Toxic leadership is defined as a type of leadership that creates a negative work environment for employees. It occurs when leaders exhibit behaviors that are damaging to their teams and organizations, such as conflict, manipulation, bullying and micromanagement. Toxic leadership can have devastating effects on employee morale and lead to serious problems such as low productivity levels, excessive absenteeism and even turnover.
Toxic Leadership and treatment of employees.
The most common signs of toxic leadership are aggressive behavior towards subordinates, lack of trust in team members’ abilities, micromanaging staff and creating an atmosphere where competition and blaming others become the norm rather than collaboration or problem solving. Employees may also experience emotional abuse from their leader through bullying tactics or being subjected to sarcasm or humiliation. This can result in a demoralized workforce with reduced job satisfaction.
When it comes to addressing toxic leadership behaviour there are several steps organisations can take:
1) Establish clear expectations – Make sure all employees understand what is expected of them at both individual level and team level; this will help prevent misunderstandings from occurring between colleagues which can be a primary cause of workplace toxicity. Setting expectations should include setting ground rules for appropriate behaviour so that everyone knows what is acceptable within the organisation’s culture; this could mean that any form of abusive language is not tolerated amongst colleagues or customers alike.
2) Provide training -It’s important that managers receive specific training on how to manage people effectively while providing support and guidance when needed but without creating an environment where fear dominates working relationships. Training should focus on understanding different personalities, building strong communication skills including active listening techniques while helping managers develop effective problem-solving strategies too so they don’t just rely solely on blame based solutions every time something doesn’t go right..
3) Implement performance evaluation systems – Performance evaluation systems provide measurable objectives against which employee performance can be judged fairly without bias against certain individuals or groups e.g allocating tasks according to strengths rather than weaknesses etc . This will help ensure consistent standards across the board regardless of gender , race etc .and reduce chances for toxic behaviours like favouritism from taking root within the organisation .
4) Set up early warning systems – Early warning systems allow any issues regarding employees’ wellbeing/work-related stressors for example ,to be flagged quickly before they become unmanageable .This could involve regular meetings between Managers & direct reports both one-on-one & team wide in order to gain insights into how each individual is feeling about their workload / team dynamics / career aspirations etc which could then be addressed proactively before turning into more severe cases of burnout or depression which ultimately affects overall productivity levels negatively & HR resources increase massively in order to resolve these types long standing issues thereafter
5) Establish open communication channels – Open communication channels must be established so that employees feel safe enough to come forward with any concerns they may have regarding inappropriate behaviour by their manager/team leaders/peers etc if it goes beyond acceptable standards set out by the company’s policies e..g sexual harassment etc
Ultimately ,toxic behaviours cannot only have detrimental effects on individuals involved but companies too ;both financially due insufficient output resulting from unmotivated workers & inefficient use of resources trying solve strained relations internally instead focusing growth efforts externally