LEADERSHIT
Toxic Leadership and the Systems That Protect It
In my life, I have met some exceptional individuals in positions of leadership across nonprofits, business, government, and public service. I have also encountered deeply dysfunctional leaders whose behavior damaged organizations, employees, and communities while remaining largely protected from meaningful accountability. One of the things that continues to trouble me is the vast disconnect between what institutions know and what they are actually willing to implement. We send people to universities, teach them how systems fail, educate them on psychology, ethics, organizational behavior, law, rehabilitation, communication, and leadership theory,only to send them to institutions that resent real change.
That contradiction alone can make a rational person feel disconnected from reality. While studying criminal justice in university, many of the theories surrounding rehabilitation, restorative justice, and behavioral reform had already been thoroughly researched decades before I arrived. Yet despite all the data, studies, and evidence supporting reform, the operational reality of the criminal justice system often remained largely unchanged. Prosecutors are experimenting with alternatives to incarceration like no bail, diversion, reduced sentencing, or community supervision, but without meaningful infrastructure for rehabilitation, education, addiction treatment, employment, or mental health support, many of those reforms are more harmful than good.
The same pattern appears throughout modern leadership culture: organizations understand what healthy leadership looks like, yet continue rewarding systems and personalities that produce dysfunction.
Leadership theory itself illustrates this divide clearly. Classical leadership traditionally emphasizes hierarchy, authority, top-down command structures, and transactional compliance rooted in the belief that leaders possess innate traits such as charisma or intelligence. Contemporary leadership theory increasingly prioritizes adaptability, emotional intelligence, collaboration, communication, and transformational leadership designed to inspire growth and shared purpose. Modern organizational psychology overwhelmingly supports the latter approach, yet many institutions continue operating under models that reward dominance, control, fear, and ego over trust and development.
A recent article from Gallup found that 42% of employees who voluntarily left their jobs believed their employer or manager could have done something to retain them. Nearly half reported that no meaningful conversations regarding career growth, job satisfaction, or workplace concerns occurred prior to their resignation. Employees cited poor communication, burnout, lack of recognition, micromanagement, and unresolved workplace frustrations as major reasons for leaving. Gallup’s conclusion was simple but important: employee turnover is often not merely a compensation problem but a leadership and organizational culture problem.
Research on toxic leadership reinforces this reality. A study published through the National Library of Medicine identified toxic leadership behaviors including authoritarianism, manipulation, narcissism, intimidation, and self-serving management practices that create unhealthy work environments. The study found toxic leadership significantly reduces employee motivation, morale, productivity, and organizational commitment while increasing emotional exhaustion and disengagement. These findings are not particularly shocking to most workers because many people have lived them directly. What remains surprising is how often organizations knowingly tolerate these dynamics despite decades of evidence demonstrating the damage they cause.
Toxic leadership does not always present itself as obvious. Sometimes it masks itself as confidence, decisiveness, charisma, or strength. In a discussion on the psychology of power between Dr. Deborah Gruenfeld and Darius Teter at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Gruenfeld explains that power psychologically transforms people in ways leaders themselves often fail to recognize. As individuals rise into authority, they frequently become more self-focused, impulsive, and less sensitive to the needs of others. Insecure leaders may begin using authority not to support organizations or teams, rather to reinforce their own status, protect their ego, and demand obedience. Over time, fear and self-preservation replace trust, openness, and accountability.
Gruenfeld also argues that many toxic leaders fail to change because organizations and followers often mistake dominance for competence. During uncertainty or crisis, people naturally gravitate toward individuals who project certainty and control. Leaders themselves may become trapped exhibiting strength and confidence while suppressing vulnerability, reflection, or honest feedback out of fear they might appear weak. As authority increases, self-awareness often decreases. Subordinates hesitate to challenge leadership hierarchies and discourage honest communication. Leaders gradually surround themselves with compliance rather than truth or value.
