yet, he led himself and his entire crew—save one—to their deaths. To some extent, several of the specific aspects of Ahab’s leadership that we would critique reflect his personal characteristics. We might, for example, note Ahab being blinded so much by resentment that he overlooks the ethical imperative of taking care of his followers. But we also have to confront the fact that his followers lacked the combination of wit and courage that would have enabled them to stop him, one way or another. For example, we could fault the crew for being so easily hoodwinked by Ahab. But the leader–followerdynamic Melville describes is very common. It’s easy for skilled leaders to persuade followers that they are embarked on a moral quest, and that they are a valued part of something great. So followers are at fault, but it’s hard to blame them, since being taken in is completely understandable in terms of the way human leader-follower relationships seem to have evolved (Heifetz 1994; van Vugt 2006).

We might also criticize the one member of the crew who realizes fully the folly of Ahab’s quest, the first mate, Starbuck. He knows that diverting the expedition to chase one whale doesn’t make sense. But Starbuck is unable to do what he knows needs to be done to stop Ahab and his madness. He simply lacks the personal power or the power to persuade others. So neither the crew as a whole, who adopt Ahab’s quest as their own, nor the first mate, who doesn’t know how to resist, can deter their captain. In a wonderful passage, Melville, writing from the viewpoint of the book’s narrator Ishmael, ponders the meaning of Ahab being captain of a crew of “mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals” who are “morally enfeebled … by the incompetence of [Starbuck’s] mere unaided virtue” (Melville 1851, p. 251). But surely Melville hints that he himself would yield to such a leader without the capacity of one well-placed follower to resist effectively. Starbuck is found wanting as that effective follower, but Melville signals that there are in fact few such individuals.

We see then that Ahab deserves blame for blindly pursuing his obsession, but also that he is enabled by his followers, both by those who understand that they are being led badly and by those who do not. So followers are part of the problem. But there is another side to bad leadership. Once followers empower leaders, they pave the way for those leaders to behave quite badly. We explore this later. For now, we get a hint of what often happens from Lord Acton’s famous quote: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Moreell 2010).

In this essay, we will explore both how and why followers enable leaders to be bad and what happens when they fully empower leaders. So while it is the leaders who end up doing bad things, it is the followers who give them the latitude to do so. We’ll begin by outlining the seven different types of bad leadership identified by Barbara Kellerman in her book Bad Leadership (2004). We’ll see that Kellerman attributes each kind of bad leadership to some bad followers. Next we’ll explore the dynamics of the leader–followerrelationship. What is it like, and why is it like that? In that section, we’ll review Sigmund Freud’s analysis of leadership both in mob or crowd situations and in organized groups, such as the military or the church. Freud’s analysis tips us off to the importance of understanding human needs and how leaders’ ability to satisfy those needs leads followers to empower them in return, such that, corrupted by increased power, leaders are more likely to behave badly. We will consider in particular how the need for significance and self-worth helps account for followers going along with leaders. After fully considering how follower needs empower leaders, and in many instances support badleader behavior, we will consider how power itself makes bad leadership more likely. The overall theme throughout this discussion is that bad leadership owes much to followers being all too willing to grant potentially corrupting power to leaders.

Kellerman’s Bad Leadership

Barbara Kellerman’s treatment of bad leadership in her 2004 book is important in understanding what both leaders and followers contribute to bad leadership. Very usefully, she distinguishes ineffective from unethicalleadership, describing three kinds of ineffective leadership and four varieties of unethical. The three ineffective types are incompetent, rigid, and intemperate. The unethical are corrupt, callous, insular, and evil. All of her specific descriptions of these types implicate followers. For example, in the case of incompetent leadership, she writes that “the leader and at least some followers lack the will or skill (or both) to sustain effective action” (Kellerman 2004, p. 40). Intemperate leadership involves leaders who lack self-control and are “aided and abetted by followers who are unwilling or unable effectively to intervene” (Kellerman 2004, p. 42). A final example is corrupt leadership in which “the leader and at least some followers lie, cheat, or steal” (Kellerman 2004, p. 44). In these and other examples, the leaders’ weaknesses are magnified by followers who are also immoral or lack, as we argued earlier, the wit or will to stop or divert the bad leadership. Importantly, in all seven types of “bad leadership,” followers play a role in enabling the bad leader. In one way or another, they authorize bad leadership.

