Destructive workplace leadership is a speedrun to throttling employee productivity, cohesion, and morale. Sadly, like many problematic relationships in life, the red flags aren’t always visible, so watching out for common toxic leadership signs is crucial to steering clear of harmful work environments. Whether you’re new to a team or undergoing a management shift, here are five tell-tale signs of toxic leadership you should know.
- Picking Favorites
- Overstepping Boundaries
- Shifting Blame
- Inability To Accept Criticism
- High Employee Turnover
Picking Favorites
Showing favoritism toward certain employees is a common characteristic among toxic leaders. Managers and team leads who do this can quickly corrupt the meritocracy that underpins most organizations. Leadership bias can lead to heightened tensions, dissatisfaction, and sharp drops in productivity as managers reward connections over performance. Sometimes, other senior members or leadership staff struggle to notice the favoritism in action, making it harder to prove. Still, call it out if you notice favoritism taking hold in your workplace.
Overstepping Boundaries
Toxic managers frequently overstep professional and personal boundaries. These transgressions can take several forms. Managers who hound you about work-related matters outside typical working hours are prime examples of toxic leaders who do not value boundaries. A manager who floods your inbox with work tickets or zoom links during your time off is another toxic leadership red flag to notice. Unpaid overtime requests, inappropriate comments, crude language, or any of the countless ways toxic managers can overstep your boundaries are signs it’s time to take action.
Shifting Blame
Blaming missed targets and poor performance on others to save their hides is another glaring sign of toxic leadership. Effective leaders take ownership of their mistakes. In contrast, toxic leaders prefer to divide the blame for a failure amongst staff members or deny wrongdoing altogether. Poor leaders hate accountability for their shortcomings and tend to blame their losses on external, uncontrollable factors. Remember to keep formal communications in writing if you deal with a liability-aversed manager. This protects you from shouldering any undeserved blame and holds your leaders accountable for their errors.
Inability To Accept Criticism
Nobody enjoys being told their doing something wrong, but managers who are incapable of constructively receiving criticism create a work ecosystem built on fear and complacency. And what do criticism-resistant crews do right? They’re excellent at fostering a team of ‘yes-people’ who would rather allow an error to occur than risk getting on their managers’ bad sides and potentially losing their livelihoods in the process.
Solid leadership means possessing enough modesty and humility to heed your teammates’ advice. Only then can a group work effectively to hit organizational goals and metrics. In other words, a good leader listens to their colleagues’ questions, concerns, and criticisms. If your manager struggles to take constructive criticism or, even worse, resorts to anger and deflection, it’s time to find a solution internally or begin shopping around for another job.
High Employee Turnover
A high turnover rate is another strong indicator that an organization potentially has a toxic leadership issue. Unhappy workers leave, so it’s worth investigating if you notice that a certain company or job position has an unusually high turnover. Of course, poor leadership isn’t the only reason a business might have high employee turnover, so it’s helpful to consult a company review platform (e.g., Glassdoor, Kununu, Indeed, etc.) to determine the root issue. All in all, taking a few minutes to comb through employee reviews under a job posting with a high turnover number can help you weed out toxic leadership issues before ever stepping foot in the office.
Final Thoughts
A safe, regulated, well-managed workplace where everyone gets a fair shake is absolutely essential for individual and organizational success. Toxic leadership can kill productivity, employee satisfaction, and turn a team of otherwise productive individuals into a professional mess. Avoiding the toxic leadership trap means reading the writing on the wall when it appears. If you notice any of the five toxic leadership signs mentioned above among your own management, it’s time to sound the alarm.