Establish and communicate clear short-term goals for individuals that are aligned with team and organizational goals. Provide solutions-based feedback to team members regularly. Engage them in decision-making to ensure everyone's opinions are heard.
Toxic leaders are “those individuals who by dint of their destructive behaviors and dysfunctional personal qualities generate a serious and enduring poisonous effect on the individuals, families, organizations, communities, and even entire societies they lead”, Dr Jean Lipman-Blumen.
Such leaders share common personality traits, notably including narcissism, hubris and Machiavellianism. There are some organizational best practices on how to deal with such destructive leaders who exhibit these very traits.
Toxic leaders employ narcissistic behavior patterns, believing that they are always right and their team members are wrong. Driven by narcissism, they value their self-interests over the well-being of their team, using their toxic behavior to fuel their self-confidence and self-promotion.
Toxic leaders are inherently bad people
Their behavior can be a defense mechanism against their own self-doubts. This means that some toxic leaders have the ability to change over time.
A leader whose personality is composed of a trio of negative personality traits — narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism — is a dark leader. Broken down, narcissism is composed of grandiosity, perceived superiority and entitlement. Psychopathy is when someone is emotionally cold, remorseless and impulsive.
A weak leader focuses solely on getting the job done instead of using the job as a way to help their people develop new competencies and skills. It's an ineffective leader who keeps their people playing small without investing in them, whether it's through neglect or because they see others as a threat.
Toxic bosses insist on getting their hands on every aspect of your work. They have a hard time letting go and trusting their team members to perform their work. As a result, the employee experience under such suffocating micromanagement can be downright demoralizing.
A manager who uses gaslighting will say one thing and do another. They might say that they value diversity in the workplace but only put forward candidates that look and sound like them. Gaslighting works when the employee wants to believe the manager's words to the extent that they will disregard their actions.
Successful leaders don't have the time or patience for indecision. They understand that to achieve success, you must put aside fear and doubt, pick a course and stick to it. Their decisions are grounded in knowledge and strategic thought, but they don't waffle or create subcommittees to examine every detail first.
Micromanaging can cause your employees to think you don't trust them to do their jobs effectively and makes it more difficult to establish trust between you and your team. Spending excessive time micromanaging your employees also distracts you from your other managerial duties.
Some qualities of an ineffective leader include micromanaging, lack of integrity, and lack of vision. These are all traits that may affect the working environment and the team members involved.
What does failure of leadership mean? Failure of leadership happens when an organization's management has problems instructing team members and coordinating their efforts. This can cause project delays, decreased employee morale, miscommunication and inconsistent quality of work.
Dark leadership represents a part of leadership reality and describes the dark part of the coin, a selfish and impulsive leader, which may nonetheless be as effective or successful as bright and prosocially oriented leaders.
The term “toxic leadership” is still used by other services, but recently the Army has introduced a new term related to the same idea: “counterproductive leadership.” The new term is officially defined in Army (AR) Regulation 600-100.
The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments.
“The darkness in dark leadership comes when an overused skill becomes a detractor, and begins to harm others and the organization. Also, the dark triad can progress to what's known as the dark tetrad which includes everyday sadism, when leaders derive pleasure from causing suffering in the people they lead.”