Destructive Leadership: the Cause, Effect, and Aftermath

The traditional concept of a leader, as being the directing chief at the top of a hierarchy, is now considered to be inadequate to truly lead a modern organisation. Leadership is concerned with people and so anyone, and indeed everybody, has the potential to demonstrate leadership qualities and behaviours.

Leadership is, and always has been, a vital aspect of social and economic constructs. It is essential to the survival of societies, industries, organizations, and virtually any group of individuals that come together for a common purpose. However, leadership is difficult to define in a single, definitive sense. As such, theories of leadership, what constitutes a great leader, and how leaders are made have evolved constantly throughout history, and still continue to change today in hopes of improving upon our understanding of leadership, its importance, and how it can be most effective in modern organizational cultures.

By definition a leader is a person who leads or commands a group however, I believe a leader should be a person who inspires his team excel in the worst of conditions. A leader should be extraordinary reliable as the team should know that the leader could guide them to the best of his abilities toward their goal. A leader should be persistent as they should be the motivational force leading the group. A leader should be patient and calm knowing that quality takes time and that the individual member of his team have obstacles to overcome on their own part.

In today’s business environment, leadership is a major topic of discussion and concern. Having the right leaders in place could be the difference between a successful business and unequivocal failure. There are many different leadership styles that are proven to be effective and then there is the type of leadership that leads a business in the opposite direction. This type of leadership is known as toxic leadership. Research has shown there to be many defining characteristics of a toxic leader and there are identifiable signs that may be indicative of a toxic workplace. The effects of this type of leadership and the environment that it creates can be far-reaching. However, there are ways to assist individuals with protecting themselves from a toxic leader and the negative results of working in a toxic environment.

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.

Leadership can be defined as the ability of a company 's management to make sound decisions and inspire others to perform well (Investopedia, 2014). From the beginning of time, in the middle of all the major changes and historical events there where effective and motivated leaders having a wide sphere of influence and inspiring other groups of people to be creative and efficient. A leader is defined as a person or thing that holds a dominant or superior position within its field, and is able to exercise a high degree of control or influence over others (businessdictionary,2014).Leaders have always played a major role in the evolution of technology as well as in forming the very lifestyle of today’s society. Effective leaders are able to set and achieve challenging goals, to take swift and decisive action even in difficult situations, to outperform their competition, to take calculated risks and to persevere in the face of

Leadership is the ability to influence others towards achieving a goal that will benefit a community, an organization, and a nation as a whole. A leader sets goals, communicates the goals clearly to follows, set conditions for achieving the goals, guide followers towards achieving the set goals and increase the morale of followers through motivation. A leader also sets values underlying the operations that are geared towards achieving the set goals. I think a good leader should have the following qualities.

Leadership is defined in many ways, but what it is in common in each definition is the emphasis on influence over other’s thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and attitudes. According to Spector (2012), power is “the extent to which one person can influence another to do something” (p. 321). This means that that power is what inspires subordinates to follow an employer. There are five sources of power. Expert power is given when there is a perception that the person has knowledge or expertise in an area. Referent

“It’s important to remember that the vast majority of leaders in the Army are very good and are deeply

Destructive Leadership describes a leader that has the abilities to lead and form groups. They are very convening and able to brain wash their followers. In most cases they are able to follow out their immorally behaviors. Osama Bin Laden was the head leader of Al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization. The leader undermined followers to promote violence and destruction. The leader was effective enough to order followers to smash a plane into one of America’s busiest businesses in New York. America was in an uproar; because these where innocent lives that were taken. Osama Bin Laden was powerful enough to pursued followers to carry out orders. The moral leader was effective enough to lure followers to carry out the given orders.

A leader should be a sociable person, who easily creates relationships with others and who knows how to put in contribution his wide network of knowledge.

Leadership is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as the “action of leading a group of people or an organization.” Leadership is also the ability to set trends, inspire, motivate, and sway others to produce desired results. There are different styles and ways of performing leadership and a good leader has the ability to take ordinary people, put them all together, and hopefully yield successful results. For organizations to have sustained results from their performance there must be a good balance of business insight, technical and interpersonal skills, and good team dynamics. A leader must know how to use all these areas as well as trust and communicate with their people in

According to Yukl (Yukl, 2013) one of the many definitions of leadership is “the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable other to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organization”. Therefore it is of importance to have an effective leader in an organization to guide the company in the correct direction, in order to achieve the company’s’ main goal.

For decade’s individuals, companies, and organizations have spent an unprecedented amount of money on researching, molding, modeling and working to define what a leader is and what characteristics make successful leaders. Despite all the research, there is not a quick answer or even full agreement as to what makes an individual an effective leader. The definition of a leader is “someone who can influence others and who has managerial authority.” (Robbins, Decenzo, Coulter, 2015. P.370)

Leadership is not just about the title, the position or the duration one has been in a certain office. It takes more than just that to be sufficiently effective. In our society today, there is quite a number of the so called ‘leaders’ who do not really deserve to be called by that title because they do not effectively live up to the expectations of the mandate in which they are called or trusted with. There are some qualities or attributes that are necessary in the life and operation of a leader which make him an effective leader. Some of those qualities include ethics, effective communication, trustworthy, engaging themselves at their best, being creative with credibility, and having a character and not just competence. All these