Are bad bosses as commonplace as we imagine?

The topic of leadership has inspired hundreds of books and thousands of articles from academics in business schools. Yet if I randomly stopped people in the street and asked them “what do we know to be true about good leaders?” — I’m not sure what they would say. They might suggest that the simplest rule is that we should avoid promoting narcissists. Which would lead me to wonder — as I reflect on our world leaders — how successful we leadership scholars have been in getting our messages out.