I do not like the term toxic leader. Leaders make the world better. Anyone perceived as toxic is not making the world better. I think a more appropriate name is toxic boss. A toxic boss is a person whose organizational position gives them power over others, and who then deploys that power in a way that creates stress or negative emotions in others. A weak leader may not be inspirational or may not achieve the full potential of their team, but a toxic boss is something different. A toxic boss makes the world worse for the people they are responsible for. It would be better for them if the toxic boss stayed home.
A boss can be toxic through action or inaction. The classic toxic boss is a screamer, using verbal horsepower to communicate their authority over others. Those people are still out there, but there are many other toxic boss behaviors. Perhaps the boss is intent on creating competition among team members, foolishly thinking it will improve the team’s overall performance. Or the boss does not trust anyone else, insisting on participating in every decision or project, no matter how small. A boss without any work life balance can easily become toxic for others. A boss who is aloof, frequently absent, or hesitant to make decisions can be toxic as well.
A toxic boss creates an inhospitable workplace climate. Everyone feels as though the atmospheric pressure in the office has somehow risen above normal. Heart rates rise just coming through the front door. The lights seem gratingly intense. The workplace is audibly quiet as people take cover at their desks, but the air is buzzing with non-verbal cries for help. Somehow, everyone except the boss knows how bad things are.
I hope you never find yourself working for a toxic boss. But if you do, break the glass on this article. Here’s what I think you should do.
You don’t have to be the boss to be the leader
Surviving a toxic boss requires emergent leadership. An emergent leader is anyone who emerges from the crowd to take on a leadership role, even if they don’t have a position of authority within the organization. Emergent leadership requires courage, but more importantly it requires someone with a sense of ownership for the entire team. An emergent leader refuses to be a bystander; when they recognize non-verbal cries for help, they act. A weaker person may shy away from emerging as a leader, feeling that it would be inappropriate for them to act on behalf of the group, or that it’s simply not their job. Don’t be that person.
Once you’ve decided to take action, you should tell the boss that they’re toxic. This conversation must be conducted in private and with significant diplomacy, but it is a critical first step. It is likely that the toxic boss has no idea how their actions are harming others. It is even possible that once they’ve been made aware, they will make an honest attempt to change their approach. Many well-intentioned people are thrust into leadership roles without preparation. Give any toxic boss the benefit of honest feedback and a chance to improve. If they do, problem solved. If they do not, you’ve taken the ethical high road.
You can still survive a toxic boss that doesn’t respond to feedback, it’s just going to take more work. Protect your peers by following two general strategies: help everyone handle the negative emotions created by the toxic boss, and do everything in your power to lead the team to success despite the poor climate.
Be the sponge that soaks up the negative emotions
Your first strategy must be to take care of the other human beings trapped in the toxic climate with you. Follow the non-verbal cries for help. In quiet moments, engage your co-workers. Acknowledge that things are not going well. Give them the opportunity to make their cries for help audible. Be the person that others feel safe confiding in. Letting everyone unpack their emotional backpacks is the first step to healing. Not everyone will confide in you, but even if your effort as an emergent leader helps only a few people feel better it is worthwhile.
Becoming your team’s handler of toxic emotions will not be easy. Dealing with your own mental and emotional wellness while immersed in a toxic climate is hard enough. When others offload their negative feelings to you, they may stick. You’ll start to carry the emotional weight of the entire team on your shoulders. To succeed you need to be a very skillful stress manager. You will feel impacts mental and physical. Sleep, nutrition, exercise and whatever activity you seek for mental rest will become critically important. Overcoming a toxic boss is a total body and mind workout.
Lead others to mission success if the toxic boss won’t
The second strategy is to do whatever you can to lead the team to operational success. There are many reasons why this is an important strategy.
First, for almost all people, the biggest sense of satisfaction at work comes from success. Whatever the team exists to do, people want to do that thing well. Teams led by toxic bosses seldom perform well. Although the individual toxicity of the boss certainly makes people miserable, often the greatest wellspring of negatively is actually the team’s poor mission performance. The pain caused by the toxic boss will feel easier to endure if the team finds a way to succeed despite it.
The second reason to focus on team performance is to stick to the ethical high road I mentioned earlier. There is a fine line between stepping up as an emergent leader to help others survive a toxic boss and stepping up as the leader of a rebellion. By focusing on the team’s performance, your actions as an emergent leader will align with the toxic leader’s desired outcomes, even if you’re working to the outcomes in a different way. As long as your goal is the team’s performance, you may be able to convince the toxic leader to give you space to do things your way. Or you may able to take your leadership work underground, helping others without the toxic boss knowing that you’re doing it. Conversely, if your actions are perceived as a self-interested power grab, the toxic leader will probably grow even more malignant and your co-workers may resist your effort to help.
Hopefully, by engaging with your co-workers to help them work through their negative emotions and to help the team achieve its mission, you’ve mitigated the toxic climate back to a survivable level. However, if people are still struggling there are two additional strategies you can deploy. They are more aggressive, inching closer to what may be perceived as rebellion, but they may be necessary.
Shine a light on the problem
The first of the aggressive strategies is to make sure that leaders external to the team are aware the boss is toxic. This can be as simple as an informal conversation with someone from another place on the org chart, or as complex a formal complaint.
Speaking up changes the nature of your effort to survive the toxic boss. As an emergent leader, you’ve tried to solve the problem without using organizational power or authority. By bringing the rest of the organization into play, you will be engaging people that do have formal position power to address the problem. The stakes for the toxic boss are obviously higher, so it will be difficult to predict the boss’s reaction. There is a risk of retaliation, but you can’t let that stop you. However, that risk is why I recommend the less aggressive strategies first. But if your efforts as an emergent leader fail, do not hesitate to do the next right thing and call upon the power of the larger organization.
You can challenge a toxic boss
The most aggressive strategy is to continue to provide emergent leadership within the team in a deliberate effort to marginalize the toxic boss. If all previous efforts fail, and the organization fails to act to correct the toxic behavior, I think you’re left with two options: give up and leave the organization, or stay and challenge the toxic boss to a leadership contest. Other people certainly will leave if they can, but not everyone will be able to. If the strongest emergent leader leaves, who will stand up for everyone else? That’s why I think the ethical thing to do is to stay and actively work to lead the team to a better place right under the nose of the toxic boss.
The beauty of really great leadership is that it works at a level of human connection far more fundamental than management power from the org chart. If you truly care about your co-workers, truly have the team’s success at heart, and engage people as fellow human beings, there is absolutely nothing the toxic boss can do to stop those people from following you. As your coworker’s confidence in you as their leader grows, their regard for the toxic boss will shrink. Even if that person is still in charge on paper, and does their best to make everyone miserable, if others see you as their leader and feel that you’re taking care of them, the toxic boss’s impact will grow weaker and weaker. At some point, people will start to wonder why they let the toxic boss get to them in the first place. Your leadership will free them from the toxicity, even if the boss is still there.
I offer that strategy not to incite a riot in anyone’s workplace, but to try to encourage and empower anyone suffering in a toxic climate. It can be difficult to see when you’re immersed in that climate, but you really do have the power to extricate yourself and others from it. All it takes is a leader with the courage to emerge, the compassion to take care of their fellow human beings, and a focus on accomplishing the team’s mission. Toxic bosses only survive when others refuse to act.