Leadership: Leaders, Followers, Environments

Toxic leadership as a special case

Seen in this way, toxic leadership is a special case of more general leadership situations. The key difference involves the extent to which toxic leaders (i.e., those individuals with certain predispositions and characteristics) are able to overwhelm or offset the resistance and checks and the balances presented by followers and organizational institutions, processes, and traditions. In situations where followers and organizational environments are weak, susceptible, or conducive to toxicity, flawed leaders would gain the upper hand. This way of viewing toxic leadership lends itself to any context or situation, from a dysfunctional family unit to a nation and to anything in between. It also applies to for-profit businesses as well as to nonprofit organizations such as universities.

A note about nonprofit organizations is in order. Nonprofit organizations such as universities or governmental agencies have well-established procedures that make them more bureaucratic but that also tend to prevent toxic leadership from emerging or from lasting very long if it does emerge.³² This is for three reasons. First, leaders tend to have less power and control than they are normally perceived to have. Many functions of university presidents, for example, tend to be in the honorary or “regal” realm, welcoming groups, presiding over large ceremonies, and setting very broad policies. Presidential tenures have also declined considerably, to about 5 years from start ...