While Kellerman’s typology of bad leadership is useful, at present the more important takeaway is her insight that (bad) followers contribute to bad leadership. We get a clearer picture of why this is so by viewing the leader–follower dynamic from the perspectives of several important theories of leadership. As we shall see, all of these theories highlight the point that followers grant leaders tremendous power and authority. Empowering leaders in this way makes them vulnerable to some of the corrosive effects of feeling powerful, which we will discuss later.

Leaders and Followers

One of the earliest treatments of the leader–followerdynamic is Sigmund Freud’s (1921) essay on group psychology. Freud was highly influenced by Gustave LeBon’s (1896) somewhat frightening description of how people in crowds can be transformed such that their feelings of power and anonymity free them from the constraints of everyday morality and allow an ugly and aggressive suppressed self to emerge, a self that often directs its unleashed rage toward people in outgroups. Crowds release the everyday checks on many impulses, such that behaviors such as assault and rape became more common. Extreme examples of these dynamics are seen in lynch mobs and some combat units in wartime. But there are also instances of such crowd dynamics in ordinarily formal, decorous venues. Former FBI Director James Comey, a nemesis of President Donald Trump, discussed the wild cheering that accompanied Trump demonizing those who had turned against him after he was acquitted in his 2020 impeachment trial:

The important thing was what happened in the audience, where there were plenty of intelligent people of deep commitment to religious principle. They laughed and smiled and clapped as a president of the United States lied, bullied, cursed and belittled the faith of other leaders. (Comey 2020)

Comey wrote further that

like all people, they too easily surrender their individual moral authority to a group, where it can be highjacked by the loudest, harshest voice. … We all tend to surrender our moral authority to “the group,” to still our own inner voices … [and act] as if the group is some moral entity larger than ourselves. … [The demagogue] knows that good, principled people – who would never lie, curse or belittle the faith of another person – will go along. … They will still their inner voices. (Comey 2020)

Comey’s account is a good illustration of Freud’s and LeBon’s overall point that followers will go along with and reinforce what leaders do when the emotional ties between members of the group, and the group’s ties to the leader, cause individuals to put their personal morality aside for the morality of the leader and the group. In such contexts, there is almost no way to protest what the leader is saying and the way the group is being swept up. The only alternatives are going along with the crowd or leaving the group. The first is much easier. For our purposes, the most important takeaway is that followers give their moral judgment over to leaders, empowering them in ways that lead to significant elements of bad leadership.

Just what is it about the crowd dynamic that produces these effects? Freud (1921, p. 81) argues that the group is “an obedient herd” that has “a thirst for obedience.” He also argues that the group’s needs “carry it half-way to meet the leader, yet he [sic] too must fit in with it in his [sic] personal qualities” (Freud 1921, p. 81). These comments raise three questions. First, what should we make of the comment that a crowd has a thirst for obedience? Second, what are the personal qualities that meet that need? And third, what is the nature of the resulting meeting of those needs with the person who has the desired personal attributes?

Is Freud’s (1921) characterization of human beings as having a thirst for obedience or “the need for a strong chief” (p. 129) in a crowd generally accurate, and does such a characterization highlight an important quality of human interaction and group dynamics? Studies and observations of crowds in lynch mobs, theater fires, political rallies, or soccer matches suggest that the answer is yes. One manifestation was seen in the crowd that gathered in 1974 to watch Evel Knievel attempt to ride his motorcycle over the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. The campsite near the launching ramp was a scene of sexual debauchery, drunkenness, drug use, and violence directed at reporters and innocent bystanders, including teenage girls in high school marching bands. One interesting dynamic was the spreading of rumors, which released constraints on the crowd. People are looking for direction from leadership or some other strong signal. A rumor, or an individual shouting a slogan, can serve as such a signal. It is difficult to deliberate or even to think in crowd situations of high arousal and excessive stimulation, so individuals typically have a need or thirst for some kind of guidance or direction in such situations. Even if they are able to think for themselves about how to act under these circumstances, it may be nearly impossible to engage in reasoned discussion or debate in a crowd, or to challenge the group as a whole or whomever has assumed a leadership position, however briefly. Therefore, people will follow directions even if they have no deep or general need for direction, never mind a thirst for obedience.

