One of the factors that contributed to the problem was the lack of
leadership resulting from the unusual practice of changing the leader
very frequently. This is yet another example of bad management by KKS.
At the time of T-ara's debut in July 2009 the leader was Eunjung, who
was followed by Boram in 2010, Hyomin in 2011 and Soyeon at the
beginning of 2012. Part of the leader's job is to prevent situations
like this developing, but when the problem arose Soyeon failed to deal
with it and even joined in the tweeting when she should have stopped it.
She should have been thinking of what was best for the group and the
members, not indulging in petty bitchiness on Twitter. Because half the
original members had already been leader before her it's likely that
Soyeon lacked authority and she certainly didn't have the experience
that someone who had been leader from the beginning would have had.
Being the leader isn't easy; it requires vision, a strong sense of
responsibility and commitment to taking care of the members. If the
right person, probably Qri, had been given the position from the start
and been allowed to develop her leadership skills over the course of
three years she might have been able to prevent the whole
disaster.
An extra job for the leader in this case was to ensure that Hwayoung was
properly integrated into the T-ara family, but whose responsibility was
that? T-ara were just finishing their third year and Soyeon was their
fourth leader and the third during Hwayoung's time in the group.
Hwayoung once said that because she joined the group late she didn't
think she should bother the unnies. That's part of the problem. She
wasn't sure that she really belonged there, and if I'm right about the
staff (unproven but credible) they were trying to make her feel that she
didn't. The other members may have been unaware of how she felt and
with all those changes of leader the sort of relationship between leader
and new member that would help to prevent the problems didn't develop.
Is Hwayoung to blame for that, or Boram, or Hyomin, or Soyeon? I would
say the responsibility lies with KKS, who would appoint a leader and
then replace her when she started to gain some understanding of what was
required.
