We all know bad leadership when we see it. We've all encountered leaders who think only of themselves, promote their friends, abuse their office, and generally forget that leadership is about service to other people and organizations, rather than about self-aggrandizement or enrichment.

In American Psychologist, Robert Sternberg (2007) lists a number of fallacious (and unwise) beliefs held by unsuccessful or poor leaders. These include:

• Unrealistic optimism, in which a leader feels s/he can do whatever s/he wants and achieve success
• Egocentricity, the belief that only the leader is important and that everything revolves around the leader
• Omniscience, a leader's belief that s/he is all knowing
• Omnipotence, a leader belief that s/he is all powerful
• Invulnerability, a belief the the leader can get away with anything without suffering any negative consequences
• Moral Disengagement, a belief that the leader can dictate his or her own definition of morality, which tends to be defined as whatever the leader wants accomplished, without any connection to what the general population would consider as moral or immoral.
  

We associate certain traits or skill deficiencies with poor leadership. These include, among others: deceit, dishonesty, disrespect, unfairness, indecisiveness, selfishness, intolerance, poor communication skills, and impatience. Perhaps the easiest way to form a more complete list of poor leadership is to refer to the desirable leadership attributes and consider their diametric opposites.

In fairness to those exhibiting poor leadership, they may be divided into two categories:

1. Unintentional Ineptitude - due to ignorance, lack of expertise and/or intelligence, or inability to apply intelligence.
2. Pre-meditated - due to intentional use of one's position for personal gain, including fraud.

Of these, the latter is easily considered the more offensive, but both can lead to great destruction, damage, and loss.

It's easy to blame an organization's woes on a bad leader, but there can often be more blame to go around. In The Leadership Quarterly, Padila et al (2007) use the term destructive leadership to encompass a variety of poor behaviors by leaders. But they go a step further than simply indicting those leaders. They point out that in addition to destructive leaders, there are: susceptible followers, and conducive environments, and that all three together form a "toxic triangle." The destructive leaders use their charisma to further a destructive agenda, reflecting their narcissism and flawed ideologies. The susceptible followers conform to and collude with the leaders to embrace bad values, and the conducive environment provides the instability, paranoia, lack of checks and balances, and flawed morals that allow the others to thrive.

Thus, poor leadership is certainly a function of ignorance, ineptitude, bad decision making, and selfish or even criminal activities on the part of people in positions of leadership. The role of followers and the environment or situation cannot be ignored, however.

- Lord Acton

To this statement then we can add that bad men are given their mandate by susceptible followers and conducive environments.