Organizational psychologist Ronald Riggio made a similar argument in an article published by CNBC discussing why people follow toxic leaders in the first place. According to Riggio, many people confuse arrogance, narcissism, and dominance with competence and security. Toxic leaders often project qualities people instinctively associate with protection and stability even when those individuals are manipulative or emotionally destructive. Research cited by Riggio found narcissistic leaders were frequently rated as more effective despite harming communication and group performance. In many organizations, results become justification for abuse. If profits rise, goals are achieved, or performance metrics improve temporarily, people rationalize toxic behavior under the assumption that “the ends justify the means.”
This dynamic begins to resemble unhealthy relationships or failing marriages more than functional leadership. Toxic leadership often operates through emotional volatility, distrust, insecurity, control, and imbalance. Research on second marriages has shown divorce rates ranging between roughly 31% and 60%, often driven by unresolved baggage, poor communication, financial strain, and emotional exhaustion. Similar patterns emerge inside organizations where leaders carry destructive habits into new environments without reflection or accountability. Employees begin operating in survival mode rather than collaborative environments built on trust.
Another uncomfortable reality surrounding toxic leadership is the way some male executives intentionally surround themselves almost exclusively with female employees, not out of genuine commitment to diversity or empowerment, but as a mechanism of control, ego reinforcement, and organizational manipulation. While building gender-diverse teams is healthy and necessary, workplace researchers and organizational psychologists have noted that environments where a male leader disproportionately hires women while systematically avoiding strong male peers or dissenting personalities can sometimes reflect deeper toxic dynamics. Toxic leaders often prefer employees they perceive as less threatening, more compliant, or less likely to challenge authority. In these environments, hiring decisions become less about competence and more about creating a psychologically “safe” ecosystem for the leader’s ego. Employees may be subtly encouraged to compete for approval, loyalty becomes more important than honest disagreement, and organizational culture slowly transforms into a performative hierarchy centered around the emotional needs of leadership rather than the health of the institution itself.
One of the more dangerous aspects of toxic leadership is how insulated executives become from accountability once they reach positions of power. A study by Gallup found that accountability was the lowest-rated leadership competency among executives and managers, with only 30% of managers saying their leaders were exceptional at holding people accountable. In theory, CEOs answer to boards of directors, shareholders, regulators, and legal systems. In reality, accountability at the top is often vague, selective, and reactive. Boards may hesitate to remove underperforming executives due to personal relationships, reputation concerns, or financial optics. Research from Deloitte has also shown that executives often control much of the information directors receive, creating major transparency problems within organizations themselves.
Even during corporate scandals or ethical failures, executives are rarely held personally responsible unless prosecutors can directly prove intentional wrongdoing, an extraordinarily difficult standard within large bureaucratic systems. Consequences typically only emerge after catastrophic financial damage, public outrage, or reputational collapse which makes inaction impossible. Even then, executives frequently leave with massive severance packages rather than meaningful punishment. Employees notice this imbalance. Accountability tends to flow downward while protection and influence accumulate upward. Research from the World Economic Forum found only 31% of respondents were satisfied with leadership accountability inside their organizations.
Perhaps most troubling, toxic leadership reproduces itself. Employees working under manipulative or authoritarian leaders often learn that advancement depends not on collaboration or integrity, but on aggression, silence, political maneuvering, or unquestioning obedience. Over time, workers internalize these behaviors because they consistently observe toxic individuals gaining promotions, influence, and institutional protection. Research on workplace culture and abusive supervision shows that employees exposed to toxic leadership are more likely to adopt controlling or hostile management styles themselves once they gain authority. Organizations unintentionally train future leaders to replicate the same dysfunction they once endured.
This creates a dangerous cycle where toxic leadership becomes normalized rather than recognized as failure. Employees lose trust not only in leadership, but in the systems themselves. Eventually organizations become emotionally exhausted environments where survival, optics, and protection matter more than creativity, honesty, or growth.
The tragedy is that none of this is new information. The research exists. The theories exist. The data exists. We know psychologically safe workplaces perform better. We know collaboration improves innovation. We know emotionally intelligent leadership increases retention and morale. We know fear-based systems create burnout, disengagement, and instability. That may be the defining contradiction of modern leadership: society increasingly understands what healthy leadership looks like while continuing to reward many of the traits most associated with unhealthy power.
