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Toxic Leaders Essay

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Why do toxic leaders develop in Special Forces – I think most would agree that toxic leaders don’t actually intend to be toxic, or arrogant, self-serving, or petty. In fact, toxic leaders actually want to and think that they are very successful. They certainly don’t self-assess very well or they would be aware of the effects that it has on their subordinates. That has been my experience with one specific case that I have dealt with. The bottom line is that I don’t think toxic leaders become toxic while in Special Forces. Those people just don’t have the necessary attributes to make them good leaders. We all know people that don’t have the ability to interact well with others. People that say the wrong thing at the wrong time and don’t realize …show more content…

If we want to fix this problem, then we need to start by being honest with our peers and subordinates and actually attempting to counsel and develop them. We simply don’t do that as much as we should. We are terrible with paper work and almost never give soldiers written counseling. While in SF I have received counseling, that wasn’t a generic copy and paste for every team member, one time. In ten years. We cannot expect to grow and promote the right guys if we all generally have the same NCOERs and we fail to do any negative paperwork when guys do the wrong thing. I would, and I expect others to do the same, counsel my peers and subordinates. Identify major decision making failures and put in the effort to rate that individual accordingly. Mistakes are looked at as isolated incidents and then a year down the road that individual is making the same mistakes with someone else and there is no record of it happening the previous year. With the situation involving my Company Commander, I failed to do anything to help rectify the situation. I was a junior member and lead to believe that it was just something that I would have to

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