I think two reasons we let dark triad types assume leadership roles come down to the stresses of responsibility for others and anxiety about shame. We may see the flaws of a leader, may even think there's something quite wrong with them, but it's easy to let someone else have the responsibility and deal with the shame of mistakes.

Unfortunately, this leads to people who either feel no shame or are good at covering up their missteps - or both - taking on many of the leadership roles. We even have the feeling that they're especially good at leading and are "natural born leaders."

In my opinion, a good first step would be to try to stop identifying people as - stop tying their identity strictly to the categories of - "leaders" and "followers." Barack Obama is clearly a political leader, as a former president of the US. But there are many areas in which he is no leader at all - is he a leader as a surgeon, a submarine captain, an astronaut, a pastry chef? - and even in this preeminent sense he is no longer the leader, either. So is he "a leader" or "a follower"? Even in examples that should be as clear as day - the President of the United States of America (and in my opinion a very good one) - that isn't so cut and dry as we assume or pretend.

If we recognize that everyone encompasses "leader" and "follower," we put responsibility back where it belongs: in the hands of each individual, for themselves and how they affect others.

Maybe no one is listening to you; but if you're ahead of your time and you say it well, you're still a leader. Even if what you say is obvious and ancient, if others are ignoring it - and you know it's important - and you go on saying the truth, then things will come around, and you were in some sense a leader.

This is a way I operate and I see it as "leadership" but do not care about the word.

I do, however, perceive some blind spots and over-categorization going on.

Let's try to dissolve the leader/follower dogma a little.

We live in a democracy - that's what we like to believe, and we should cultivate even more of an advanced democracy emulation than we have by recognizing that everyone's got some leader and follower in them, and this is healthy and good for everyone. What's unhealthy is shoving people into one category or another and trying to keep them there all the time.