Keynotes · Podcasts · Workshops
Why organizations create toxic leaders, and how to stop it
Talks and conversations for leadership teams, HR and event audiences. Toxic leadership is rarely an accident. It grows out of how organizations select, reward and protect their leaders. That is where it can be stopped.
Topics
Systems, not accidents
01
Toxic by design
Why organizations don’t promote toxic leaders by accident. How selection, incentives and evaluation reward the behavior they claim to reject, and which levers leadership teams actually control.
02
Why toxic bosses stay
The structural logic behind leadership survival: why harmful leaders often keep their positions while capable, ethical ones are pushed out, and what that costs the organization.
03
Gaslighting as a management tool
How institutions normalize manipulation, how to recognize it early, and what HR and leaders can do before it becomes part of the culture.
Formats
Keynote, workshop or conversation
- Keynote for conferences, leadership meetings and company events, on site or online
- Workshop for HR and leadership teams: recognizing manipulation and responding to it
- Podcast and panel interviews and discussions
Background
The view from inside
Markus Zehentner is a senior lawyer and researcher. He knows from the inside how power, hierarchy and procedures shape working life, and he studies why some organizations keep producing toxic leaders.
- Co-author of Breaking Free from Toxic Leadership, with psychotherapist Claudia Schwinghammer
- Guest on Where Work Meets Life™ with Dr. Laura: “Why toxic bosses stay while the good leaders are fired”
- Author of Toxic by Design, a monthly newsletter on LinkedIn
Planning an event or a podcast episode?
Send a short note with the date, the audience and the format you have in mind. Talks are available in English and German.