Toxic leadership is hardly a novelty—human history is littered with egotists, autocrats, and petty tyrants. Today's toxic leaders, however, sport crisp suits rather than robes, preside over meeting rooms rather than courts, and have exchanged decrees for passive-aggressive emails. What remains consistent is the petty backstabbing Still, the notion of toxic leaders exerting a malign influence remains alarmingly pervasive—despite almost every organisation having soaring prose about the importance of ethical behaviour. Indeed, far from a decline in toxic leadership because of values statements being posted in every break room, organisations are proving highly effective incubators rather than inhibitors of toxic leadership. Rewarding those whose behaviours undermine rather than uphold organisational well-being.
At the core of toxic leadership lies a troubling dichotomy of charisma and cruelty—leaders who publicly project virtues such as decisiveness and confidence while privately tormenting their employees. These Jekyll and Hyde managers create climates of unpredictability, significantly raising employee anxiety. The result? Workplaces teeming with insecurity, mistrust, and collective burnout. Indeed, employees often report emotional exhaustion under such leadership styles, describing it vividly as a daily lottery of moods.
The paradox, humorously tragic, is that toxic leaders rarely perceive themselves as problematic. They host seminars on 'team cohesion' without irony, applaud values like accountability in town halls while privately undermining subordinates, and might even win leadership awards, oblivious to their destructive wake. In short, self-awareness among these leaders remains astonishingly scarce, their consciences outsourced to HR departments or the bottom line with the result that 'people tend to see the talk only as window dressing'.
Organisational Consequences of Toxic Leadership
The ripple effects of toxic leadership spread alarmingly fast. Organisations are not simply collections of employees—they are interconnected ecosystems. Thus, the tone set at the top inevitably flows to the entire organisational culture.
At the individual level, emotional exhaustion is a critical consequence, manifesting as burnout, anxiety, and reduced organisational commitment. Employees report chronic fatigue, cynicism, and detachment, symptoms that soon translate into tangible organisational losses—declines in productivity, creativity, and innovation. Art Padilla, Robert Hogan, Robert B. Kaiser identified five features of destructive leadership:
- Destructive leadership is seldom absolutely or entirely destructive: there are both good and bad results in most leadership situations.
- The process of destructive leadership involves dominance, coercion, and manipulation rather than influence, persuasion, and commitment.
- The process of destructive leadership has a selfish orientation; it is focused more on the leader's needs than the needs of the larger social group.
- The effects of destructive leadership are outcomes that compromise the quality of life for constituents and detract from the organization's main purposes.
- Destructive organisational outcomes are not exclusively the result of destructive leaders, but are also products of susceptible followers and conducive environments.
These features manifest in a toxic triangle:
Moreover, toxic leadership is correlated with increased counterproductive work behaviours, ranging from minor incivilities to outright sabotage. Employees, feeling unjustly treated, may resort to passive-aggressive resistance, reduced cooperation, or even malicious compliance—deliberately following flawed instructions to highlight managerial incompetence. In this environment, even routine tasks become battlegrounds of subtle rebellion and mistrust.
Beyond individual impacts, toxic leadership fosters widespread organisational cynicism. Cynicism emerges when employees see glaring discrepancies between espoused organisational values and actual practices. Practices which fall into what Elizabeth E. Umphress and John B. Bingham called 'Unethical Pro-organisational Behaviours' which are unethical acts intended to benefit the organisation yet 'violate core societal values, mores, laws, or standards of proper conduct'. Promises of transparency seem laughable when information is withheld or distorted; calls for teamwork become hollow when competition is covertly rewarded. Such cynicism erodes the organisational identity, leaving employees disillusioned and detached.
Psychological safety also crumbles under toxic leadership. Defined as an environment where interpersonal risk-taking is safe, psychological safety is crucial for innovation and learning. Toxic leaders, however, stifle dissent, punish mistakes, and discourage open dialogue. The humorous irony here—if one could laugh through the misery—is that organisations often lament a lack of innovation while simultaneously tolerating a culture of fear.
Strategies for Mitigating Toxic Leadership
Addressing toxic leadership requires organisations move beyond mere symptom management to systemic reform. However, three strategies emerge consistently in research: leadership development, promoting psychological safety, and establishing transparent accountability.
First, leadership development programs must go beyond superficial training sessions on communication skills—so anyone thinking they can send the manager off for a few days and all will be well are deluding themselves and harming employees. Instead, programs should foster genuine moral reflection, self-awareness, and ethical sensitivity. True moral development occurs gradually through practical reflection and experience rather than through sporadic ethics seminars. Organisations must facilitate environments where leaders openly acknowledge mistakes, learn from them, and foster empathy. Leaders who embrace vulnerability and authenticity encourage others to do likewise, transforming cultures from fear-based to trust-based.
Secondly, promoting psychological safety is essential. Organisations should explicitly reward open communication and constructive dissent, acknowledging employees who challenge harmful behaviours or problematic decisions. Psychological safety can be fostered through practices like blameless post-mortems, regular 1:1s to seek in-depth feedback (anonymous feedback surveys will never suffice), and training managers to respond constructively to criticism. Such environments not only reduce toxicity but actively promote innovation, collaboration, and mutual respect.
Finally, accountability must be transparent and impartial. Clear policies regarding unacceptable behaviour should be enforced consistently and publicly, irrespective of a leader's status or performance—e.g., their sales numbers are great, but their behaviour is toxic ≠ keep them in the role. This approach requires courage from senior management—often needing them to confront difficult truths about their own managerial shortcomings or those of valued colleagues. Yet, visible accountability is the most powerful antidote to toxic leadership, sending a strong message that values like respect, fairness, and integrity are non-negotiable. As one finance industry executive observed:
If there's a situation within the corporation of sexual harassment where [the facts are] proven and management is very quick to deal with the wrongdoer . . . that's leadership. To let the rumor mill take over, to allow someone to quietly go away, to resign, is not ethical leadership. It is more difficult, but you send the message out to the organization by very visible, fair, balanced behavior. That's what you have to do.
Quoted in Treviño, Hartman and Brown (2000): Moral Person and Moral Manager
Cultivating Our Own Monsters
Toxic leadership, though disturbingly prevalent, is neither inevitable nor irreversible. But this requires that everyone in an organisation understands amoral behaviour is not merely an individual failing, it is a systemic cultural issue. Bad things happen because good people remain silent. The underlying causes of toxic leadership—poor conscience formation, unchecked cynicism, and deficient moral discernment—demand comprehensive, sustained organisational responses. For which, there are many powerful tools available: genuine ethical reflection, building psychologically safe environments, and establishing transparent accountability systems.
Perhaps the poignant lesson to emerge from studying toxic leadership is that we inadvertently cultivate our own monsters—leaders who are not inherently malicious but whose flaws are enabled and rewarded by our silence, our acquiescence, our ability to make excuses for their behaviour. Acknowledging this complicity is the first step toward meaningful reform.
Ultimately, the objective is clear: not simply to eradicate toxic leadership but to build organisations where ethics, empathy, and genuine leadership thrive. Only then can we rewrite the corporate script—transforming what too often feels like a melodrama into a compelling success story.
Good night, and good luck.
Diogenes Searching for an Honest Man (c. 1780) attributed to J. H. W. Tischbein is licensed under Public Domain.
