I would argue that the root cause of the problem is the dominance paradigm. The very fact that we frame leadership as power over instead of responsibility for other people reflects that. To be clear, I’m not saying changing how we frame the issue fixes it - though it’s not insubstantial - but that there’s a direct line between abuse of power and the very fact that we build our cultures on a foundation of domination reinforced by the exploitative way in which we engage in the control and management of capital, financial and otherwise.
Indeed, and the desire to boil it down to a farcically simplistic model of human behavior is a false comfort.
“Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” ~ Lord Acton [emphasis mine]
Humans aren’t automatons, and we’re not the authors of our own repression through the investiture of trust in leaders. People are responsible for their own choices.
