Exploring toxic leadership theory Within the Nigerian political circle, the word “my leader” is commonly abused and used merely for praise worship and sycophantic arousal without any real underpinning meaning of leadership. Often you hear a person who lacks basic leadership attributes or qualities being referred to as my leader. Conventionally, a leader is someone with a vision who inspires, motivates, encourages, empowers communicates, leads and uses social influence to enlist and aids others or followers to achieve or accomplish shared or common goals culminating in mutual beneficial outcomes (Dvir, et. al. 2002; YukI, 2006; Bass & Bass, 2008). In contrast, the toxic leadership theory explains the destructive behaviours of some leaders with vicious and dysfunctional personal characteristics and traits who often inflicts reasonably serious and enduring harm on their followers or organisations (Lipman-Blumen, 2005:18; Judge et. al., 2009). Examples of behaviours and traits associated with of toxic leaders or leadership (Komives, Lucas & McMahon, 2013:243-244), are: 1. They leave their followers worse off than they found them; 2. The violate the basic standards of human rights of their own supporters, as well as those of other individual and group they do not count among their followers; 3. They consciously feeds their followers illusions that enhance the their own powers and impair followers capacity to act independently, (e.g. persuading followers that they are the only ones who can save them or the organisation); 4. They mislead followers through deliberate untruths and misdiagnoses of issues and problems; 5. They have insatiable ambition that prompts them to put their own sustained power, glory and fortunes above their followers wellbeing and advancement; 6. They have enormous egos that blind them to the shortcomings of their own characters and thus limit their capacity for self-renewal and self-analysis; 7. They are self-righteous demigods and self-imposed godfathers with reckless disregard for the costs of their actions to others, their organisations, followers, as well as themselves; 8. They habitually demurs and castigates contrasting viewpoints and their acts of cowardice and faintheartedness leads them to shrink from difficult choices; Any leadership and followership relationship that does not mutually advance both parties shared interests, goals and outcomes are more likely to perpetuate the toxic leadership conundrum. Followers need to constantly reappraise their leaders attributes and characteristics to avoid been easily sway by their flattering charisma and tenuous persona. Charles Omorodion Strategy & Transformational Leadership Consultant Reference Bass, B. M. & Bass, R. (2008). The Bass Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications. (4th ed.), New York: Free Press Dvir, T., Eden, D., Avolio, B. J., & Shamir, B. (2002). Impact of Transformational Leadership on Follower Development and Performance: A Field Experiment. Academy of Management Journal, 45 (4): 735-744. Judge, T. A., Piccolo, R. F., & Kosalka, T. (2009). The bright and dark sides of leader traits, A review and theoretical extension of the leader trait paradigm. The Leadership Quarterly, 20(6), 855-875. Komives, S. R., Lucas, N. & McMahon, T. R. (2013:243-244). Exploring Leadership. (3rd Ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey -Bass Lipman-Blumen, J. (2005). The allure of toxic leaders. New York: NY Oxford University Press Yukl, G. A. (2006). Leadership in Organizations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 09:55:30 +0000