THE DARK SIDE

BY MICHAEL DEGROSKY

When I was a leadership studies master’s student, faculty reserved the word leader for people doing positive, constructive things. My professors certainly weren’t alone. Indeed, models that most influence the practice of leadership almost exclusively treat leadership as an altruistic endeavor.

But much has changed. Contemporary leadership scholars now acknowledge that leadership is not exclusively positive and constructive but also has a dark side.

Understanding destructive leadership is now a significant research focus, and there is growing awareness that a range of harmful behaviors – collectively referred to as toxic leadership – is common in contemporary workplaces and has far-reaching negative consequences for people and organizations.

Academically, the study of toxic leadership is an emerging sub-discipline and, frankly, it is a fragmented work in progress. However, the unfinished nature of the research should not prevent individual leaders or organizations from taking action to mitigate the risks posed by toxic leaders and leadership.

Not all bad leadership is toxic leadership. An over-burdened and stressed leader micro-managing a team is not leading well. An under-prepared leader emulating a poor role model is unlikely to succeed. These are examples of bad leadership, but they are not the persistent destructive behaviors of the Machiavellians, narcissists, and psychopaths who find their way into leadership roles. Stunningly, the research consistently associates toxic leadership and psychopathy, a personality trait characterized by manipulation, lack of empathy, and unethical behavior.

I like the framing of toxic leadership offered by Adbesi Inako Akinyele and Zinguang Chen who, in their 2004 article in International Studies of Management and Organization, call toxic leadership “a multi-faceted and destructive leadership style characterized by negative managerial techniques.” Behaviors associated with toxic leadership include abusive supervision, excessive authoritarian control, manipulation, and emotional unpredictability.

Writing in Psychology Today in 2023, Ronald Riggio called out specific destructive techniques and tactics associated with toxic leaders, including abusing power to command and control, demanding unquestioning loyalty and blind obedience, creating fear, and manipulating dependent and unwary followers to do their bidding. Riggio, an organizational psychologist, is the Henry Kravis Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology at Claremont McKenna College in California. Other researchers have cited verbal abuse, bullying, gaslighting and other psychological manipulation, hoarding and centralizing power, and micro-management as characteristics of toxic leaders.

The consequences of toxic leadership are wide-ranging for individuals and organizations. The research shows that people subjected to toxic leaders experience low morale, diminished job satisfaction, declining commitment and motivation, emotional exhaustion, stress that impacts physical and mental health, and burnout. Organizationally, toxic leadership in the workplace leads to declining productivity, teamwork, alignment, and ethical behavior, increased turnover, organizational dysfunction, and exposure to reputational and legal harm.

As the understanding of leadership has improved, it has become clear that character is the bedrock of effective leadership. Writing in the October 2022 edition of the MIT Sloane Management Review, Mary Crossan, William Furlong and Robert Austin call character “the foundation of all judgment and decision making.” Connecting the work of various scholars studying leader character and those studying the problem of toxic leadership, we can summarize toxic leadership behaviors as emanating from failures of character, arising from either deficiencies or excesses in important dimensions of character.

While credible research suggests that psychopaths are over-represented in organizational leadership compared to the general populace, I do not want readers to think that all negative leadership is toxic leadership or that all toxic leaders are malignant narcissists and psychopaths; many are just regular people overwhelmed by the pressures of their responsibilities, struggling with burdens in other parts of their lives, or who have become intoxicated by the power and status of their position. For those people, Crossan frames toxic leadership not as an absence of character, but as character imbalances, allowing that even a leader whose leadership attempts have created a hostile workplace can be strong, perhaps even too strong, in one or more dimensions of character but deficient in others, leaving their strengths unsupported. This framing leaves open the possibility that struggling leaders, through character and leadership development, may become aware of their shortcomings and work to improve them.

We must also look at toxic leadership through the lens of organizational culture. Toxic leaders cannot exist unless their organizations have, intentionally or unintentionally, created conditions in which their destructive behaviors go unnoticed or uncorrected. In organizations favoring short-term results over long-term sustainability, behaviors creating hostile work environments are often overlooked, enabled, or even encouraged. When high-level leaders model destructive leadership behaviors without consequence, others emulate them, toxicity can become the norm and pervade the organization’s culture.

The consequences of toxic leadership are wide-ranging for individuals and organizations.

What practical actions can we take to mitigate the risks that toxic leaders and leadership pose? I have four thoughts.

1. Individual leaders and organizations must recognize that leadership is a specific and essential skill set, with character at its core, for which organizations must recruit and hire, and that leadership must be developed and actively supported.

2. Organizations must purposefully and continuously prepare leaders with a focus on character and ethics through leadership development systems that prioritize empathy, accountability, and psychological

3. Organizations should ensure that they have strong human resources practices, particularly recruitment, hiring, and promotion, with a focus on detecting toxic leaders already in the workplace as well as preventing them from entering the workforce and rising into positions of authority.

4. Every organization and organizational leader must actively attend to Since no unified definition of toxic leadership or list of toxic leadership behaviors exists, organizations would be wise to identify and communicate unwanted leadership behaviors and be prepared to hold leaders accountable when those behaviors are detected.

Mike DeGrosky is a student of leadership, lifelong learner, mentor and coach, sometimes writer, and recovering fire chief. He taught for the Department of Leadership Studies at Fort Hays State University in Kansas for 10 years. Follow Mike on LinkedIn.