One thing I don’t feel gets enough recognition is toxic leadership in the workplace. I feel people have been conditioned into believing these environments are customary to every workplace, but that isn’t the case.
Webster’s dictionary defines toxic leadership as a leadership style that is destructive to team members and the overall workplace. It involves a self-centered attitude and behaviors that negatively impact subordinates, leading to a detrimental organizational climate. Toxic leaders often exhibit traits such as exploitation, disrespect, and lack of emotional intelligence, which can result in high turnover rates and demoralized employees.
Toxic leaders come in all shapes, sizes, ages, ethnicities and span across all industries and career fields, including private sector, non-profit, and government entities. My guess is that since you are inquiring about toxic leadership, you are likely neck deep in a situation that has you questioning whether you may be in the presence of a toxic leader. (And if you have to ask, you more than likely are) I seriously doubt the toxic leader is researching this topic. The toxic leader I’m sure is oblivious to the fact they may actually be responsible for low morale, fear, and insecurity amongst employees. Like my therapist once told me, “It’s never the people who need therapy, that are in therapy.” But just in case a toxic leader may happen to stumble across this writing, this is for you! And please share it with all your toxic leader friends.
Prior to my current position, I had no experience with toxic leadership. I’m a middle aged woman who has been working for 30 plus years and have held positions in customer service, finance, and have even run a medical practice. I have experience in entry level, with nobody reporting to me, and I also have experience with having staff who I was responsible for. No rose colored glasses over here. I am realistic and know not every day will be sunshine and roses, otherwise they wouldn’t call it a job, they would call it a vacation in Puerto Rico. As long as you have a good, solid team, the worst of the worst days don’t seem so bad. You know as well as I do, it’s rarely about the workload, it’s about your leader. People don’t usually quit the job, they quit the leader.
So let’s talk about it. What makes someone a toxic leader? I don’t mean what happened when they were 6 years old that they haven’t worked through in therapy. I mean what are the toxic traits they pack around and dump on your doorstep? What are you forced to figure out because the mortgage is due and the kids need an outfit for the 100th day of school? For me, there is not one single day that the stench of toxicity doesn’t blow into my office and I choke on the blood from my tongue that I have been biting all day. I will share examples of these traits as we go along, and you may have traits of your own to explore, but for me: Gatekeeping, disrespect, never taking accountability (includes blaming others), unclear expectations.
Gatekeeping-You know how they say, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?’ I was so blessed to have never experienced this in my life up until this point, and truth be told, had I known this was coming I would have never resigned from my previous place of employment. Gatekeeping is where no task is turned over to you in its entirety. Literally every single thing you do has at least some portion that requires you to get information from your toxic leader. For example: You are required to call to schedule someone to come in for an interview. You are given the name and phone number only. On the surface this seems legitimate. I mean, what other information do you need in order to set up an interview next Tuesday at 2pm? Ok, let’s just say I get Sally on the phone, identify myself, and ask her to come in at 2pm and she starts to ask questions about the position? We have multiple positions open, how can I confidently answer her questions if I have no idea what position she has applied for? I’m calling her, so at the least, I should know what position it’s for. So, how does that make me look when I have to ask her what position she applied for? Once I stammer around a bit and tell her all these things will be discussed on Tuesday, she gets off the phone and questions what a cluster fuck she is about to walk into on Tuesday when the dumb girl on the phone doesn’t even know why she’s coming in. I mean…come on!! But hypothetically speaking, let’s just say she agrees to Tuesday’s interview with no additional questions. Part of my responsibility is to pull the interview questions based on certain criteria pertaining to her work experience. Hmmm, I have no resume. I literally have a name and phone number. This requires me to ask my leader what interview questions to pull. I am never fully trusted to have all the responsibilities to do my job confidently and effectively. But that’s just it. Your toxic leader could care less about your confidence level. In fact, your toxic leader, more than likely, gets pleasure out of seeing you slipping on a banana peel and being seen as incompetent. They enjoy the fact you have to come to them for every single thing. It gives them power and they adopt this ridiculous idea that ‘nobody can do anything without me’, when they have no intention of ever giving you the tools to effectively do your job without them. This is just one small example of this trait. For the sake of time, that’s all I will go into, but I can assure you there are plenty more examples.
