What Are the Common Traits of a Toxic Leader?

Short answer: Research describes toxic leaders with a recurring set of traits: they are self-centered and self-promoting, belittle and humiliate others, control and decide alone, are unpredictable in their moods and reactions, and lack empathy. Many are also skilled manipulators who deny, shift blame and play people against each other. What makes them toxic is not a single bad moment but a repeated pattern that serves themselves and leaves the people around them worse off.

“Toxic leader” is an everyday term, but research has given it more precise contours. In a study with military and civilian samples, Andrew Schmidt (2008) developed a Toxic Leadership Scale and found five dimensions: abusive supervision, authoritarian leadership, narcissism, self-promotion and unpredictability. His summary: toxic leaders are best described as narcissistic self-promoters who engage in an unpredictable pattern of abusive and authoritarian supervision.

The most common traits

1. Self-promotion

Success is theirs, failure is someone else’s. They present the team’s work as their own, are highly attentive to how they are seen from above, and invest more in visibility than in results.

2. Belittling and humiliating others

Public criticism, sarcasm, ridicule, silent treatment. Bennett Tepper (2000) called this abusive supervision: a sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behavior. It is one of the best-researched forms of destructive leadership.

3. Control and authoritarian decisions

They decide alone, tolerate no disagreement and often control every detail. Micromanagement is not always toxic, but combined with distrust and punishment it becomes a means of control (see dealing with a micromanaging boss).

4. Unpredictability

Friendly today, furious tomorrow. Teams spend energy reading moods instead of doing their work, and no one knows what will be rewarded or punished.

5. Narcissism and lack of empathy

An inflated sense of their own importance, a need for admiration and little interest in how others feel. Interestingly, narcissism helps people become leaders, but does not make them better ones: a meta-analysis found that narcissism was related to leadership emergence, but not to leadership effectiveness (Grijalva et al., 2015).

6. Manipulation and dishonesty

Denying what was said, rewriting events, withholding information, making promises without terms. Typical tactics include gaslighting and DARVO, in which the leader turns into the victim when held accountable.

7. Divide and rule

Favorites and scapegoats, different stories for different people, competition instead of cooperation. A divided team is easier to control and less likely to push back together.

Not every toxic leader is loud

In a representative study of the Norwegian workforce, the most common form of destructive leadership was not tyranny but laissez-faire: leaders who are absent, avoid decisions and leave conflicts unresolved (Aasland et al., 2010). The same study found that many leaders show constructive and destructive behavior at the same time. A toxic leader can be charming in many situations, which is one reason why they are often protected.

Why this matters, and why it is not only about the person

A meta-analysis of 57 studies found that destructive leadership is associated with lower well-being and performance of employees and with higher intentions to leave (Schyns & Schilling, 2013). Yet toxic leaders rarely act alone. Padilla, Hogan and Kaiser (2007) describe a “toxic triangle” of destructive leaders, susceptible followers and an environment that enables them. That is why organizations keep promoting them, as Markus Zehentner explains in Why organizations don’t accidentally promote toxic leaders.

What to do if you recognize your boss

• Check whether it is a pattern or a bad phase: bad leader vs. toxic leader.
• Start documenting with our free Incident Log.
• Find out where your boss could get to you: Personality Type Self-Check.
• Decide whether to address it: how to deal with a manipulative boss.

In the book: Chapter 1 of Breaking Free from Toxic Leadership asks why so many bosses are bad leaders, Chapter 3 describes the psychology and tactics of manipulative bosses.

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Sources

Aasland, M. S., Skogstad, A., Notelaers, G., Nielsen, M. B. & Einarsen, S. (2010). The prevalence of destructive leadership behaviour. British Journal of Management, 21(2), 438–452. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2009.00672.x

Grijalva, E., Harms, P. D., Newman, D. A., Gaddis, B. H. & Fraley, R. C. (2015). Narcissism and leadership: A meta-analytic review of linear and nonlinear relationships. Personnel Psychology, 68(1), 1–47. DOI: 10.1111/peps.12072

Padilla, A., Hogan, R. & Kaiser, R. B. (2007). The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments. The Leadership Quarterly, 18(3), 176–194. DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2007.03.001

Schmidt, A. A. (2008). Development and validation of the Toxic Leadership Scale (Master’s thesis). University of Maryland. drum.lib.umd.edu

Schyns, B. & Schilling, J. (2013). How bad are the effects of bad leaders? A meta-analysis of destructive leadership and its outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 24(1), 138–158. DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.09.001

Tepper, B. J. (2000). Consequences of abusive supervision. Academy of Management Journal, 43(2), 178–190. DOI: 10.2307/1556375

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