Toxic Leadership: A Systematic Approach to Shift From Reactive to Proactive Solutions

Abstract: The problem of toxic leadership is conceptually complex because it involves human behaviors and interpersonal relations. Numerous authors have researched and studied the issue of toxic leadership. Consequently, there are abundant sources that analyze its intricacies. However, despite all this, the academic community has not reached a consensus on the definition of this elusive concept and on describing the behaviors and attributes toxic leaders display. This lack of a common ground on which to base policies and preventive measures permeates the US military. In fact, apart from the US Army Center for Army Leadership annual survey (CASAL), the rest of the services do not conduct any regular quantitative research on the incidence of toxic leadership within their organizations. 1 In contrast, many articles and research papers about toxic leadership in the military are available. However, just as their civilian counterparts, researchers on the military side have focused their academic work mainly on providing a definition of toxic leadership from the military perspective in order to facilitate its identification, with the ultimate goal of getting rid of those toxic leaders. In other words, their proposed prescriptions have been reactive in nature. The most important conclusion extracted from this fact is that the US military has not paid enough attention to the consequences of toxic leadership, with respect to the degree and magnitude of damage toxic leaders cause to an organization. This is especially important because the system only detects those toxic leader behaviors at a very late stage in the career of an officer/senior NCO. In a time when human resources are particularly scarce, the US military loses valuable personnel when it is too late to implement corrective action and after those toxic leaders have influenced negatively a great number of subordinates under their influence. The only option available then is discharge of the toxic leader.