The field of leadership studies frequently focuses on defining leadership traits in abstraction from the context in which leadership operates. The first aim of this article is to provide a brief overview of reasons why this might be the case. Reasons include: leadership studies being dominated by the perspectives of leaders; the lack of definition and visibility of followership studies; the status and limitations of much qualitative research; and a predominant focus on good leadership. Consequently, many people who experience the effects of leadership, and particularly those of bad leadership, do not recognise their experiences in the literature. However, recognising that followers who experience bad leadership personally increasingly engage in autoethnographic studies, my second aim is to draw out some examples of bad leadership from the autoethnographic literature, as well as their effects. In spite of its negative effects, bad leadership frequently remains unchallenged. My third aim is to explain why this might be the case, where I argue that this stems partly from the pitfalls of autoethnographic studies. I also sketch how these pitfalls might be overcome and how doing so and adopting the principle of ‘accountability for reasonableness’ might help to tackle bad leadership.

领导力研究领域通常侧重于从领导力运作的环境中抽象地定义领导力特征。本文的首要目的是简要概述为什么可能会出现这种情况。原因包括：领导力研究被领导者的观点所支配；追随者研究缺乏定义和可见性；大量定性研究的现状和局限性；并且主要关注良好的领导能力。因此，许多经历领导力影响的人，尤其是领导能力差的人，没有意识到他们在文学中的经历。但是，认识到个人领导能力较差的追随者越来越多地参加民族志研究，我的第二个目的是从民族志文献中找出一些领导力差的例子及其后果。尽管有负面影响，但糟糕的领导才能常常不受挑战。我的第三个目标是解释为什么会这样，我认为这部分是由于人类志学研究的缺陷所致。我还概述了如何克服这些陷阱，以及如何克服这些陷阱并采用“合理性问责制”的原则可能有助于解决领导能力低下的问题。