By: Tammy Dunahoo on February 9, 2019
“Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”[1] John, who had proclaimed that Jesus was the Lamb of God, in a dark moment asked, “Are you the Messiah, or should we keep looking?” Human propensity through the ages has been to give agency to a leader who can solve…
By: Mary Mims on February 8, 2019
Working in Children and Youth Ministry, there is always an apprehension when adults want to get inordinately close to children or teens. Churches and ministry organizations constantly need an awareness of the potential of child sexual abuse. Studies have shown that over eighty percent of the time a child abuser is someone known by the…
By: Nancy VanderRoest on February 8, 2019
Ahhh, the dark side of transformational leadership! What a nice, light topic for this week. It reminds me of the Darth Vader of leadership! Such a bright subject to tackle but also a necessary subject as well. Transformational leadership is a leadership style that can inspire positive changes in those who follow. The problem is…
By: Greg on February 8, 2019
Recently I watched the new Christopher Robin movie and thought it cute and enjoyable for the whole family. Did you know that movie was banned in China? You may already know that there has been an ongoing fight between online meme creators and those that censor. The Pooh character has become a lighthearted way for…
By: Wallace Kamau on February 8, 2019
I have a very strong strong drive to succeed and I literary dread failure. I know this does not come out as obvious because of my introverted personality but I know too well that I am passively aggressive. I have therefore taken notice of the successful organizations and individuals and always taken interest to know…
By: Karen Rouggly on February 7, 2019
A few years ago, I stumbled upon Derek Silver’s TED Talk on how to start a movement.[1] In this TED talk, he talks about the fact that in order to be a leader, you have to have at least one follower. He says, “The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.”[2]…
By: Trisha Welstad on February 7, 2019
You can’t always tell much by a book’s cover. However, if you look at Dennis Tourish’s text, it is fairly obvious by the ominous picture, the play on popular culture’s phrase of “the Dark Side” and the subtitle, “a critical perspective” that there will be some serious critique of transformational leadership. In The Dark Side…
By: Jean Ollis on February 7, 2019
It may sound cliché, but we are living in fascinating times (and most people throughout history have probably proclaimed this same sentiment). It’s easy to look locally, nationally, and globally to examine the dark side of leadership (or what we perceive as the dark side). Our immediate thoughts may take us to the most obvious…
By: Rhonda Davis on February 7, 2019
“In the struggle to contain the dark side, to reclaim power and to gain wisdom, the first step is awareness.” [1] In his book The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership, Dennis Tourish explores the negative side of a leadership model that he believes has become the primary model in most organizations. Written after “The Great…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on February 7, 2019
The focus of Tourish’s text is on the problematic values, assumptions and practical effects of transformational leadership theory. The core proposition of this theory is that leaders should have a transformative effect on followers’ performance and worldview. These effects are said to arise through the leader’s charisma and their inspiring vision. These transformational leadership theory…
By: Sean Dean on February 7, 2019
About ten years ago my sister was working as the activities director at a nursing home in my home town. One day former president George H. W. Bush and his wife Barbara stopped by to say hello to the residents of the home. Mr. Bush’s summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine is about eight miles from…
By: Dan Kreiss on February 7, 2019
If those who have served in the military could please forgive me for the inference, but this book inflamed feelings of PTSD and was at times difficult for me to read. The institution in which I have worked the past 15 years was ‘led’ by an increasingly narcissistic president who exhibited many of the maladaptive…
By: Mike on February 7, 2019
Dennis Tourish’s The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership is an audacious assault on what he calls the dysfunctional aspects of contemporary forms of leadership in the West attributed to the economic fall of 2008.[1] When I saw the egotistic price for his book on Amazon I promptly abandoned Kindle and went for a realistic E-book…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on February 7, 2019
In a way . . . I am very lucky. My first call involved a church situation that could have been detailed as a case study, or even its own chapter, in the second section of Tourish’s work, The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership. I have written somewhat about this before, however these links below…
By: Jenn Burnett on February 7, 2019
At one time in Canada, meaning was largely sourced in Christian faith. As “(t)he management of meaning is … held to be a crucial activity for leaders”[1], pastors would have naturally been recognised simultaneously as leaders of the community and the church. In response to the decline of influence of the church in shaping culture,…
By: Digby Wilkinson on February 7, 2019
By my calculation this is Denis Tourish’ eighth book on leadership, which is a spectacular accomplishment. Eight books on one subject is almost overdoing it, I think. And I have to say, the rather dramatic title, The dark Side of Transformational Leadership: A Critical Perspective,[1] lends evidence to my belief that Tourish might have been…
By: Jason Turbeville on February 7, 2019
I have been called Pope Jason, in jest, but probably with a little bit of sarcasm. I had told a youth worker, who had decided he wanted to date one of the youth, (he was 19 she was a senior and 17) that he could no longer serve as the drummer in the youth led…
By: Mark Petersen on February 7, 2019
It was surprisingly refreshing to read Dennis Tourish’s book, The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership, because it tackled a common theme with a different take which exposed a new perspective. Mainstream leadership materials – from Collins’ Good to Great to Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership – highlight and endorse the central, transformational role of one person –…
By: Harry Edwards on February 7, 2019
This hit close to home. The study of leadership, leaders and what makes them tick has fascinated me for a number of years. I mean, who doesn’t t get excited to hear the latest developments from Apple each time Steve Jobs was on stage and utter his famous words, “… there’s one more thing.” Or…
By: Colleen Batchelder on February 7, 2019
The church is one of the only realms of leadership that enables men and women to retain positions of authoritarian leadership without any regard to the leader’s spiritual health, relevancy or team building capabilities. Therefore, the church has a tendency to solely rely on the pastor’s vision and, consequently, revile the pastor’s downfall. In a…
