**Author details**

Herbert Nold

greed, and a host of other behaviors that have negative effects on other individuals and the organization are also complex. Complex interactions between leader's personalities, ambitions, training, combined with forces like pressure from stakeholders and the inexorable force of organizational culture may shape and bring out the bad in even the most stalwart individual. Leadership should not be evaluated in a vacuum and treated as if the leaders exist in isolation from the rest of the organization. Rather, leadership, good or bad, should be evaluated as an integral component of a dynamic system with complex interactions that the leader

*"The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday's* 

I believe that many potentially good leaders fall victim to forces both inside and outside of organizations that play on fears, personality weaknesses, or ambitions that bring out dark side leadership behaviors or excuse them in favor of earnings or some other quantifiable measure. Business owners, founders, and top-level executives can help mitigate poor leadership and promote superior leadership by actively developing organizations with a people-centric management style. People with a shared purpose and healthy, positive, relationships collaborate effectively and share their unique knowledge. Before this can happen though, business owners, founders, and top-level executives must become aware of the invisible forces generated by the organizational culture and systems that shape leadership behaviors. The old saying "what gets measured gets done" may not necessarily be good particularly when what is being measured encourages bad behavior. Unseen forces can derail the best or wellintentioned leader, but they can also help make average leadership, good. It goes both ways.

*"You can analyze the past, but you have to design the future."—Edward de Bono*

tive influence of the Dark Side and the evil Sith Lord.

Becoming a truly people-centric organization is not easy and takes a great deal of time and effort, and yes, money. It takes a lot more than including the standard "people are our greatest asset" in the corporate mission or purpose statements particularly since people within the organization can easily see through the façade making the statement more of a demotivator rather than a motivator to the people. Decision makers up and down the organizational hierarchy should reflect on the elemental questions that make up the dimensions of a people-centric organization presented in this chapter and attempt to assess the levels of each. If the answers are "I do not know" or "probably not" then they have work to do. Our research shows that organizations that increase the levels of these elements are successful and enjoy superior performance. Further, average leaders can become good and good leaders can become outstanding by accessing the shared body of knowledge in people both inside and outside of the organization [10, 12]. Paying attention to developing the people-centric management can decrease pressures on leaders that influence poor leadership. Nobody can totally eliminate poor leadership. But, a truly people-centric management approach and awareness of the complex forces affecting leadership behaviors can promote good leadership behaviors and help reduce the poor or destructive behaviors. Be aware of The Force within your organization to develop Jedi Knights as leaders and fight the seduc-

can affect but also must work within.

122 Dark Sides of Organizational Behavior and Leadership

*logic."—Peter Drucker*

Address all correspondence to: hnold@yahoo.com

Polk State College, Winter Haven/Lakeland, Florida, USA
