When Leadership Fails

Individual, Group and Organizational Lessons from the Worst Workplace Experiences

Lonnie R. Morris, Jr., Wendy M. Edmonds, Lonnie R. Morris, Jr., Wendy M. Edmonds

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781800437692
  9781800437678
• eBook ISBN:
  9781800437685
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

When Leadership Fails is a multidisciplinary resource for researchers and practitioners. As a curated selection of unique, scholar-practitioner reflections from around the world, this collection highlights both the universal impact of leaders behaving badly and the communal triumph that emerges from deconstructing these experiences in aggregate. In addition to expert insight into these leadership and organizational challenges, readers benefit from the application of empirical and theoretical research for analysis and interpretation. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of the individual, group and organizational implications of negative leadership encounters in the workplace. Readers will find value in the immediate application of these lessons to their own careers and organizations.

Chapter 1

Monsters, Inc.: Toxic Leadership and Engagement

Ngozi Igbokwe, Sarah Smith, Colton Hart, Elizabeth Hergert, Ellen Reter, Marguerite Wildermuth, Ryan Bouda, Tiffany Phillips and Cristina Wildermuth

Abstract

Leaders have a profound impact on the work lives of the employees they supervise. This chapter explores the experiences of employees whose leaders exhibit toxic behaviors and the impact of this toxicity on employee engagement. The authors report the findings of a qualitative study involving in-depth interviews with 13 participants. First, the authors describe the participants’ experiences before and after experiencing toxicity. Next, the authors outline three critical toxic leadership styles: the nightmare (leaders who have unbalanced emotional control and who are overly fond of power), the pretender (leaders whose authenticity and integrity seem low, who play different characters depending on the circumstances), and the runaround (leaders who change directions too often or give unclear instructions). Finally, the authors address organizational, leadership, and individual strategies to identify and remove toxic leaders from the workplace.

Keywords: Employee engagement; leadership effectiveness; psychological safety; supervisor–employee relations; toxic leadership; employee meaningfulness

Introduction

Have you ever had a boss who became the reason you never wanted to step foot in a workplace again? Well, you are not alone. Most of us have worked for an inadequate supervisor who made us feel resentful, angry, or apathetic. At first, we may have been willing to give a new manager a break. Maybe the person did not know the ropes yet. Maybe we were the ones doing something wrong. After a while, however, we started losing energy, experiencing less focus, and bringing less passion to work. We had lost our engagement.

Engagement refers to “a positive work-related state of fulfillment that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption” (Schaufeli et al., 2006, p. 702). Vigor means energy; engaged employees with vigor are unlikely to feel exhausted at the end of a normal workday. Dedication involves employees’ passion and enthusiasm for what they do. Finally, absorption is linked to focus: the ability to concentrate on work’s responsibilities.

Engagement benefits organizations and employees. Engaged organizations report positive work outcomes such as higher customer loyalty, increased productivity, and lower absenteeism (Harter et al., 2016). Engaged employees find meaning in what they do and feel supported by the organization (Vila-Vázquez et al., 2018). They experience higher life satisfaction and better mental and physical health than their disengaged counterparts (Guglielmi et al., 2016).

Researchers have identified relationships between engagement and leadership. For example, the Gallup report The State of the American Manager (2015) connected 70% of the employees’ variability in engagement to their managers’ actions. The common adage “people do not leave organizations, they leave managers” is grounded in data: one in two employees leave organizations throughout their careers because of their managers (Gallup, 2015).

In this chapter, we share the results of a qualitative study exploring the relationship between toxic leadership behaviors and employee engagement. We asked two central questions:

1. How does a manager’s behavior sustain or hinder employees’ willingness to bring their whole selves to work?
2. What is the impact of managers’ behaviors on employees and their engagement?

This chapter also includes: (a) background information on toxic leadership and engagement; (b) research methods; (c) our findings; and (d) leadership lessons.

Background: Toxic Leadership and Engagement

Toxic Leadership

Lipman-Blumen (2006) defined toxic leaders as those who “leave their followers worse off than they found them” (p. 3). Whether intentionally or unintentionally, toxic leaders intimidate, belittle, and deceive their followers. They also can engage in self-promotion, abuse, lack of self-control, unpredictability, narcissism, and authoritarianism (Schmidt, 2014). These leaders’ destructive styles evolve, causing unaddressed toxic behaviors to fester and leading to unnecessary employee suffering (Mehta & Maheshwari, 2014).

One would think such harmful leaders would be identified and removed. However, toxic leaders remain all around us. Theo Veldsman (2014), a professor at the University of Johannesburg, argues three out of every 10 leaders are toxic. Some organizations experience more toxic leaders than others. For example, in a study on toxic leadership behaviors at the Army War College conducted by Reed and Bullis (2009), all respondents experienced toxic leadership.

