Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership Leadership Pathology in Everyday Life Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries INSEAD Fontainebleau, France ISBN 978-3-319-92461-8 ISBN 978-3-319-92462-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92462-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018953037 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans- mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Once, I overheard someone saying that experiencing gratitude and not expressing it is like buying a present and not giving it. With this in mind, I would like to dedicate this book to two women who have been very important to me for most of my working life. The first is Sheila Loxham, my long-time personal assistant, who has been a remarkable support to me over the years. I have always greatly appreciated her ability to reframe difficult situations in a very positive way. In that respect, she often plays the role of the counselor’s counselor. The second person to whom I would like to express my gratitude (and with whom I have also worked for a very long time) is Elizabeth Florent-Treacy, senior lecturer at INSEAD, whose intellectual curiosity and creativity have always been a tremendous source of support to me. The Palgrave Kets de Vries Library Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Development and Organizational Change at INSEAD, is one of the world’s leading thinkers on leadership, coaching, and the application of clinical psychology to individual and organizational change. Palgrave’s professional business list operates at the interface between academic rigor and real-world implementation. Professor Kets de Vries’s work exempli- fies that perfect combination of intellectual depth and practical applica- tion and Palgrave is proud to bring almost a decade’s worth of work together in the Palgrave Kets de Vries Library. Sex, Money, Happiness, and Death The Coaching Kaleidoscope1 Mindful Leadership Coaching Coach and Couch (2nd edition)2 You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger Telling Fairy Tales in the Boardroom Riding the Leadership Rollercoaster Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership 1 Edited by Manfred F.  R. Kets de Vries, Laura Guillén, Konstantin Korotov, Elizabeth Florent-Treacy. 2 Edited by Manfred Kets de Vries, Konstantin Korotov, Elizabeth Florent-Treacy, Caroline Rook. vii Contents Part I 1 1 Introduction 3 2 Do You Want to Be Led by a Dictator? 17 3 Trumpmania 25 4 The Ugly American 35 5 Not All Narcissists Are Created Equal 43 6 Do You Identify with the Aggressor? 49 7 The Making of a Bully 55 8 Are You Addicted to Power? 61 ix x Contents 9 Mission (Im)possible: Dealing with Narcissistic Executives 67 10 Developing Leaders Through Adversity 73 Part II 79 11 A Tale of Two Organizations: Creating Best Places to Work 81 12 The CEO Mega-Pay Bonanza 87 13 The Money Delusion 95 14 Saving a Family Business from Emotional Dysfunction 101 15 The Wise Fool 107 16 Down and Out in Beggarland 111 17 Don’t Let Shame Become a Self- Destructive Spiral 117 18 What’s Pushed Out the Door Will Come Back Through the Window 123 19 W hat Good Is Empathy? 129 20 Are You Suffering from D.A.D.? 135 21 Accepting Your Shadow Side 141 Conten ts xi 22 Beyond Coaching BS 147 23 What Happened to Prince and Princess Charming? 153 24 Why Wisdom Can’t Be Taught 159 25 What Next? 165 26 The Epitaph Question 171 Bibliography 175 Index 177 About the Author Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries brings a different view to the much-studied sub- jects of leadership and the psychodynamics of individual and organizational change. Bringing to bear his knowledge and experience of economics (Econ. Drs., University of Amsterdam), management (ITP, MBA, and DBA, Harvard Business School), and psychoanalysis (Membership Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, Paris Psychoanalytic Society, and the International Psychoanalytic Association), Kets de Vries explores the interface between management theory, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, executive coaching, and evolutionary psychol- ogy. His specific areas of interest are leadership (the bright and dark side), career dynamics, talent management, entrepreneurship, family business, cross-cultural management, succession planning, stress, C-suite team-building, executive coaching, change management, organizational design, management consulting, and organizational development. The Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development and Organizational Change at INSEAD, Kets de Vries was the founding director of INSEAD’s Global Leadership Centre. In addition, he is Programme Director of INSEAD’s top management programme, The Challenge of Leadership: Creating Reflective Leaders, and the founder of the Executive Master Programme Consulting and Coaching for Change (and has received INSEAD’s distin- guished teacher award six times). He has also held professorships at McGill University, the École des Hautes Études Commerciales, Montreal, the European School for Management and Technology (ESMT), Berlin, and the Harvard Business School, and he has lectured at management institutions around the xiii