Is there a need for obedience or for a strong chief in ordinary situations, that is, situations that are not dominated by the strong conformity and obedience pressures of a mob? There are several theoretical perspectives that suggest, again, that the answer is yes. Mark van Vugt and William von Hippel have studied leadership from an evolutionary perspective and note that human beings’ success as a species derives from a remarkable ability to cooperate, aided by, among other things, language (van Vugt 2006; von Hippel 2018). But cooperation requires some kind of coordination. This can be achieved through rules or through authority structures (Tyler and Lind 1992). In order for an effective authority structure to evolve, one that can foster group coordination, there needs to be some optimal mix of leaders and followers. If everyone attempts to lead, or if everyone waits to follow, nothing or little can be achieved. Therefore, leadership and followership have evolved in humans in order to best solve the challenges of coordination. Van Vugt (2006) asks the important question as to how the right mix of leaders and followers is achieved. He suggests two factors. One is that most people have enough flexibility in their interpersonal styles to either lead or follow, depending on the situation. This flexibility has been noted in some of the earliest leadership research (Bales 1958). Another possibility is “frequency-dependent selection,” which yields a mix of essentially born-leaders and born-followers in a useful ratio. The combination of some people who pretty much always lead, others who pretty much always follow, and a hefty majority who are flexible enough to do either can produce the right mix of leading and following in any given situation. These considerations don’t necessarily mean that people crave obedience, but they do mean that we are generally willing to be led and that once we are in the follower mode, we will, in fact, follow. The strong inclination to follow, then, empowers leaders, increasing the potential for bad leadership.

Given that evolution has prepared most of us to follow as well as lead, what kinds of individuals are most likely to compel others to follow? Freud (1921) notes three qualities. First, a leader “must possess a strong and imposing will” (p. 81) that imposes itself on the group. Second, he or she (generally he in Freud’s view) must “be held in fascination by a strong faith (in an idea) to awaken the group’s faith.” That is, “leaders make themselves felt by means of the ideas in which they themselves are fanatical believers” (Freud 1921, p. 81). Third, the leader must “possess the typical qualities of the individuals concerned in a particularly clearly marked and pure form” (Freud 1921, p. 129). In more modern parlance, the leader must be “prototypical” (Hogg 2001). Each of these ideas about the personal qualities of leaders has found its way into more recent approaches to leadership. And as we shall see, all of these approaches have implications for the idea that by so willingly granting power to personally compelling leaders, followers pave the way for the abuse of power, that is, bad leadership.

First, the idea of “strong and imposing will” finds its way into Terror Management Theory, which proposes that at least under some circumstances, “an individual who exhibits an ‘unconflicted’ personality – in the sense of appearing supremely bold and self-confident” will emerge as a leader (Solomon et al. 2015, p. 117). This is especially true when such an individual

performs a striking initiatory act that shines a magnifying light on him [sic], makes him [sic] seem larger than life, and enthralls followers who wish they had the courage to follow suit. (Solomon et al. 2015, p. 117)

These ideas are essentially reworkings of Weber’s idea of the charismatic leader who is “set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities” (Weber 1922, p. 358).

Second, the idea that such a person must have “a strong faith (in an idea)” (House and Shamir 1993, p. 81) that can awaken the group’s faith is developed in House and Shamir’s (1993) approach to charismatic leadership. They argue that charismatic leaders articulate a vision for their followers that describes a better future for their group, one that they are morally entitled to. Such leaders engage their followers’ self-concepts so that their sense of both morality and competence (self-worth and self-efficacy) is dependent on putting their personal objectives aside for the group mission. This greatly empowers leaders in ways that tempt them to behave badly.

Third, the idea that the prototypical individual emerges as a leader is developed in the social identity theory of leadership (Hogg 2001). Such persons exert great pressure on less prototypical individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior. They are also accorded high status and set apart from the group as a whole. This granting of power and special status to the most prototypical group member opens the way to exploitation and the abuse of authority. Soon the person who became the leader because he or she embodied so well the ideal group characteristics is “set apart,” in Weber’s terms (Weber 1922, p. 358), and seen as belonging to a different elite group that has the power to lead in a much less democratic way, opening the way to corruption in ways we will touch on later.

