The book ‘Destruktivt ledarskap’ was released in 2018 and takes a closer look at what destructive leadership entails and which types of leaders can affect employees and organizations in a negative way.
All leaders have both positive and negative qualities, but the negative ones often have a greater effect. In other words, a leader can possess many good qualities but still be destructive in their leadership. Fortunately, leaders can be trained to be more constructive through knowledge that increases self-awareness of the negative behaviors and characteristics he or she possesses.
The research:
The researchers behind the book distinguish two different types of destructive leaders; the active and the passive. While the actively destructive leader is an outer enemy, whose behavior will not greatly affect the employees if there is a strong unity in the group, the passive leader is invisible and indistinct, which makes it unclear for employees who is responsible for what, which can be difficult to handle.
This uncommitted passive leader, who does not confront the issues of the organization but rather shies away from confrontation and avoids responsibility, is the most harmful of all leader types.
At this networking event you will meet Maria Fors Brandebo, PhD and co-author of the book, who, based on her research, will introduce us to the term destructive leadership. Furthermore, Maria will present valuable tools for how HR can work with destructive leadership and what to do about destructive leaders in our own organizations.
Maria Fors Brandebo, Ph.D psychology, Karlstad University, Sweden, is a university lecturer at the Department of Security, Strategy and Leadership, Swedish Defence University. She has published articles, books, chapters in books, and research reports within the field of military leadership, trust, military recruitment and retention, destructive leadership and job satisfaction.
You can also read about the content of the book in this article in Djøfbladet.