Last Friday I wrote Narcissism and Leadership and how much narcissism has increased over the last few years.

I’ve never understood the preoccupation with the glitterati, but I have wondered how much our celebrity-worshiping culture affects kids?

According to Drew Pinsky MD, AKA, Dr. Drew on radio and TV, and S. Mark Young, a social scientist it may be especially dangerous for young people, who view celebrities as role models.

“They are the sponges of our culture. Their values are now being set. Are they really the values we want our young people to be absorbing? … It harkens back to the question of how much are young people affected by models of social learning. Humans are the only animals who learn by watching other humans.”

Worse than dysfunctional celebs is our penchant for making heroes out of the bad guys.

18 year-old, 6-foot-5, 200-pound “Colton Harris-Moore is suspected in about 50 burglary cases since he slipped away from a halfway house in April 2008. Now, authorities say, he may have adopted a more dangerous hobby: stealing airplanes.”

Adin Stevens of Seattle is selling T-shirts celebrating him and there is a fan club on Facebook.

I’m not surprised, in a world where serial killers have groupies and people fight for souvenirs of death-row inmates it figures that they’re going to romanticize someone who manages to not get caught.

But what makes me ill are his mother’s comments, “I hope to hell he stole those airplanes – I would be so proud,” Pam Kohler said, noting her son’s lack of training. “But put in there that I want him to wear a parachute next time.”

It’s tough enough to grow up these days; it’s tougher in a dysfunctional home or in areas that are gang-controlled, but what kid stands a chance with parents like this?

What can we do? Where can we find more positive role models that have the glamour that mesmerizes kids and grownups alike?

When will we glorify function instead of dysfunction? Meaning instead of money?

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Image credit: Chesi – Fotos CC on flickr

I’ve come to the conclusion that the road to hell isn’t paved with good intentions; it’s paved with ”leaders with intentions”—good, bad or indifferent.

I figured this out based on media coverage of leaders. After all, have you ever seen a media treatment of a follower?

Media co-opted ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’ decades ago and increasingly diluted the meaning until it disappeared.

Along with dilution, the media gave those they termed leaders the same treatment that was previously reserved for extraordinary athletes, celebrities and rock stars.

In doing so they created the monstrous, indestructible, uncontrollable ego found in every leader who bought into their hype; and reflected in compensation packages more fit for royalty than for business people.

And in case you haven’t noticed, you can find many of those massive egos in (surprise, surprise) investment banking, hedge funds, insurance and other sectors of financial services. But you knew that.

In fact, ego-mania has percolated throughout all industries, with little consideration for the size of the organization or its mission.

Further, in throwing the leader term around so loosely the media helped enlarge politicians’ already super-sized egos still more and extended the ego franchise to religious heads.

Not only are those egos super-sized, they also seem to be bulletproof.

How many of these ‘leaders’ have actually taken responsibility for what they’ve caused?

Have you seen them apologizing for their share of bringing down the global economy? Did I miss it? Boy, I hope you Tivoed it for posterity.

But the media’s gone pretty silent on the subject; lauding corporate heads seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird. But dodos aren’t the only extinct bird, the phoenix is, too. And like the phoenix, media leadership hype will rise again just as soon as we all forget—which, unfortunately, we will and that’s a historically proven fact.

By the way, I’m not the only one; Jim Stroup noticed the silence, too, only from a different perspective.

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Image credit: sxc.hu