Blog 7

Toxic Leadership Blog

           

            Toxic leadership has two types of leaders: intentionally toxic and unintentionally toxic. Both cause harm to their followers and others whether they meant to or not. Intentionally toxic leader enjoy harming others and will do so for personal gain. An example of such a leader can be Adolf Hitler or Mussolini who used fear and violence for their own personal gain. The only example of such a leader in my life I can think is my friend Gloria. She is very manipulative and will do anything to get what she wants even if it means hurting a friend. Also one of the behaviors of toxic leader is treating followers well, but making them hate others. Gloria also does this by making her friends hate a person because she doesn’t like that person. An unintentional toxic leader causes harm by performing careless and reckless actions. A behavior of a toxic leader that also goes along with this is misdiagnosing problems and failing to solve them. An example of such a leader in my life could be the principal at the school I work at who makes decisions that cause more problems and doesn’t really know how to deal with these problems. There are many types of toxic leaders both the ones that I can identify with most in my life is the absentee leader and the bully leader. An absentee leader is almost never there for their followers and does not do really lead their followers. One of the teachers I work with is an absentee leader because he is always leaving the classroom and almost never does his job. I am always the one who has the explain how to do class work and answer questions because he just sits at his desk the whole day. I always have to walk around the classroom and make sure the students are doing their work and understand what they have to do. A bully leader is someone who is very insecure about themselves and puts others down who outperform them. I knew a bully leader when I was in elementary school named Judy. She would always tease me and put me down in front of others because she was jealous of me for getting good grades. She was very insecure about herself and did not really know to interact with other people or make friends. When you are dealing with a toxic leader you can either talk to that person or walk away from that situation. In my situation with the absentee leader at my work I sometimes try to talk to the teacher. In the case of Judy I should have tried to talk to her about why she did not like me and try to fix the problem.