What is the nature of the relationship that emerges from the meeting of people’s need for leadership and the appearance of strong, charismatic, and prototypical leaders? Again, Freud (1921) is relevant. He describes followers as held in fascination by such leaders, who have the effect of hypnotists and can direct groups to do things that they wouldn’t ordinarily do, to take action that they wouldn’t if they were thinking carefully and weighing consequences. Followers tend to look at such leaders as they do love objects and shield them from all criticism. Again, the consequence is that followers do not do much thinking about where the leader is taking them and give leaders extraordinary latitude to do as they wish, often for the worse, resulting yet again in bad leadership.

One way of thinking about this dynamic is in terms of the concept of legitimacy. The combination of the leadership needs of followers and leaders’ strength and charisma grants leaders tremendous legitimacy, legitimacy which enlarges the scope or range of actions that the leader can take and that followers will undertake on the leaders’ behalf. Edwin Hollander (1993) captures this element of leadership in his concept of idiosyncrasy credit. He suggests that the charismatic leader is one with a high degree of idiosyncrasy credit. In general, idiosyncrasy credit is built from being competent in fulfilling the group’s needs and from conforming to group norms, so as to signal that the group’s values are good or right. Such credit, or legitimacy, is “the latitude followers provide a leader to bring about change” (Hollander 1993, p. 36). The more the credit, the more the leader can “get away with,” and the further the followers can be led in ways that the leader wants. Thus, like many other aspects of the leader–follower dynamic, idiosyncrasy credit empowers leaders and paves the way for them to lead badly.

Hollander describes idiosyncrasy credit, or legitimacy, operating “in relatively noncoercive, less power-oriented situations” (Hollander 1993, p. 36). It produces voluntary compliance. In fact, in power-oriented situations, where an authority or leader uses reward or coercive power, legitimacy may quickly erode, and followers will not willingly continue in the direction that the leader points. The interplay or trade-off of legitimacy and coercion is well illustrated in John Keegan’s (1987) book on military leadership, The Mask of Command. Keegan discusses the idea that leaders, especially military commanders, must give followers what they need and expect in order to enlist followership. He argues that reward and punishment are necessary, along with elements such as charisma, to maintain influence. But he cautions leaders and authorities to be judicious and sparing in their use ofcoercion, lest they lose their legitimacy, and thus their ability to elicit voluntary compliance. He warns leaders that the abuse or overuse of coercive powerundermines “the mystification of [their] role” and destroys their “power, essentially an artificial construct” (Keegan 1987, p. 324). In other words, legitimacy is very much a psychological construction, and power very much depends on this construction, as followers “accord or withdraw support to leaders” (Hollander 1993, p. 29) on the basis of their judgments of legitimacy.

The Needs of Followers

Hollander’s analysis of idiosyncrasy credit, or legitimacy, claims that it is accorded to leaders to the extent that leaders satisfy group needs. In Hollander’s theory, those needs include positive social identity and the achievement of group goals. Several other theories have specified further some of the group needs and goals that leaders help followers achieve or satisfy, thereby strengthening follower attachment and leader power. In outlining some of these theories, we underline the very tight, nearly symbiotic, nature of the leader–followerrelationship. Leaders satisfy important follower needs. In return, followers grant leaders legitimacy and, with it, power. The power that followers give leaders increases the probability of a range of bad leader behavior, which is to be discussed.

One highly relevant approach to leadership usefully underlines followers’ utter dependence on leaders, in ways that are similar to Freud’s analysis of group behavior. The book Leadership Without Easy Answers by Ronald Heifetz (1994) argues that in many difficult situations, people look to leaders to provide an easy answer, to take care of the problem, by devising a simple solution. The questions that followers want easy answers for relate to needs for direction, protection, and order. Heifetz (1994) argues that the challenge for goodleadership is essentially to wean followers away from these expectations of leadership and give them what they need rather than what they want. This entails helping followers in clarifying their personal values and figuring out how to realize those values, given reality. This “adaptive work” is the heart of leadership. Again, the idea that leaders must struggle to lead without doing what they are expected to do—provide easy answers to address needs for direction, protection, and order—underlines the great dependence that followers have on leaders, a dependence which often yields so much power to leadership that power’s corrupting effects on leaders take hold. Heifetz (1994) further argues that leaders do not always do this kind of adaptive work. It is difficult. As a result, leaders often provide easy answers that give followers what they want but not what they really need in order to realize their values in light of reality. This unrealistic, follower-driven leadership is the essence of bad leadership.

