How to Mitigate a Senior Leader’s Toxic Behaviour
Understanding what is and isn’t toxic behaviour in the workplace can be difficult, especially from a junior to senior perspective for many reasons. Lack of experience in understanding relationships and boundaries combined with ego can often lead to toxic behaviour being misdiagnosed. However, senior leaders have a profound responsibility to call out other leaders who aren’t showing up as they should.
Toxicity can come in many shapes and forms, whether it’s someone’s behaviours through to communication styles and even how they interact with those at peer level.
Let’s start by talking about office politics
Just like a rotting apple, one badly behaved senior leader can poison an organisation's culture and destroy it from the inside out. Office politics (and seeing who engages in them) is a great way of deciphering which leaders may be contributing to the toxicity of the organisation. In theory, toxic leaders will be less focused on diffusing politics and, instead, adding fuel to the fire:
“Toxic leadership is a combination of self-centered attitudes, motivations, and behaviors that have adverse effects on subordinates, the organization, and mission performance... Toxic leaders consistently use dysfunctional behaviors to deceive, intimidate, coerce, or unfairly punish others to get what they want for themselves.” - Forbes
What are some examples of toxic behaviours?
Micromanagement: Being unable to allow people in their team to make mistakes, having to watch their every move, and being critical to the point that it stifles others.
Gossiping: Relishing in negative “office talk”, spreading rumours instead of stopping them, and using people’s personal lives or information as chit-chat behind their backs.
Failure to recognise other's successes: Struggling to celebrate others and instead focused on their success and their success only.
Bad-mouthing people who leave the company: The moment someone leaves or is let go, they “let loose” on how they feel about them.
Favouritism: Singling out people in their team or at peer level for no other reason than likeability.
Manipulative tendencies (inclusive of people pleasing): Coercive behaviour such as withholding information, using someone's good nature or character against them, or people pleasing out of necessity so they can get what they want.
All talk, no action: Talks a lot about all the things they’re doing, but rarely ever executes them.
How can you mitigate a senior leader's toxic behaviour in practice?
#1 Don’t engage unless you have to
It can be very disarming, knowing how to engage with someone who you know is toxic to work with. The most important thing is to create a professional distance between you and that leader. This doesn’t mean you should compromise your professionalism, but ensure that your interactions are intentional and aren’t over-indulgent. If the individual has manipulative tendencies, you’ll want to be aware of how much time you’re spending with them.
#2 Collect evidence
You can’t accuse someone of being a toxic leader with no evidence. In many cases this is a serious accusation if you do decide to raise it, so ensure that you collect evidence and make note of behaviours, and ensure that you have witnesses if you need to bring these situations up. It doesn’t have to be over-dramatic, either. You simply need to ensure that your evidence is backed up not just by your opinion, it must be factual.
#3 Speak up
Finally, it’s time to speak up. This can be challenging, especially if you’re dealing with someone more senior than you. However, if you feel confident that your case will be heard and other senior leaders will be on your side, then lay out your evidence and provide a solution for the relevant decision-maker.
In some instances, leaders may not even realise they’re toxic. They could be carrying bad behaviours from previous organisations or simply need to go back into management training. It’s important not to assume that one toxic behaviour makes someone inherently bad, so give someone the benefit of the doubt to change.
