Toxic Leadership

As 2020 comes to a close, I’m reflecting on a year of tragedy and loss for our country and realizing how much our leaders have failed us.

Even worse than bad leadership is toxic leadership, which Wikipedia defines as follows:

A person who has responsibility over a group of people or an organization, and who abuses the leader–follower relationship by leaving the group or organization in a worse condition than when they first found them.

It turns out that humans have a built-in need for strong leadership and we sometimes confuse this with the toxic version. Not only that, but we enable these leaders’ toxicity. As psychologist Jean Lipman-Blumen writes:

Given the strong need for leaders, followers who are confronted with toxic leaders unsurprisingly find excuses to tolerate them. Employees submit to bad bosses because they want their paychecks or are afraid to be left jobless. People think they incur a personal risk if they confront a toxic leader, due to their need for order or their fear that a new boss could be worse.

Of course, the individual is unimportant. We all know other toxic leaders and there will be more in the future. As citizens and employees, we need to recognize and confront toxicity when we see it. If not, we are doomed to repeat the cycle.