A Research Study On Toxic Leadership

How can we ensure that effective healthcare leadership is incorporated in today’s organization? While continued reports exist of organizations struggling to stay afloat, research has indicated that healthcare organizations are lacking in effective styles of leaderships. With fast approaching changes with mergers and acquisitions, many healthcare organizations have chosen to restructure their facilities to accommodate the rapid growth in the industries crisis of inadequate leadership in organizations. In fact, numerous reports have surfaced depicting growing needs for organizations to change their current leader’s roles to help improve the potential success of developing effective leadership.

Leadership is critical and it refers to the process of influencing followers towards achieving the groups’ goals. Toxic leadership refers to the leadership offered by leaders who abuse power and leave the group they lead in a poorer condition after they are left. Toxic leadership is associated with incompetence, insularity, evil, intemperance (lack of self control), callousness, rigidity and corruption among other bad leadership characters. The leaders involved in toxic leadership are not concerned about uplifting the people they lead (followers). Instead, they make sure they satisfy their self interests. They fight and control instead of caring for their followers. In most cases, the leaders with this leadership style are leaders who bully, abuse, and discriminate the subordinates. In addition, they create a hostile climate, self serving and arrogant, threaten and even yell at their followers among other fierce characters. They do not lead based on their qualifications. However, they apply force to be in leadership positions thus making the lives of their followers a misery . They are selfish in that they work to promote themselves without regard to the welfare of their followers. In most cases, do this by not minding about the future of their group and its members. This paper explores the effects of toxic leadership in the United States.

This paper will respond to three questions, “Are all managers leaders?” (Phillips & Gully, 2014, p. 425) “What are some common barriers preventing leaders from behaving ethically and how can these barriers be overcome?” (Phillips & Gully, 2014, p. 450) And “Is it possible for leadership substitutes to be effective?” (Phillips & Gully, 2014, p. 450)

Toxic leadership is something that is present in the Army today and has several devastating effects on that leaders unit. By now, if you have spent any time in the Army, I’m sure you have experienced some form of Toxic leadership. Although not every toxic leader has a loud, decisive, and demanding demeanor. Some toxic leaders can have the same affect with a quit and soft demeanor.

This includes the need for a better understanding of how toxic leadership practices, if it does exist, can impact turnover intention and OCB in nonprofits. As the nonprofit sector in Orange County, California provides services to residents who might be otherwise without them in areas such as healthcare, education, housing to the arts and sports. Furthermore, nonprofits often serve the most vulnerable population groups for basic needs, especially at a time of economic hardship and shrinking resources. However, nonprofits need to be innovative and creative to continue to serve and deliver services to their populations. While the behaviors of toxic leader have been shown to undermine organizational success in for-profits and public organizations, it is not well documented how toxicity impact Orange County nonprofit professionals and the success of their organizations. More importantly, there is no evidence of the effects of toxic leadership practices on nonprofit employee’s organizational citizenship behaviors and turnover intention and how that will impact their engagement

Similar to groupthink, aversive leadership behaviors also emerge in response to interpersonal and organizational stress. Pearce and Sims (Thoroughgood et al., 2010) define aversive leadership as “. . . a brand of management relying on coercive power through specific use of intimidation tactics and reprimands” (p. 648). Such tyrannical and abusive behaviors destroy leader-member trust, which results in diminished performance, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors of followers (Bligh, Kohles, Pearce, Justin, & Stovall, 2007). Aversive leadership often arises from the mutual reinforcement of biased perceptions of both follower and leader intent (Harvey et al., 2006; Hogan & Hogan, 2001) – a process somewhat analogous to the realization of negative self-fulfilling prophecies (Vecchio, 2007).

Therefore, the shift in the dynamics of the dysfunctional leaders requires a comprehensive change for the whole systematic process of the organization. Also, it requires awareness that the toxic dynamics of leaders pose a serious threat to the health of the organization in the long-term. Toxic leadership can be like a silent killer, and the toxic leaders can drain the energy from the organization.

