#474 Dealing with Toxic Leadership: A Strategic Imperative for Decision-Makers
Dealing with Toxic Leadership: A Strategic Imperative for Decision-Makers
By Niels Brabandt
Toxic leadership is not a rhetorical device and not a matter of personal sensitivity. It is a structural and behavioural reality that undermines performance, damages organisations and leaves lasting psychological and professional scars on those exposed to it. Over recent months, the volume and severity of cases shared with me have increased markedly. Decision-makers can no longer afford to treat toxic leadership as an individual problem or an unfortunate exception. It is a governance issue.
Why toxic leadership is difficult to identify
One of the greatest challenges in addressing toxic leadership lies in distinguishing it from legitimate leadership behaviour. Not everything that feels uncomfortable is toxic. Direct feedback, performance expectations and corrective conversations are essential elements of leadership. Confusing these with toxicity weakens organisations and trivialises the experiences of those who genuinely suffer under destructive leadership.
Toxic leadership begins subtly. A common early indicator is a lack of accountability. Leaders claim success as their own while shifting blame for failure onto others. Closely related is micromanagement, often disguised as support or involvement but in reality driven by control. These behaviours signal an inability or unwillingness to lead responsibly.
Escalation patterns and organisational damage
As toxic leadership escalates, inconsistency and arbitrariness emerge. Direction changes without explanation. Expectations are retroactively redefined. Favouritism becomes visible, inner circles form and professional advancement depends less on competence than on proximity to power. At this stage, psychological stress becomes chronic and trust erodes rapidly.
The most severe forms involve overt abuse of power. This includes unpaid overtime justified by false narratives of loyalty, public humiliation, gaslighting and emotional volatility. When a leader’s mood determines acceptable behaviour, productivity declines and fear replaces judgement. In extreme cases, legal boundaries are crossed, turning leadership failure into organisational liability.
A particularly destructive variant is ethical flexibility. Leaders publicly promote values while privately abandoning them whenever personal gain is at stake. For decision-makers, this is a critical warning sign. Ethical inconsistency destroys credibility and leaves teams without orientation.
What toxic leadership is not
It is essential to state clearly that constructive criticism is not toxic leadership. When feedback is evidence-based, delivered privately and aimed at improvement, it is leadership in action. Performance improvement plans, though unpopular, often exist to support development rather than to punish. Labelling all criticism as toxic is itself harmful and delegitimises real cases of abuse.
Professional response and self-protection
When toxic leadership is identified and confirmed through internal and external reality checks, action is required. The first step is to name the behaviour clearly and factually. In some cases, leaders reflect and adjust. Where this does not happen, attempting to fix or coach an unwilling leader is counterproductive and dangerous.
At this point, protecting professional identity becomes paramount. Toxic leaders frequently undermine confidence and competence perceptions. External validation from peers, clients or other organisations is essential to maintain an accurate self-assessment.
Formal action and leadership by leaving
If change is not forthcoming, decision-makers face two viable paths. One is formal escalation through internal mechanisms, employee representation or legal channels. The other is leadership by leaving. Exiting a toxic environment is not defeat. It is a strategic decision to preserve long-term performance, health and integrity.
High turnover is not a coincidence in toxic systems. It is a symptom. Organisations that tolerate toxic leadership ultimately pay the price through disengagement, reputational damage and loss of talent.
Conclusion
Toxic leadership is never the fault of those subjected to it. Recognising it, addressing it professionally and choosing the appropriate response are acts of leadership in themselves. Decision-makers who confront toxic leadership protect not only individuals but the future viability of their organisations.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, Moderator.
Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
We're getting serious today. We're talking about toxic leadership. This episode is a result of a high number of emails I received since the beginning of this year. I don't know what happened this year because the—when, when someone says, "Well, the, the economy gets tight," that happened in other years as well, but I never received such an enormous amount of emails where people said, "Could you please talk about toxic leadership?" Many of them with very specific examples of what happened to them. And it's extremely important to know toxic leadership is an issue; however, it's a difficult issue, and that's why we're going to talk about it today.
