Human Relations in Organizations: Applications and Skill Building 8th Edition by Robert Lussier

Exercise 7

Is Leadership Really Important?
Scott Adams is the creator of the cartoon character Dilbert. Adams makes fun of managers in part because he distrusts top-level managers, saying that leadership is really a crock. According to Adams, leadership is about manipulating people to get them to do something they don't want to do, and there may not be anything in it for them. CEOs basically run the same scam as fortune-tellers, who make up a bunch of guesses and when by chance one is correct, they hope you forget the other errors. First, CEOs blame their predecessors for anything that is bad, then they shuffle everything around, start a new strategic program, and wait. When things go well, despite the CEO, the CEO takes the credit and moves on to the next job. Adams says we may be hung up on leadership as part of our DNA. It seems we have always sought to put somebody above everybody else.
Do you trust top-level managers?