Russell is a lousy leader on Survivor

Russell Swan makes his second appearance on Survivor this season and he's even more annoying than last time. He, along with two other previous leaders who had to leave previous seasons due to injury, joined a team of five new players.

His first statement was that he didn't want to assume a leadership position. He even told the cameraman that he hoped some other 'dummy' would take that role. Yet he immediately told everyone what to do, alienating the rest of the team.   
When it was time to make fire, always a big challenge, Malcolm stepped forward as someone who had done this before. He set up the process but Russell, always wanting to lead, did the grunt-work. Malcolm gave and Russell accepted credit for starting the fire, never sharing the credit where it belonged. Malcolm, very cleverly, allowed Russell to take the credit.

 

He put a even bigger target on his head when he told Zane he would vote out anyone looking for the hidden immunity idol even though Zane knew he had at least a clue to it.   When the first challenge came along, he once again took the leader role but refused to listen to his team. He chose which team members would take each role, to the point of ignoring the women who claimed not to be good at puzzles, putting them on that task because he wasn't good at puzzles.

A leader needs to listen to his people. You cannot take whatever role you want, you need to set up the team to win by placing everyone in the best role to win as a team. Determine your team member's strengths and weaknesses and plan your strategy accordingly. The other leaders did this with great success.

 

Unfortunately, Zane threw himself under the bus and the team voted him the first one out.