Niels Brabandt
When it comes to toxic leadership, the first aspect is you have to identify it, and identifying it is more complicated than you think because not everything that you do not like automatically is toxic leadership. However, many things where people from other generations say, "This is just how business life is," many of these behaviors are toxic leadership despite the fact that other generations back in the days accepted that behavior. So we need to talk about how to really find out if leadership is toxic or if someone is addressing important issues, and we're going to talk about the definition right here today.
Niels Brabandt
So first, toxic leadership. Step number one is, of course, you have to identify the situation, and it starts with quite, let's say, minor cases of toxic leadership. Minor doesn't make them more—less, uh—minor doesn't make them less severe, but minor means they are not the, the worst cases of toxic leadership. Still unacceptable. So first, of course, is the lack of accountability. I give you an example. I delegate a task. When the task goes well, I say, "Look what a great leader I am." And when the task doesn't go that well, I say, "It's your fault. You did this wrong. You had to do it better. Not my fault. It's your fault." Finger pointing. Maybe you heard of that. So people basically select if they are the hero or if someone else is the villain. But in any way, they are the hero. So the leader's always the hero. And another aspect of that often comes with it is micromanagement. People just want to check in, or they just, in high commerce, want to help you. What they really do is control every single step of you on a daily, sometimes on an hourly basis. So lack of accountability and micromanagement is the beginning. That is something that quite a number of people already face.
Niels Brabandt
Many of them, by the way, leaders who perform that do it because they never learned how to lead. I was in the fortunate situation with every job I had before I started my own business that I had professional leadership training, intense professional leadership training, a year, a year and a half with another employer. So really professional leadership training. And when you don't do that, you shouldn't be surprised that people don't know how to lead because every trade needs to be learned, no matter if it's being a handyman or if it's a leader. You have to learn how to lead people.
Niels Brabandt
However, it often gets worse from that when you, for example, face a certain inconsistency. So one day you have to run that direction. Next day you have to run the other direction. But however, you have to figure it out. You had to know before. You need to know that this is this direction or that. So it's always your fault. So suddenly everything feels very arbitrary, and then suddenly you feel this is all about people that are just favorite people by that leader, favoritism, an inner circle which exists in the organization. When you have these cases where people suddenly become inconsistent, very random, very arbitrary, and they have certain people they like, certain people they do not like, and there is no way to move from one position to the other, they have their favorites and they have their non-favorites, and the inner circles basically dominate the whole business world in which you live, that, of course, is a quite extreme case already of toxic leadership, however, not the worst one. But when this happens already, you are under constant psychological stress, and we need to talk about how you defend yourself, but also how you protect yourself from this.
Niels Brabandt
It gets worse, however, when you then say, "Okay, someone abuses their power." I give you a very simple example. When someone says, "Look, if you don't like this job, leave. And if you don't do your job properly—and by the way, over hours aren't paid in this organization—we are a family, right? We're not a business. We are a family. Over hours just happen." So abuse of power, often overstepping the mark, even with offending the law, working laws, workers' rights, for example. The abuse of power, especially when you're in structurally weaker areas where the economy isn't that strong, is an extreme case of toxic leadership.
Niels Brabandt
Often when you then speak up and say, "I don't think this is right," you get public humiliation, and then suddenly people start to try to trick you into things, which usually starts with gaslighting, meaning people suddenly say they didn't say things, although you can often prove they said, and there are eyewitnesses who confirm that they said, "No, I didn't say that." The classic gaslighting. However, one of the extreme cases also is emotional volatility, and that happened to me with one of the leaders during civil service, which I did when I was 18, 19 years old. And basically every morning someone went into their office and came back and said, "Okay, today the mood is like this," and depending on if the mood is great or not so great, and the emotional volatility was entirely based on private problems outside the work, which were immediately carried into the workplace. And when they had a bad day, they were basically yelling at you all day long. So the emotional volatility simply means that someone is unpredictable in many ways, even emotionally, and you have to deal with it.