Disrespect-This is one where I may have been a little naive. In all my other places of employment this has never been an issue. I had no idea that it was possible to be smack dab in the middle of a workplace culture where a leader could be anything but respectful to the staff. But, here we are. I always check my personal emotions at the door and most effective leaders do the same. I try to be kind, friendly and approachable to my peers. I speak to everyone I encounter each day and up until this point I believed that reciprocity was just a given. Wrong again. As a menopausal, middle aged woman, the lack of sleep I get because my insides are on fire, and if I let it, could be seen as a good excuse not to say good morning. But yet I still do. This is small in the grand scheme of things, but it sets a negative tone at 6:30 in the morning. I can’t tell you how many days I say ‘good morning’ to be met with crickets. No head nod. No peace sign. Nothing. How disrespectful is it to be working 45 minutes for free every morning, and not even get a ‘good morning’ from the one person reaping the benefits. In addition to that, there are times we cross paths in the hallway and right when you get to the proximity where normal people say something, your toxic leader will grab their cell phone to avoid having to acknowledge you. It’s weird. This sends me into the overthinking spiral of ‘what did I do wrong?’
Never taking accountability-I had a boss one time tell me, ‘it’s ok to be wrong’, and what a heavy weight that was to unload. I felt such a connection to her in those words. None of us know everything. And if you think you do, you are the problem. You try your best and sometimes you fail. It’s just how things are. And unless you are a heart surgeon, failing at something is forgivable. You know what didn’t work, so you’re well prepared for the next go at it. When my previous boss told me that, I was able to let go of the perfectionist trap and was able to relieve a little anxiety, knowing my mistake wouldn’t cause the apocalypse. I’m wrong a lot. But I keep showing up. But if you have a leader who will never, and I repeat, never, take accountability, you are going to be in for a rough ride. By not taking accountability, by default, they will be looking on someone to hold the blame. When you do make a mistake, they will be extremely hard on you. They will take it from a teachable moment and turn it into something that seems as terrible as you kicking a puppy. If you are met with a situation where there is no question who made the mistake (but them), buckle up honey, the bus is coming and they will be looking for someone to throw under it. Because it isn’t fathomable for your toxic leader to make a mistake on a calendar invite. They are looking for someone to blame for giving them the wrong information that they added to the calendar invite. It will never be them. Trust me. And when they are outed for making a mistake, they will go to great lengths (like pulling up a year’s worth of emails) to show you that it was you, in fact, that got the information wrong. And if your toxic leader goes into her email archive and you never hear anything back, you can just take that as a silent acknowledgement there was no evidence. Because if they find it, you’ll hear about it. And they will never change.
Unclear expectations-This one took me a little longer to realize, because it was hidden under the guise of being trusted. You are asked to complete a task and you have little to no guidance. Since you are already aware of the standards your toxic leader may have, you ask questions. You ask them to elaborate a little more on the expectation. Their response is ‘I trust you. Just do it how you see fit.’ This should be where you abort the mission!! It’s a set-up!! At first, you won’t take it that way. You breathe a sigh of relief and think…they finally trust me. You feel all warm and fuzzy, thinking you are finally making progress. Honey, that is a hot flash! I recall one time, I was “trusted” to set up for a meeting. I had the option of setting up one of two rooms that were located across from each other. Being a very logical thinker, one of the rooms had a bunch of stuff that needed to be moved in order to set it up properly and the other did not. Using my brain, and being given little direction, I decided to use the other room so I wouldn’t have to move things out (which also meant returning it after the meeting). I asked my toxic leader to come take a look. The first response was “we never use this room. We use the one across the hall.” I explained my reasoning, which fell on deaf ears. I was told to move everything to the other room. I did. And after I did, I told them next time they will need to provide better instruction because I will not be doing my work, only to re-do it immediately afterwards.
These things I have mentioned don’t seem like much. But these are things that are dealt with on a constant basis. After a certain period of time, you start to question your value. You question whether you are competent enough to even be working there. You will start to ask questions about every single thing you do because you don’t trust yourself to give an answer or complete a task correctly. This is where the toxic leader wants you. Because the fact is, you have been competent all along and it was never about you being competent. It has always been about you being more competent than them.
Before you take a leadership role, you need to ask yourself a few questions. You need to dig deep into your personality and see where your confidence level is. You need to check and make sure your communication skills are on point. You need to ask yourself how you lead. You need to question your people skills. You can’t be an insecure leader. It takes someone confident to lead a group of people. People thrive in environments where communication is clear and concise and there is no room for question. People thrive in environments where input is recognized and welcomed, not ignored and snuffed out. Being a leader who thrives on confusion and chaos while creating an element of fear amongst staff is a terrible way to be. Leaders who lead with an iron fist may seem to be effective in the short term, but I guarantee it’s not sustainable. You won’t have any staff.
So in conclusion, toxic leaders typically don’t change. Don’t allow a toxic environment to make you question your worth!
Single Sarcastic Superhero 