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…
By: Dave Watermulder on February 7, 2019
The Youth Director at my church saw me walking around this week carrying Dennis Tourish’s book The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership: A Critical Perspective, and he asked me what it was about. This was before I had started reading it, so I took a guess. “It’s mostly about egotistical CEO’s and why they’re not as…
By: Jay Forseth on February 7, 2019
(Image by CodeCarvings Piczard # FREE Community Edition # on 2016-02-04. http://piczard.com) Our fellow Elite 8 Cohort member, Dan Kreiss, had a fascinating title for his blog last week. It read, “Corporations or Faith Communities?” I have been thinking about that title, while wondering if I was guilty for the past 15 years of worrying…
By: Jennifer Williamson on February 7, 2019
Our field leader had come to visit us and would be staying in our home for two nights since we did not live in the same city as he did. The purpose of the visit was to check up on how we were doing in our ministry (ie evaluate usJ) and to encourage us, as…
By: Andrea Lathrop on February 7, 2019
I experienced reading whiplash this week. Last week I am laughing it up with Meyer’s Culture Map and this week I was sobered and mildly depressed by Tourish’s The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership. I believe he meets his goal ‘to challenge its fundamental premises in a significant way and scrutinize its contradictions.’[1]It is remarkable…
By: Jake Dean-Hill on February 6, 2019
Reading the following excerpt in the introduction to the book, The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership: A Critical Perspective by Dennis Tourish, hooked me immediately: “Most research into leadership presents leaders as heroic, charismatic and transformational ‘visionaries’. The leader, whether in business, politics or any other field is the most important factor in determining whether an organization…
