Toxic leadership

Abstract

Toxic leadership, a dark side of leadership, has recently been attracting more research interest in organizations. It is essential to study this aspect of leadership because, with the benefit of hindsight, organizations and leaders can learn from the toxic treatment, whether toxic behavior of a leader may serve as an impetus or a constraint for positive or negative personal and organizational transformation. This kind of leadership has been discussed in the literature but not clearly defined (Labrague et al., 2020). This chapter will present the theoretical context of toxic leadership focusing on toxic leadership characteristics, factors, and behaviors. As this kind of leader affects the loyalty, productivity, motivation, health and well-being of employees, the subordinate or follower perceptions as to whether their leader is considered toxic or not will also be addressed. Additionally, since leader toxicity presents both challenges and opportunities for organizational development, these two positive and negative aspects also will be emphasized. For this purpose, general phenomenological definitions of the term are explained first then, how toxic leadership relates to the context in which it appears is connected.