Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

The Psychology of Leadership

The purpose of this research is to examine Leaders, Fools, and Impostors: Essays on the Psychology of Leadership by Kets de Vries. The plan of the research will be to set forth in general terms the thesis of the book, and then to provide a summary of the ideas contained in each of the essays in the book, with a view toward evaluating whether it could be recommended for further research on the topic of leadership.

In this collection of essays, Kets de Vries takes a psychological approach to the study of leadership as a feature of the "psychodynamics of organizations" (xiv). It is not too much to say that the approach is a combination of psychobiography and psychohistory, for he provides numerous specific real-life examples of how leaders have failed the test of leadership owing to psychologically motivated actions, attitudes, and behaviors. Indeed, Kets de Vries specifically asserts that so-called "rational approaches to management" (xiv) are just plain wrong because they leave out the human factor. Drawing on clinical methods and theories, notably Freud's view that much human behavior has its source in the unconscious (hence irrational), Kets de Vries shows that reconstruction and evaluation of the facts of behavior can be traced to unconscious motivation. The reason that this seems a valid subject for study is that the consequences of the behavior of leaders, proceeding on account of power and authority, can be visited on subordinates and on the structure of organizations that they lead.

Kets de Vries's overriding point is that an organization can be explained and understood in terms of psychodynamics between leaders and followers. That is what he means when he makes the point that followers create leaders (1). How this happens is the subject of each succeeding essay. The first essay, "Leader as Mirror," examines the quality of "mirroring" undertaken by most people in the process of human development. That is, the individual "se...

Page 1 of 7 Next >

More on The Psychology of Leadership...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
The Psychology of Leadership. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:06, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1712088.html