Toxic leaders’ actions affect their followers, who may feel demoralized and marginalized (Green, 2014). Various authors have tied poor leadership to the disengagement of their followers (Beck & Harter, 2014; Leary et al., 2013; Payne et al., 1998; Schmidt, 2008). However, toxic leaders may be difficult to identify, as one follower’s “toxic leader” may be another person’s hero (Lipman-Blumen, 2006). Even world leaders who committed major atrocities had adoring followers. Lipman-Blumen (2005) identified six reasons followers support toxic leaders. These are (a) having someone in a position of authority; (b) experiencing safety and security; (c) feeling special; (d) belonging to a community; (e) avoiding isolation; and (f) feeling powerless to confront the toxic leader.

Employee Engagement

Unhealthy leaders damage the work environment. Currently, a mere 30% of the working population experience engagement (Gallup, 2015). Disengagement has led to a general decrease in productivity and an estimated loss of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in the US alone. The phenomenon, therefore, has practical implications for companies and affects revenue. Leaders’ efforts to understand and foster engagement could promote workers’ satisfaction, happiness, and feelings of connection to their work (Schmidt, 2014) and the organization (Saks, 2006).

Three conditions promote engagement within the workplace: meaningfulness, safety, and availability of resources. Employees experiencing meaningfulness feel valued by and valuable to their community (Macey & Schneider, 2008). Kahn (1990) connected meaningfulness to task characteristics, role characteristics, and the quality of the work interactions. Meaningful tasks are challenging and rewarding. Employees gain a sense of ownership, the motivation to work toward their goals, and the opportunity to exercise variety and creativity. Meaningful roles give people a sense of importance and purpose. Finally, meaningful work interactions help employees build positive connections in the workplace. Employees may embrace coworkers as a second family (McBride & Bergen, 2015).

Safety involves “feeling able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career” (Kahn, 1990, p. 708). Safety refers to employees’ perceptions of how much risk they can take and the impact of taking such risks (Frazier et al., 2017). Four factors influence safety: interpersonal relationships, group and intergroup dynamics, management style and process, and organizational norms.

• Interpersonal relationships: Employees feel safer when they can be vulnerable at work and when workplace interpersonal relationships are positive (Kahn, 1990).
• Intergroup dynamics: Healthy groups provide protection (and thus, feelings of safety) to its members, increasing morale and rapport (Salanova et al., 2005).
• Management: Employees feel safer when managers are supportive and empowering. Engaging managers accept occasional failure without negative consequences (Kahn, 1990). A recent meta-analysis on safety confirmed the relationships between positive interactions with the manager and the employee’s feelings of safety (Frazier et al., 2017)
• Organizational norms: Employees appreciate clarity, predictability, and stability in organizational rules and norms (Kahn, 1990).

Finally, availability means the compatibility between the employees’ physical, emotional, and psychological resources and the work demands. When resources are scarce, the employees may lose focus and engagement.

Identifying the cause of disengagement is not always simple. The confusion between engagement traits (personality traits connected to the phenomenon), attitudes (feelings of energy, satisfaction, involvement, empowerment, and commitment), and behaviors (going above and beyond one’s duty, expanding one’s role, colla...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Acknowledging, Deconstructing and Processing When Leadership Fails
• Chapter 1. Monsters, Inc.: Toxic Leadership and Engagement
• Chapter 2. Investing the Time to Lead Well
• Chapter 3. Front Porch Organizations, Back Door Employees: How Mentoring Mishaps Potentially Derail Next Generation Leaders
• Chapter 4. Toxic Followership: Leader Deception and Breach of Trust
• Chapter 5. Death by Authoritative Leadership and Micro‐management
• Chapter 6. Campus in Crisis: Leadership Lessons Learned
• Chapter 7. Ethics, Leadership and the Dreaded Performance Appraisal
• Chapter 8. Autocratic Leadership among Managers and Its Impact on Salespersons Behavior in India’s Pharmaceutical Industry
• Chapter 9. Leadership Failure in a Hostile Environment: The Importance of Leading Oneself
• Chapter 10. Toxic Leadership: A Quick Erosion of Psychological Safety
• Chapter 11. A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: How a Narcissistic Leader Decimated a Faith-Based Nonprofit
• Chapter 12. When Founder’s Syndrome Is Used for Personal Gain
• Chapter 13. How to Destroy a Research & Development Group without Really Trying
• Chapter 14. When Leading the Team Goes Wrong
• Chapter 15. No Rest in the Restroom: Servant Leadership and Conflict in Products & Marketing
• Chapter 16. The Demise of a Company: An Insider’s Personal and Scholarly Reflection
• Chapter 17. Incompetent Authoritarian Replaces a Servant Leader
• Appendix: Interview Protocol – Toxic Leadership Study
• Index