Niels Brabandt
The emotional volatility often goes hand in hand with that they are abusing you either verbally, sometimes even physically, which is the most extreme case, or one, one, one, one of the most extreme cases. The emotional volatility, of course, is nothing which is acceptable for anyone working anywhere. So when you face this abuse of power, you get publicly humiliated, gaslighted, pretending to not have said things although they did, and the emotional volatility, then you really have to take care of yourself very quickly.
Niels Brabandt
However, we have to acknowledge here that it can always get worse. When you now say, "I'm going to publicly address that," be aware that you look at certain aspects. When you say, "Our leadership here is mainly fear-based. There's lots of suppression going on." As soon as you speak up, they overload you with work only to say, "Look, I told you you can't do the job. I told you you're not right at the job. I told you you're not very good." But what they just did is they deliberately put an enormous amount of workload on you.
Niels Brabandt
And when this overloading then suddenly comes on top with, so topping the whole thing, and this is now the absolute worst case of toxic leadership, is ethical flexibility. People who love to talk about values and then they change values as soon as someone knocks at their door and says, "I either have money or a career for you." So when leaders suddenly cater to anyone that is helpful to them but never caters to the team in the moment of need, that's called moment of truth. I recommend to look into the professional studies of Professor Tegel Neeley, Harvard University, and the ethical flexibility simply means that everything is not predictable, and that, of course, makes you lose any kind of direction at work. So when you have this fear-based leadership, the suppression, the overloading, the ethical flexibility, you are in the highest and worst situation of toxic leadership.
Niels Brabandt
However, and now here comes the important difference. I already said not everything that you do not like automatically is toxic leadership, and that's an important distinguishment. When someone, for example, says, "Hey, I looked at your report and it's full of errors again. We sat down two, three times and I told you how to do it correctly. Here, here, here, here, here are errors again. I can prove them. These are the wrong numbers. So you either have to do it right or you're not up to the job and we have to take a look into if you actually pass your probation time." And that's not toxic leadership. That's called feedback.
Niels Brabandt
And it's substantiated. It's put in the right setting. No public humiliation. You sit down with them in a meeting room. No one else knows about this. So someone tries to help you. And by the way, if someone puts you on a performance improvement plan, pipping you, as it's often professionally called, no one is a big fan of being pipped. Many people say, "I don't want to have a professional improvement plan." However, often these plans are there to help you because the last thing an organization wants is that you leave. They invested in you. They hired you. They put the money in there and they hold no interest in making you leave anywhere because then all the money and effort is lost. So when someone simply says, "Look, you didn't do something right," and they can prove it and try to help you, that's not toxic leadership.
Niels Brabandt
And unfortunately, some people now abuse the term toxic leadership and say, "You criticized me. That's very toxic. It doesn't feel good for me. I don't have to do things that are not good for me. I don't have to. I really don't have to." And that is a massive issue. When you can't distinguish between toxicity and directness, and especially when you do it deliberately. So, for example, you want to prevent any kind of criticism, so you immediately throw, "Oh, toxic leadership," at anyone who's criticizing you. Not only are you at least as bad as toxic leaders, however, you also harm people who actually face toxic leadership and no one suddenly takes them seriously anymore because suddenly people think, "Oh, you know, basically anyone who doesn't like to be criticized says toxic leadership." And that, of course, is not acceptable.
Niels Brabandt
So always check in, and that is very important. Check the resources you have, like this podcast or scientific publications, or simply check with your colleagues if they are also of the opinion that this might be toxic leadership. Or maybe your colleagues tell you, "Look, quite frankly, you haven't done great work in the recent past. There might be different reasons for it, and we're happy to help. However, your work was full of errors, if you like it." And then you can't say, "Oh, toxic leadership by, by, by colleagues." No, sometimes people criticize you. I can tell you I'm now doing another master's degree, and you get feedback where you say, "I really appreciate if that's not, if that's a bit more positive." But especially academic development means that you really, you really have to check carefully that everything you do is based in science and not based on opinions. And then you have a hard and steep learning curve if you want to get better at that. So resources and colleagues is one of the most important aspects here to check if you actually face toxic leadership.
