Responding to Bad Leadership

Before beginning work on this discussion, read chapters 10, 11, and 12 in your Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters

In this final discussion, you will examine a macro view of leadership and followership. Sometimes failures of leadership and followership lead to horrific outcomes, including suicide or even murder. In this week’s Required and Recommended Resources, you will find information on several cult leaders who inspired this sort of action, such as Jim Jones, David Koresh, Sung Myung Moon, Charles Manson, and Marshall Applewhite.

For this discussion explore the question: When and how is it appropriate to intervene in a group’s leadership system that outsiders consider a cult? As always, we will seek to understand this complex issue together as a class, building off of one another’s answers. To this question, we will have to address some of the following questions as well: What distinguishes a group led by a cult leader from a group led by a legitimate leader? Should an adult have to answer for the right to belong to a cult without interference from others? When is it appropriate for you or others in society to decide what practices are legitimate for leaders and followers? Where does the line need to be drawn, if at all?