Leadership Models Changing?

An editor's note from Graphic Design USA's newsletter.  I think the editor's insight and experience with "bad" managers is great!  I'll repost some of it here:

I have had some truly horrible bosses in my time. Mostly they were children in grown-ups clothing, confusing the exercise of raw power, with what it means to be a real leader. A rogue's gallery of screamers, tantrum throwers, spirit breakers, micromanagers, pencil tossers (pencils are little wood-and-lead instruments that people used to write with), credit hoarders, non-communicators, non-listeners, disrespectful of those who reported to them and obsequious to whom they reported. I consider myself a loving and forgiving person but, in truth, I continue to harbor dark fantasies of revenge for acts and omissions dating back two decades. Of course, being a lawyer in the early years of my career, I was managed by lawyer/managers, which is a lower form of life than regular human beings. But you get the point. With this as background, I was especially pleased that GDUSA is co-sponsoring — along with staffing experts at The Creative Group — an original survey of the winners of the American Inhouse Design Awards regarding the traits of a successful creative manager. Excerpts from the "Creative Leadership" study will be published in our Inhouse Design Annual, which hits the streets next week, and more comprehensively in a white paper available to GDUSA readers in the fall. Among the results: our audience feels generally more positive about the current crop of leaders than I did about mine; they sense a transition from traditional command-and-control types to a more open-minded, sensitive and flexible style of leadership; and they are hungry for more formal business and management training at school and work. Please make a note to read the new survey; it is time better spent than crafting little voodoo dolls of, or scanning obituaries, for past employers. Trust me. -- Gordon Kaye

I like that it appears leadership is transitioning from the "power mongers" into a better model.