Invisible Cost of “Toxic” Leadership

Many organizations today are plagued by so-called leaders who don’t carry a leadership mindset. Their title may read “Project Leader” and they may be managing a few people, but that does not make them real leaders. We all know that leadership is a mindset, a way of thinking and attitude. It has little to do with title/designation.

Few years back, I heard a project manager saying, “I will screw him up if he does not complete this module today”. This rather harsh statement was spoken in front of all team members! Statements like these tell us more about the attitude of the project manager. That is why they say that if you want to judge the character of a leader, see how he thinks, acts and talks when he is handling a difficult situation.

You can identify a toxic leader by following traits:

• Does not promote initiatives
• Behaves destructively
• Often shouts at his people when they make mistakes
• Micromanages
• Suppresses innovative ideas
• Always tends to find something that is not going right and fix people on that
• Tries to be in control all the time
• Does not openly communicate in a straight-forward fashion
• Does not trust people
• Encourages and then enforces “conformance” to his ideas
• Assigns blame to someone else in the team rather than protecting them
• Succeed mostly by showing others down

Leaders who are not conscious and careful about the way they think, act and talk set a wrong example for their people. With wrong examples around, people are bound to underperform, get de-motivated and hence, disengaged. This (invisible) cost is huge and most of the times, beyond the scope of recovery.

People tend to derive some “meaning” from everything you do – specially if you are a leader. Your thinking, approach, method, statements and actions are your tools to ensure that they derive the “right” meaning that helps them become more engaged with their work, be more productive and stay motivated.

Toxicity in words, deeds and thoughts of leaders builds an organization culture that is very difficult to unwind.