Niels Brabandt
The question is now, what do you do when you really see, "Okay, it is toxic leadership"? I checked in with people and they said, "Yeah, it is. It is toxic leadership." Okay, so where do we go from here? Very important is when it comes to the implementation, you have to defend yourself here. And the very first step is with that leader, name it. However, when you name it, you speak to the leader and say, "Look, this will happen." The burden of proof, by the way, is with the one who makes the claim. So you need to have the burden of proof, and then you have to address it. And quite a number of leaders actually appreciate that, and then they learn and then they change.
Niels Brabandt
However, some people do not. And very important is when you have an adult human being in front of you who probably is in business for a long time or in the organization for a long time or in the industry or whatnot else, don't try to therapy people when they don't agree. Don't try to coach people when they don't agree. Don't try to fix a leader that does not want to be fixed because that is going to make everything worse, especially when you have a psychopath, sociopath, or narcissist. And by the way, only psychologists and therapists can determine if someone are, not some online dubious test from the local newspaper. When you name it and they deliberately don't change it but make it more difficult for you and make everything worse, stop fixing people and first protect yourself by reducing the exposure to that person. So name it, stop fixing, reduce your exposure. You have to protect yourself first here.
Niels Brabandt
Of course, you now say, "Well, well, what do I do?" So you have to raise awareness amongst other colleagues that this is happening. You have to probably organize or talk about it. And of course, you have to protect your professional identity first and your personal identity as well, your psychological well-being. I'm professionally trained by Johns Hopkins University, in the PFA method, psychological first aid. It's very important that the professional identity gets protected because sometimes there are people who are really competent and they say, "I think I'm really bad at my job," because when that leader says, "I'm so bad, I must be bad," and you suddenly see when they switch employers, suddenly they are amazing. So you see that this stop fixing and then taking care of your professional identity, especially when you do it with colleagues and get an external reality check, helps you to actually put the situation in the right order.
Niels Brabandt
And it's very important, by the way, when you do the external reality check and they say, "Quite seriously, sorry, Neils you made mistakes and I think you were rude and I think you didn't do that well," then you have to reconsider if you are probably the problem here. Sometimes the problem is your boss. Sometimes the problem is the toxic organizational culture. Sometimes the problem is you. However, very important is no matter what happens, you are not worthless as a human being or as a professional person. When you check everything and you say, "It is toxic leadership. Someone is just bringing me down," then you have to see that this is not your fault. Your professional identity should not be harmed, especially when external reality checks help you to confirm that you are on the right path here and you are on the right way with seeing things.
Niels Brabandt
And by the way, when people now say, "So what do I do then when someone doesn't want to change?" Basically, you now have two options. And I know that one of the two is an option you will not like. The first one is you take formal action. You complain to the work council, to the unions. You can complain internally, externally. Of course, you can do anything from internal complaint up to police report or reporting with a public prosecutor. That is a wide range of activities you can do here and actions you can take. However, when you see nothing's going to change, even if you win this in court after two or three years of lawsuits, nothing's going to change. This person will always be like that. Then leadership means to leave.
Niels Brabandt
And I know what you say now or what you think now. You think this feels like the other person has won. And I have been there. I have been. I have been put into a situation with toxic leadership and I addressed it. And what happened was I was taken out of the team and put into a different team, which of course for me felt like a defeat. It felt like I've done something wrong here. Sorry. Fortunately, I had a good leader back in the days who took care of it and he said, "Look, I can't tell you what we're doing right now, but we are dealing with this. We are just protecting you right now." So they put me in another team. Same, same good product. Of course, different, different projects, but same quality of projects. Still flagship clients. Everything all right. It still felt like a defeat.
