Psychology Commons^™

Does Sacrificial Leadership Have To Hurt? The Realities Of Putting Others First, Rob Mckenna, Terran Brown

SPU Works

Sacrificial leadership has generally been associated with positive outcomes for organizations and employees. While it is often desired by organizations, we suggest that current organizational systems often fail to promote sacrificial behaviors. We present a new perspective sacrificial leadership that includes character-based elements such as humility, a willingness to calculate the cost of leading and the courage to be irrelevant in the presence of systems that pressure leaders to behave otherwise. We discuss how these elements are often not encouraged in current selection, employee development, and succession planning processes.