LatinosUSA

A lot of people in my WP community know that I’m passionate about the subject of leadership, and I spend a significant amount of time reading and researching it. As I work on building my own way of understanding leadership and answering some big questions I have, I want to share what I’m learning along the way.

There’s a lot happening in this country right now. Much of it seems rushed, irrational, and lacking thoughtful consideration. There certainly doesn’t appear to be any long-term strategy (ten years or more). If there is one, no one has explained it yet.

It feels like a toxic environment, if you ask me. I’ve discussed bad leadership before, but in this post, I want to focus specifically on toxic leadership.

Toxic leadership is a negative leadership style in which a leader engages in systematic and destructive behaviors that harm individuals and organizations, either directly or indirectly.¹

Some of the key traits and behaviors of toxic leaders include:

• Self-centeredness and narcissism: Toxic leaders often display excessive self-promotion and a grandiose ego. They seek personal gain and credit, exhibiting traits like greed, arrogance, and self-absorption.²
• Abusive and humiliating treatment: These leaders habitually belittle, shame, or threaten subordinates. They may insult, demean, or publicly criticize followers, creating a climate of fear.³
• Manipulation and exploitation: Toxic leaders manipulate information and people for personal advantage. They play favorites, scapegoat dissenters, withhold resources, or deceive staff to maintain control.⁴
• Rigid control and intimidation: They enforce strict obedience and micromanage subordinates. Authoritarian tendencies, such as demanding unquestioning compliance and centralized decision-making, often coexist with toxicity.
• Lack of empathy and ethics: A defining trait is indifference or hostility toward others’ needs. Toxic leaders generally show little concern for follower well-being and often justify unethical actions if it serves their aims.

These traits create a destructive leadership profile. Toxic leaders tend to combine narcissistic or selfish motives with ongoing abusive actions, creating a sustained pattern of harm within the organization.

Toxic leadership often overlaps with other harmful leadership tendencies, such as destructive leadership and authoritarian leadership:

• Destructive leadership is a broader umbrella term encompassing many harmful leader behaviors. As defined in leadership literature, “Destructive leadership is a broad, overarching concept covering a number of different kinds of misbehaviors by managers, supervisors, and leaders. It includes bullying and harassment, petty tyranny, toxic leadership, the dark side of leadership, bad leadership, narcissistic leaders, derailment, incompetence, unethical behavior, and poor leadership.”⁵
• Authoritarian leadership (or autocratic leadership) is a style characterized by strict control, centralized decision-making, and a demand for obedience.⁶

Taking into consideration everything mentioned above:

Can a toxic leader lead change?

Absolutely. A toxic leader can lead change, through coercion, manipulation, or disruption, but the nature and sustainability of that change are often deeply problematic.

How can a toxic leader lead change?

• Short-term effectiveness: They may drive immediate results through fear, pressure, or authoritarian control.
• Disruption: Toxic leaders often shake up the status quo, which can be perceived as bold or decisive leadership, at least initially.
• Charisma and manipulation: Some toxic leaders are persuasive and can rally people behind a cause, even if only temporarily.

But these short-term gains often come at a high cost. They erode trust, weaken organizational culture, and undermine long-term success.

I know firsthand that no one enjoys working for a toxic leader. I’ve had my share of them throughout my career, and I can say without hesitation that those were some of the worst times in my professional life. Toxic leaders drain your energy, kill motivation, and hinder performance.

As I continue to study leadership, I find myself asking: 

If most of us don’t like working for toxic leaders, why do we elect them to run our governments?

Perhaps it has something to do with the level of separation between the toxic leader and the everyday citizen, say, someone living in a quiet town in the Midwest of the United States. The perception that a leader’s actions “over there” won’t affect “me over here” is both powerful and dangerous.

But sooner or later, the institutional chaos caused by a toxic leader, especially in a global power like ours, touches every life, not just in this country, but around the world.

It’s worth taking the time to reflect on the decisions we’re making, whether informed or not, and how they are shaping our society for the worse.

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1. https://bmcnurs.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12912-022-01167-8#Sec2 ↩︎
2. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/1977827#:~:text=the basis for the emergence,exhibit behaviors that cause ↩︎
3. https://bmcnurs.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12912-022-01167-8#:~:text=individuals and organizations directly or,they abuse their power, which ↩︎
4. https://risetpress.com/index.php/jhsmt/article/download/1115/726/4996 ↩︎
5. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_54-1 ↩︎
6. https://pjlss.edu.pk/pdf_files/2024_2/24124-24142.pdf#:~:text=Authoritarian leadership emphasizes legalism, with,These leaders ↩︎