Psychologist David Messick (2005) outlines a different, but overlapping, set of five needs that leaders help followers satisfy. First, he discusses a need for Vision and Direction, similar to the needs described in the earlier theories for group movement and direction. Messick then discusses Protection and Security, (essentially Heifitz’s protection goal noted above). Messick’s other needs are somewhat different and speak more to individual needs to belong and to have a positive sense of self-worth or self-esteem. First, he discusses the need for Achievement and Effectiveness. This really amounts to a need to feel competent and to have a sense of self-efficacy and therefore self-worth. He also notes a need for Inclusion and Belongingness. Finally, Messick describes a need for Pride and Self-Respect. Leaders can help followers satisfy this need by treating them with dignity and recognizing their individuality and the value that each one contributes to the group. What this theory implicitly highlights is the strength of the needs for belonging and esteem, especially the latter, and the significant role leaders can play in gratifying those needs. It may go too far to say that human beings have a “thirst for obedience,” but it is quite apparent that people look to leadership because of the many psychological benefits that leaders can provide. Messick’s delineation of five distinct follower needs that leaders satisfy underlines the great dependence of followers on leaders, and the power, and potential abuse of power, that that dependence grants.

Leadership and Esteem Needs

In line with Messick, there are several other theories that underline the importance of the need for self-esteem and also make clear that followers depend greatly on leaders to help satisfy that need. William James (1892) was one of the first psychologists to emphasize the strength of the need to think well of oneself. Even before psychology as a formal field of study got off the ground, James explored what Abraham Maslow (1962) later called Esteem Needs. One process that affects self-esteem is social comparison. James noted that “we cannot escape” the emotion of “dread” if we compare poorly to others (1892, p. 179). Another process affecting self-esteem is called reflected appraisal, judging ourselves according to how others look at us. James noted people’s “innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably” (1892, p. 179). We even care about being appraised favorably by “some insignificant cad” whom we “heartily despise” (James 1892, p. 185). If the need for esteem, that is, the need to have a positive view of ourselves, is frustrated, “a kind of rage and impotent desire would ere long well up in us, from which the cruelest bodily tortures would be a relief” (James 1892, p. 179).

Also relevant is Terror Management Theory’s contention that mortality salience, or fear of death, causes people to buffer the anxiety of death by boosting their self-esteem and bolstering their worldview and the value of the groups that form their social identity and their values (Solomon et al. 2015). By doing this, people can feel that their world is stable and meaningful and that they are a worthwhile participant in an effective and moral quest. While terror management theory describes allaying death fears as the primary motivator of its various effects, the underlying concern seems to be the human need for significance. Perhaps we fear dying less than what people will have to say about us at our funerals. No matter whether the underlying anxiety is about physical death or enduring significance, this theory underlines our strong need for esteem, in our own eyes and in other people’s.

One of the theory’s most relevant findings is that when mortality is salient, people prefer charismatic leaders, those who can make them believe that they are a valued part of something great. Once again, people have strong needs for feelings of self-worth, and leaders, especially charismatic leaders, can satisfy them. One trap for followers that flows from the strength of their esteem needs and the ease with which leaders can gratify them is that leaders can ignore other more basic needs and simply tell followers how great they are. This dynamic has been addressed by many writers. One of the first was Thomas Frank in his book What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004). Frank explains that conservative validation of the cultural values of working people leads them to vote against their economic interests. In early 2020, groups such as dairy farmers in Wisconsin continued to support Donald Trump, despite the harm that his trade policy was inflicting on their bottom line. Whether he really cared about their interests or not, he appeared to be on their side in a polarized polity. He validated their esteem-based resentments. This gave him a free pass for bad leadership.

