Thus far in our discussion on Mainstream Leadership we have talked about various strategic ways that today's leaders attempt to motivate, mobilize, and maneuver the modern workforce to perform jobs and tasks for the greater good of the firm.  To a certain extent, Mainstream Leadership deals as much with trying not to de-motivate your employees as it does finding ways to motivate them.  The modern worker, is an advanced breed, and, because of that, they are often much more easily distracted and negatively influenced then previous generations may have been.  Due to increases in the flow of knowledge and overall education levels across the United States and the world abroad, workers are now wondering "Why don't I make that much money?", "What does it take to get a job like that?", and "What skills does he have that I don't?".  And it isn't that these issues weren't present 15-30 years ago, but simply that they are much more evident in the new Information Age in which we live.  A leader of the modern worker must be able to convey exactly why a person's contributions are vital to the successes and failures of an organization.  He must be able to transcend issues of pay, job type, or workload and influence his population to do their best at all times in hopes of achieving better at a later date.  The modern leader must be in-touch with what's going on in the world and be able relate the issues of the day to struggles that may be happening at home or at the job site.  Most of all, the modern worker wants someone they can trust and believe in because so many of the institutions they've trusted and believed in in the past have failed them.  Whether it be the stock market, the company pension plan, or the job they thought they'd have forever, Corporate America has caused great distress in today's workforce and given them reason to doubt the once great system we've had in place for centuries.

To this point we have viewed examples of great leaders that have been depicted in the Mainstream Media, but we have yet to look at anyone who may have fallen short of becoming the next Patton or even motivating his people for better.  In the movie Office Space, Bill Lumbergh is that leader; we've all experienced them in our life times- the leader who absolutely, without shame, fails to stir passion within us to strive for better or even do our best.  Boston.com, a website devoted to the happenings of Beantown recently conducted a social survey on "Bad Bossing" and came up with several examples of superiors who came up just short of greatness.  Luckily for us their flaws were revisited here: http://www.boston.com/business/gallery/famous_bad_bosses?pg=4