Niels Brabandt
Eight months later, out of the blue, I suddenly see an email in the corporate world with my employer back then that I had a couple of employers before I did my start of my own business. And suddenly that leader was gone. And then I talked to my next higher leader and said, "What's going on there?" He said, "Look, back in the days when you addressed this, it was already addressed by someone else. However, we really had to carefully draft out what we do here. And it takes a couple of months to get things settled. And then the leader was removed that was toxic."
Niels Brabandt
And very important is toxic leadership shouldn't be about who wins and who has a defeat. It should be how to find a solution that is viable for every human being involved to make the best situation for absolutely anyone involved. Very important here. Sometimes leadership by leaving is necessary. Do not blame yourself and never let your self-value, your self-worth be affected by a toxic leader. When you do it the way we discussed right here, you will find a solution and it will all be greater and even better afterwards. I wish you all the best putting that into action.
Niels Brabandt
And when you now say, "Look, I have a couple of questions regarding this, feel free to contact me anytime." So first, of course, when you watch me on YouTube, like this video, subscribe to my channel, leave a comment here. I'm looking forward to seeing that. Of course, when you listen to me on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, leave a review, five stars. Thank you very much for doing so. Recommend this podcast and video cast amongst friends, colleagues, anywhere on social media, anywhere you like. I'm looking forward to seeing that. And feel free to tag me in it. I'm always happy to comment and give you outreach into my network as well.
Niels Brabandt
Of course, you can also follow me on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or go to my website, NB-Networks.biz, and then you see what I do for a living. However, the vast majority of you, usually we have a business audience here and many people say, "I have something to say." This episode happened because of emails I received. People tag, "Look, I have this situation. I cannot put this into the YouTube comment section. It is simply too specific. Anyone will immediately know who I am." So you can always contact me. It's fully anonymous, of course. NB@NB-Networks.com is my email address. I'm always looking forward to hearing from you.
Niels Brabandt
And by the way, if you now say, "Hey, I have an amazing expert you should talk to about this," or "I have someone who really wants to be on your podcast, video cast," feel free to send, send me, send me their, their, their, their, their contact data. We are always open to have experts on our channel, as you can see by the interviews we already have here.
Niels Brabandt
When you now say, "Hey, do we also have lives?" And by the way, when you contact me via email, if you want to have something very specific, you need a trainer, coach, a speaker, consultant, a mentor, or a project or intern manager, very happy to discuss that. When you say, "Hey, I'd just like to do question and answer, have an exchange." Perfect. Let's just get in contact. Doesn't cost you a penny. I'm looking forward to hearing from absolutely anyone of you. And of course, when you then go to expert.NB-Networks.com, you can even get live sessions. When you go to expert.NB-Networks.com and put in your email address there, no worries. You only receive one email every Wednesday morning. It's 100% content, ad-free guarantee. You get full access to all the podcasts, video casts, more than 400 online in the English and German language. In addition to that, there's always, and we only announce that in the leadership letter, there is always the date and time and the access link for our live sessions. We have one live session at least per month, so I'm looking forward to seeing you there. Of course, you can also follow me on social media, connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't do the follow thing. Do a proper connect, and I'm happy to chat with you on there as well.
Niels Brabandt
Connect with me on LinkedIn, follow me on Instagram, like me on Facebook, and follow this channel on YouTube. So I'm looking forward to hearing from you there. No matter where you contact me, I'm answering every single message within 24 hours or less. So I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
Niels Brabandt
However, the last thing I always mention is always the most important one: apply, apply, apply what you heard in this podcast, because only when you apply what you heard, you will see the positive aspects that you obviously want to see in your organization. I wish you all the best doing so. And at the end of this podcast, as well as at the end of this video cast, there's only one thing left for me to say: thank you very much for your time.