Recognizing and Addressing Toxic Leadership Patterns

Toxic leadership rarely appears as a single, clearly identifiable behaviour. Much more often, it develops slowly and almost invisibly as a combination of symptoms.

The problem begins when someone's own needs, ego, need for safety, or desire for power consistently override other people's needs, development, autonomy, well-being.

Often, it is the organizational culture itself that turns leaders into toxic ones through explicit or implicit expectations and reward systems. At organizational level, this leads to various coping strategies and behavioural patterns that are not always healthy, further poisoning the workplace environment.

Most common symptoms and warning signs

1. Strong control and lack of trust

• Micromanagement: reviewing and rewriting every decision (or most of them), email, and task.
• Excessive centralization and control over decisions: leaving no room for autonomy or creativity.
• Withholding or sharing information for personal interests. Overemphasis on hierarchy, autocratic leadership, one-person decision-making where rank matters more than collaboration and shared decisions. Constant checking in, pushing, intervening, even when it is not justified.

2. Avoidance of responsibility, self-interest, and the protection or increase of personal popularity

• Taking ownership of others' work and celebrating successes as personal achievements.
• Scapegoating and shifting responsibility in case of mistakes, focusing on changing others instead of self-development.
• Breaking promises, changing decisions without strategy, inconsistency.
• Putting personal career and power ahead of the team.
• I-focused communication: "I decided...", "I delivered it...."

3. Emotional abuse and low emotional intelligence

• Public criticism, humiliation, cynicism.
• Little feedback, and when feedback is given it is mostly critical, with positive feedback almost completely missing.
• Unclear or inconsistently communicated expectations, messages.
• Denying previous decisions and distorting reality.
• Mood swings and emotional unpredictability.
• Lack of empathy.

4. Exclusion and division

• Favoritism, bias, discrimination.
• Rejecting or ignoring ideas, input, feedback.
• Systematic suppression of talent and blocking career paths.
• Ignoring rules, lack of rules, transparency.
• Tolerating or consciously exploiting workplace games.

5. Boundary violations and exploitation.

• Ignoring work–life boundaries, e.g. constant overtime expectations and enforced availability. Guilt-tripping people for resting or taking leave.
• Placing results, KPIs above everything else, even wellbeing of other people.

Consequences

Employees lose autonomy, burn out, become overloaded and demotivated, get sick more often, complain frequently, cliques and internal conflicts emerge, people switch into survival mode, and go through processes similar to grief.

Performance and creativity decline, and the number of mistakes increases. Toxic leadership damages not only people, but business results as well.

🎁Solution-focused questions for organizations

❓Where do we currently tolerate destructive leadership behaviours?

❓Do we reinforce any toxic leadership patterns through our explicit or implicit expectations and communication?

❓ What do we actually reward: what kind of results, what kind of human quality? Do we reward and how do we reward people-centered and emotionally intelligent leadership as well?

❓Do we have safe feedback channels and do they truly work?

💡Organizational focus points

• Measure behavioural competencies as well and observe toxic patterns.

• Evaluate not only results, outcomes, but also the path leading to them.

• Recognize not only success but learning and development as well.

• Make it visible which behaviours are acceptable and which are not, even if they deliver results.

• Create feedback and signalling mechanisms where speaking up has no retaliation.

• Separate the narrative of strong leadership from destructive leadership. They are not the same.

• Provide support for leaders. Think not only in terms of individual coaching, but also leadership team-level and organizational-level reflection.

• Include the measurement and development of emotional impact and emotionally intelligent leadership in organizational surveys.

• Leadership development should include self-awareness, emotional intelligence, leadership impact, and power dynamics.

• Ensure that destructive behaviour has consequences regardless of position.

🎁Solution-focused questions for leaders – self-reflection

❓If I looked at myself from the outside, what leadership pattern would emerge from the team's perspective? What would my team say?

❓Which toxic behaviour patterns appear in me from time to time?

❓In what context do they show up? Who or what triggers them? In which situations are they activated? What might be the internal trigger?

💡Reflection exercise for leaders who suspect toxic leadership patterns in themselves

To recognize the toxic leader within yourself, you must take responsibility, stop denial, and actively change your behaviour.

• Conduct self-examination: what typical toxic behaviour patterns do you recognize in yourself?

• Do not blame others, take responsibility for the harm you cause.

• Ask your team for feedback about your behaviour and be ready to listen and implement change.

• Based on feedback and personal experience, define where change is needed, what the goal is, what it looks like when you reach it.

• What does the ideal FUTURE look like compared to NOW?

• Define the first small step that brings you closer to the future.

• Be aware that the organization learns not only from what you say, but from how you behave.

• If you recognize a pattern in yourself, name it, even in front of your team.

• Do not work alone, ask for help. It is difficult to break habitual patterns alone. Seek support from a coach, mentor, or peer group.

🎁Solution-focused questions for those who feel their leader or colleague shows toxic behaviour patterns

❓What can I do if I recognize any of the above patterns in my leader or in the company culture?

❓What influence do I have, what can I do to create change or reduce the impact on me?

💡Tips

• Do not automatically assume that something is wrong with you if you feel bad.

• Observe what the system teaches implicitly. What behaviours does it reward, what reporting style, what kind of loyalty? What has been communicated to you?

• Look for allies, you are probably not perceiving this alone.

• Give feedback. When giving feedback, focus on how the leadership behaviour affects you rather than labeling.

• Know, set, and protect your own boundaries.