Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership by Rima Samuel D. & McIntosh Gary L

Author:Rima, Samuel D. & McIntosh, Gary L. [Rima, Samuel D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2007-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

Add up the circled numbers and place the total here: ___________

If your total comes to less than 20, you probably are not paranoid. If your total is between 21 and 40, there is a likelihood that you have some paranoid tendencies. If your total is 41 or more, you probably are a paranoid leader.

Do you see the traits of a paranoid leader in yourself? In what ways does this type of leader mirror your dark side?

11

T HE C ODEPENDENT L EADER

A s all too many children have, William Jefferson Blythe grew up in the home of an alcoholic parent. His childhood environment was characterized by instability and chaos. When he entered the world, Billy Blythe was already fatherless. Three months before he was born, his father was killed in an auto accident as he was traveling to pick up his pregnant wife and bring her to their new home in suburban Forest Park, Illinois. Not long after Billy’s birth, without a husband to provide for her and her newborn son, his mother left him with his grandparents while she lived in New Orleans to pursue a degree in nursing in hopes of improving her chances of successfully raising her son. During her years of nurse’s training, Billy was essentially separated from his mother until he was three years old. One of his earliest memories, Billy would say decades later, was “visiting his mother in New Orleans, then getting back on the train with Mammaw (his maternal grandmother) and looking out the window and seeing his mother on her knees, crying, as she waved good-bye.” 1 It was a very traumatic experience for a young boy of one or two years old.

When Billy’s mother, Virginia, returned home from her years in New Orleans she quickly and somewhat hastily married a man previously reported to be a wife-abuser by the name of Roger Clinton, who was also known for his heavy drinking, gambling, and philandering. In fact once, before they were married, Virginia caught Roger cheating on her but decided to marry him anyway, much to the displeasure of her family. 2 It was a dysfunctional marriage that was shaping a future president of the United States.

By the time he reached the first grade, Bill Clinton had already been exposed to significant family violence.

One night Virginia dressed Billy up to take him to the hospital in Hope to visit her maternal grandmother, who was dying. Roger did not want them to leave. When she said she was going anyway, he hauled out a gun and fired a shot over her head into the wall. Virginia went across the street to the Taylors’ and called the police. Billy slept at a neighbor’s house. 3

That episode was only the beginning. Young Bill spent many nights lying awake in bed listening to his parents’ fights. The alcoholism of his stepfather and the violence it spawned continued to spiral out of control until Bill, then sixteen years of age, and his mother finally left Roger Clinton in 1962.

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