Followers Empowering Leaders and Its Transforming Effects

Several theories touched on earlier (Hollander 1993; Messick 2005; Tyler and Lind 1992) are exchange theories of one kind or another. They all suggest that followers give leaders something back in exchange for the benefits leaders give to them. For example, Hollander discusses how followers accord or withdraw legitimacy, in the form of “idiosyncrasy credit,” in exchange for the leader’s competence and support for group values. Tyler and Lind argue that followers offer voluntary compliance in exchange for being treated respectfully and being valued. Messick (2005) talks about a number of benefits followers give leaders, including obedience, cooperation, effort, and focus. In short, followers grant leaders tremendous power and tremendous latitude. They accept behaviors from leaders they wouldn’t accept from those with less status, who do less for them. By empowering leaders, followers almost inevitably corrupt them, following Lord Acton (Moreell 2010). What are the consequences?

Research by Adam Galinsky and his colleagues (Galinsky et al. 2008; Magee et al. 2005) shows that feelings of power, which result when followers accord leaders legitimacy or otherwise recognize their power, can lead to dramatic changes in leader behavior. Some of these changes can be beneficial. It can enable leaders to look at the big picture in any situation. It can make them more optimistic. But the downsides of feeling powerful are more troublesome. Optimism can spill over into excessive risk-taking. Most troubling perhaps is disinhibition, that is, a lowering of self-regulation. One almost amusing example is that in experiments, individuals primed with feelings of power were more likely to take the last cookie out of a dish and leave crumbs on the table, by chewing with their mouths open. Much less amusing is the unleashing of flirtations and sexual advances among both men and women (Magee et al. 2005).

Perhaps related to increases in flirtation, people feeling powerful are less likely to take other people’s perspectives and more likely to view them only in terms of how they can be useful in achieving the power holder’s goals. Freud talked exactly about how the despotic leaders of the primal horde unleashed their sexual libido and viewed others as objects who could be used in their own interests.

It’s not news that power tends to corrupt and, according to Lord Acton’s famous formula, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Here we explored the extent to which leaders’ power, and thereby their corruption, is enabled by the complex relationships between leaders and followers. Nicholas Warner (2008) writes that Herman Melville, in the passage from Moby Dick quoted at the beginning of this essay, “paints … largely a failure of followership” (p. 14). We can hope that future followers can learn to approach leaders with something more than Starbuck’s ineffective, morally enfeebling “unaided virtue.”

Concluding Comments

So, why then are there so many bad leaders? Surely leaders’ personal qualities are important, as we saw at the outset with Captain Ahab. A monomaniacal quest for revenge, based on a perceived insult from a dumb brute, compelled him toward a disastrous course of unethical, and ultimatelyineffective, leadership. But understanding his bad leadership as simply a function of his personal traits and behaviors ignores the central role of the Pequod’s crew, Ahab’s followers. They were unwilling or unable to stop him. Rather, they empowered him. But again, the fault does not lie simply with the crew’s personal qualities. We have outlined how the very dynamic of the relationship between leaders and followers disables effective resistance to leaders who are leading badly. People expect to be led, and they expect to follow. Furthermore, they expect leaders to take responsibility, do the hard work, and provide simple answers. This expectation combines with the corresponding fact that leaders generally do provide easy, need-satisfying answers. Who can resist those who help us satisfy so many of our needs? Perhaps the human need that gives leaders most leverage is the need for positive self-esteem, a sense that one is worthy, that one is both moral and effective. Leaders can easily convey that they value their followers, and hold them in high regard, in order to gain in return legitimacy and ultimately power. It is gladly and freely given by reassured followers. In exchange for a little respect, followers yield a great deal of latitude to leaders to behave as they choose. In short, they empower leaders. And like other empowered individuals, leaders are often corrupted. Leaders, followers, and the fundamental dynamics of the leader–follower relationship enable bad leadership.

What can be done? The most important, but also the most difficult, remedy is for those in follower roles to know how to resist when a leader is headed in the wrong direction, as well as how to follow and assist when appropriate. Followers must be vigilant about both the morality and the effectiveness of the leader’s initiatives, know the difference between what is right and what is wrong, and know what is going to work and what is going to fail. Then followers must find the way to resist effectively. These are not easy assignments. It can start with followers making themselves aware of their responsibility for ensuring that the leader is taking followers to a good place.