TOXIC LEADERSHIP AND THE LED: DEATH THROES OF THE ARMY
The twitterati are enraged, the veterans are frothing with anger and the going to be veterans who were eagerly looking forward to hang their OGs and walk into the proverbial sun set are now grappling with an uncertain future. With one single stroke of the pen, pain has been delivered to all quarters of the military organization which we had embraced with passion and dedication. Solid and robust leadership is the cornerstone of a successful military structure. Indian Army absolutely depends on it. What happens however, when that robust leadership turns out to be robustly bad? What happens when leadership is so vitriolic that it hangs over an entire organization like a toxic cloud that suffocates everything and everyone it comes in contact with much like the CORONA virus? Is this supposed to happen in the Army? If so, why does it happen? Why in the world would our Army tolerate toxic leadership?
It is appropriate to draw out the etymology of the phrase “toxic leadership” and assess why the term toxic is so very accurate. In Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians — and How We Can Survive Them, Jean Lipman-Blumen would say it is because toxic leaders “have poisonous effects that cause serious harm to their organizations and their followers.”[1] Toxic leaders can be characterized as leaders who take part in destructive behavior and show signs of dysfunctional personal characteristics. “To count as toxic, these behaviors and qualities of character must inflict some reasonably serious and enduring harm on their followers and their organizations. The intent to harm others or to enhance the self at the expense of others distinguishes seriously toxic leaders from the careless or unintentional toxic leaders.”[2] Thus, there is an escalatory ladder of toxicity in this detrimental malady. At one end of the spectrum, dysfunctional leaders may simply be unskilled, unproductive and completely unaware of the fact that they are lacking in the necessary talent to lead. At the other extreme, toxic leaders will find their succor in epicaricacy. Be it psychological or even physical, they will thrive on the damage they can inflict on others. In any case, this toxic leadership “plummets efficacy and applies brakes to organizational growth, causing evolution to come to a grinding halt.”[3]
Toxic leaders have such unfavorable traits that they conform to psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.[4] Maslow categorized human needs into a five-level pyramid and suggested that people move upward as needs at a particular level are met. The levels start with basic physiological needs forming the base and then ascend through safety, love and belonging, esteem and finally, self-actualization. Until needs and desires are met at any given level, the individual cannot progress to the next level. While “trustworthy leaders usually operate at level four or five,”[5] toxic leaders are still concerned with meeting their safety needs at level two or possibly their love and belonging needs at level three. Their behavior indicates that they have not begun to address their esteem needs at level four. This results in many of the negative personal characteristics.
Ardent ambition may qualify as a positive personal characteristic for a good leader, insatiable ambition does not. A leader who has an unquenchable desire for power, prestige, money, success and glory will obviously do whatever it takes to satisfy that desire at any cost. It may mean compromise of operations, organization, people or all encompassing. This leader will put ambition above all else. As with ambition, a healthy ego by itself may not be a particularly negative attribute. However, egotism in a leader is a dysfunctional trait that can destroy an organization. The leader’s exaggerated sense of self-worth, constant focus on self and inability to distinguish between the real self and the imagined self becomes the bane of the organization something similar to the ‘emperor’s new clothes’[6] To take this idea of self-worth a step further, leaders who are arrogant and overly certain of their own superiority to all others are not only consumed by their self-worth, but also by the fact that they are convinced that they can do all things a cut above all others. Because of their self-perceived perfection, they cannot fathom making mistakes. This arrogance prevents them from “acknowledging their mistakes; nothing will ever be their fault, but they will not hesitate to find and lay blame wherever it is otherwise convenient.
Finally, “haughty, arrogant, and insecure, toxic leaders sometimes cross the thin border between unethical or unprofessional behavior and illegal behavior.”[7] This can result in malfeasance. Their perceived self-importance has them convinced that rules and laws do not apply to them. This can result in behaviors that are internally and externally devastating to an organization, especially in armed forces where public trust and confidence are greatly valued. The worst case scenario which has befallen us is when a number of these negative traits are combined in a leader. In the book, Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership, Gary McIntosh and Samuel Rima suggest that the most extreme toxic leader is not getting the basic safety needs met and therefore has issues of “insecurity, yearning, sense of loss, fear, obsession, and compulsion.”[8]
Having defined toxic leadership, the next question to ask is how much toxic leadership exists in the Indian Army. The examination of this kind can only be briefly addressed here and lacks the empirical, comprehensive review that the subject matter deserves. Certainly toxic leadership does exist in the Army. Our defense mechanism so far to such leaders as and when we experience them is to consider it just pure bad luck that their toxic leader is just one person in the thousands who slipped through the cracks and made it to a leadership position without the qualifying skill set to be a leader. Our faith provides us with the assumption that the Army generally grows and promotes good, conscientious, trustworthy leaders, and that if a bad one slithers through, it is without question, outside of the norm. However, in the extant case we may be wrong. Although it would not be correct to assume that toxic leadership is running rampant in the ranks, it is unquestionably more prevalent than just a few bad seeds and its proliferation in the higher ranks is more than expected and bad begets the worse.
Finally let us now address the difficult question of why toxic leadership is tolerated, if not promoted in the Army. Perhaps the most obvious reason, albeit disturbing, is that toxic leaders seem to get the job done for their minders, at least in the short-term. Toxic behavior is probably tolerated by superiors because toxic leaders bear traits the Army values, such as rigid, controlling, enforcing and confident, but take them to the extreme. Their superiors are either oblivious to the toxic behavior or, more likely, are so satisfied with the results in terms of mission accomplishment that they choose to overlook the human cost of getting the job done. Toxic leadership has existed in the Army, and since the Army seems to tolerate it that we are in the fix we are in. While it is unlikely that this toxic leadership can be eliminated any time soon, better identification and further study on the part of the Army could very well reduce its persistence and temper its effects. Identification in the early part of a leader’s career is a good first step toward decreasing the possibility of continuing or worsening toxic behavior. This identification and recognition is critical and can only be accomplished through education of superiors as to the need to recognize it and take appropriate action. The appropriate action on the part of the superiors is good leadership itself.
[1] Jean Lipman-Blumen, Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians — and How We Can Survive Them (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, September 2004), 17.
[2] Ibid pg 18.
[3] Marcia Lynn Whicker, Toxic Leaders (Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1996), pg 11.
[4] Lipman-Blumen, pg 116.
[5] Marcia Lynn Whicker, pg 32.
[6] This expression is often used to describe a situation in which people are afraid to criticize something because everyone else seems to think it is good or important. It is the title of a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about an emperor who pays a lot of money for some new magic clothes which can only be seen by wise people. The clothes do not really exist, but the emperor does not admit he cannot see them, because he does not want to seem stupid.
[7] Ibid pg 63.
[8] Gary L. McIntosh and Samuel D. Rima, Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership: The Paradox of Personal Dysfunction (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, November 1997), pg 55.