Lipman–Blumen, Jean (2005). The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians––And How We Can Survive Them, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press.

The topic of leadership evokes curiosity about our leaders and their approaches in decision making, leadership styles and the effectiveness of their leadership. At time leaders are critiqued for their actions or views on different business affairs. In today’s working environment leaders set the tone, vision, and goals of any organization. Leadership has a huge impact on the culture of an organization and how people communicate within the organization (Northouse, 2009). The actions of leaders should inspire and positively impact their followers. The approach of leaders in handling adversities highlights many features of their character.

The topic of leadership evokes curiosity about our leaders and their approaches in decision making, leadership styles and the effectiveness of their leadership. At time leaders are critiqued for their actions or views on different business affairs. In today’s working environment leaders set the tone, vision, and goals of any organization. Leadership has a huge impact on the culture of an organization and how people communicate within the organization (Northouse, 2009). The actions of leaders should inspire and positively impact their followers. The approach of leaders in handling adversities highlights many features of their

The behavior of a leader has a direct impact on the morale of the followers. Evans (2001) notes that leadership is a critical element of morale, job satisfaction and motivation among professionals. Leaders affect morale in a number of ways. The first is that leaders set a positive tone for the organization. The second is that leaders develop the systems that create motivation for workers on a day-to-day level and the third is that leaders create a vision and enthusiasm within the organization. The issue can also be approached from the negative bad leaders tend to remove these traits from organizations, to the detriment of morale.

The leader’s performance was severely affected from lack of people skills. Communication, emotional IQ, and personality were all areas that the leader needed to improve upon. Communication was identified multiple times in the peer review and evaluation as a deficiency. The leader’s lack of communication directly led to a loss of productivity in the department. Furthermore, employees felt that they were not being listening to, leading to a loss of moral and trust. Also, the leader was completely oblivious to the emotions within the department. If the leader would have taken the time to perceive and understand the employees’ emotions, they would have been able to identify the issues within the department and take corrective measures. Also, things would have never gotten this out of hand if the leader had a better personality. Many of the employees felt the leader was unapproachable and acted better than they were, causing employees to stop following the leader.

Winning organizations today, attribute much of their success to having great people, great processes, and great leaders who inspire and motivate employees to follow them. Great leaders understand that they have influence and power over individuals, and what they do with this power defines them for years to come. We can all think of leaders of whom we respect and model our current behaviors after, and transversely, we can all think of leaders whose behaviors we are sure to avoid in our own leadership styles. Successful organizations encourage leaders to stretch themselves for personal development, while empowering others to be the best they can be in the workplace. The difficult part for many leaders is digesting the power they possess and ensuring they use the appropriate influence tactic based on the situation or the individual they are dealing with. Dubrin (2016) stated to acquire and retain power, leaders must skillfully use organizational politics, and in order to make effective use of the politics, leaders must be aware of specific political tactics and strategies! My research revealed that organizations from all industries deal with work-place politics and ethics, and rely heavily on leadership behaviors that foster a culture of success.

These traits are dangerous during a war, it may cost the lives of soldier in a war. In the world of business, if the leaders in a company have these bad traits, it may not cause death of people but are highly affected the daily lives of workers and customers.

All humans share similar basic needs and desires that we instinctually strive to satisfy. We all seek food, shelter, companionship, intimacy, importance and power. Leaders are no different. These needs must be satisfied, but leaders must be cautious and not be brought down or trapped by fulfilling these needs inappropriate ways. Leaders that lose their moral bearings and fall prey to unethical activities are not bad people, they just made bad choices. They didn’t take the role as leader to be inappropriate or evil, yet every leader has the capacity to make actions they deeply regret unless they remain grounded. It is important for leaders to manage their hungers by being aware of the potential pitfalls they may face while leading and satisfying their human needs.