“A Way” to Develop a Toxic Leader
“A Way” to Develop a Toxic Leader: How We as Leaders Create Our Own Monsters
Joe Byerly
Toxic leaders don’t just appear on the scene, they develop over time- and we are the ones that create them. Yep! It’s partly our fault as leaders because we fail to properly counsel them as they move up the ladder.
There you have it: “A way” to create a toxic leader.
So, I think it’s important for all of us to learn how not to build our own Frankensteins.
In his book, High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders, Morgan McCall Jr opines that “Believing the fittest will survive without much nurturing, organizations not only overlook people with potential to develop but also frequently and unintentionally derail the talented people they have identified as high flyers by rewarding them for their flaws, teaching them to behave in ineffective ways, reinforcing narrow perspectives and skills, and inflating their egos.”
Let’s look at the career of Colonel Toxic. As a platoon leader, Second Lieutenant Toxic was the star performer. He was physically fit, tactically sound, and his platoon was the top performing platoon in the battalion during his assignment. He pushed his Soldiers to extremes and demanded unwavering obedience. When he received his evaluation report, he was commended for his hard work with a superior rating. He was the number one platoon leader! Overtime continued success brought with it arrogance, insensitivity, and an overbearing leadership style. This rising star continued on this path for 23 years, until his brigade command. And that’s when it all fell apart. His command climate surveys became abysmal. His battalion commanders and staff officers were fearful of open communication, and everyone walked on egg shells when he was in the area. His organization was compliant, but not effective. He had obedience, but not buy-in. And so it goes, another promising military leader falls off the pyramid.
Is there anything we can do as leaders to keep the next Frankenstein from rising off the table?
Counsel, Counsel, Counsel: Counseling is our greatest weapon against creating monsters. Sitting down once a month or quarter with a subordinate to discuss performance (success and failure) is instrumental in their development. Just about everyone desires honest feedback, but rarely is it given.
Identify and highlight character flaws: Many of us overlook character flaws (insensitivity, overbearing, etc.) when successful outcomes are achieved. While this might not play a critical role in organizational performance at lower levels, this could severely impact performance at higher levels. Our star performer is still our subordinate and a fellow member of our profession, so that means it’s our job to help them become aware of developing character flaws. It’s nothing personal-it’s professional.
Scrutinize success just as much as failure: In the mind of your subordinate, their iron fist approach to leadership is what earned them a stellar performance evaluation. Morgan McCall Jr. says “seemingly stellar track records don’t always reveal who (or what) actually played the major role in a successful outcome, nor do they always show how results were achieved.” By helping them closely examine the causes of success, a leader may help a subordinate understand it wasn’t necessarily the authoritarian approach that made the unit successful, but it was several factors working in combination together, and maybe they performed well not because of the approach, but in spite of it.
Teach reflection: Reflection turns our key developmental experiences into lessons learned and provides us with the opportunity for introspection. Many top performers bounce from running assignment to running assignment, rarely taking a knee. As leaders we can use counseling opportunities and even writing assignments to provide this reflection space. (I’m reflecting on my own character flaws as I write this.)
There is no training regimen that will reprogram a toxic leader after 20 years of service. So let’s do our job as leaders and take the time to deliberately develop our subordinates.
Toxicity becomes rampant as soon as one starts to believe the hype on how good they are.
Humility goes a long way to prevention. The candid self awareness through reflection Joe talks about in his final paragraph is a control measure to going off the reservation.
I don’t know of a single person who can’t readily name off a leader they served with, around, or for that they consider toxic or the poster child of leadership toxicity.
I think Joe is correct in the counseling aspect – some become toxic because no one ever sat them down and pointed out their flaws to them. This allowed those flaws to fester unaddressed like an infection over time. Eventually the infection brings down the organziation.
The article points to the most important thing we can do to develop leaders is to focus on character development through mentoring. The focus should be on developing a better man, not someone who is focused on having the best metrics, yet our evaluation system is focused on the tangibles in an attempt to minimize bias and level the playing field. It doesn’t work but I haven’t seen proposals for a better system. For the most part we reward those who play the game and all too often those good at the game are the last ones you want leading your kids into battle.
Great article by Joe.
I fell victim to often overlooking my own flaws in interpersonal relationships because there were positive outcomes. It is easy to believe the hype as I did. I was a too smart for his own good disgruntled staff captain leaving active duty for the civilian world. I think this transition and moving into the National Guard saved me from toxicity.
A few lessons I learned that nest well with this article:
1. Everyday/Interaction is an opportunity to lead: you may develop your most valuable team mate through the smallest of measures. Real leaders are never too busy to spend time with a team member, soldier, fellow leader. Make time to listen and lead taught to me by a very successful corporate VP and former Army Reserve Specialist. He helped me spot my weaknesses in transition
2. Leadership is a transaction, it’s about give and take, you have to meet your team on their level in order for them to rise to your personal goals for the team.
3. There is always someone who is smarter, stronger, or wittier. Find this person because you can learn from and co-opt for organizational success: You may be the best platoon leader/staff officer/ company commander in the force, but there is someone who is better in some dimension. I went to work in manufacturing in a rural area and was quick to dismiss folks based on prejudices developed in the military based on appearance and behavior, initially losing the trust of the people on my team I needed most.
What bothers me about this article is that it doesn’t address what to do with a guy who is by nature a jerk, especially a cunning jerk. The things suggested are worthwhile and will work with a guy who has natural leadership ability and a fundamentally sound character, but I don’t think they will work with the shrewd dissembler.
For the Army, under the senior rater profile dominated system, “made my boss happy” will always be #1 path to success. Often one can be extremely toxic with peers and subordinates while still making the boss happy.
David Hackworth recommended a simple input by peers and subordinates to balance this out. Do a 360 review and simply put the percentage of subordinates and peers who said “yes” to this single question. “Would you follow this leader in combat”?
This article is actually interesting in a number of ways—but currently if one follows the conversation or more recently a distinct lack of conversation on the topic of mission command the article becomes quite interesting.
I have spent the better part of the last two years working in a mission command program where we initially had success in getting unit staffs at all levels (BN to Bdes) to open up and discuss in a fear free manner exactly this topic but cloaked in the doctrine of mission command—ie team building, trust or lack thereof, commander micromanagement, dialogue and collaboration in a fear free environment.
During the last year I would blog here in SWJ on the topics of Trust and MC and out of these discussions a good friend of mine who is currently deployed with the 2CR in AFG once told me—it is all about changing the current command culture—a culture that has allowed the above mentioned BCT commander to develop and exist–it is just not this COL mentioned in the article but a majority of LTCs/COLs who have been developed during the last ten years who are all toxic to a degree (one can count on one hand those current LTC/COLs who are true leaders)—either more or less but nevertheless toxic as that has been the current culture that they have grown up in.
My friend indicated that in order to change that culture it is similar to feeding a bear marshmallows with your mouth—or poking that bear in the chest—currently that bear does not allow it to happen and those that do try to change the environment “get killed” ie sidelined, ignored, not listened to and or their career takes a hit and they simply leave the service.
We expanded the MC program by hiring new individuals—with the program director believing that mission command could only be taught by retired commanders—so we expanded by hiring two retired officers a LTC and a COL—what was not known to us was that both were in fact toxic leaders —now try to push mission command with emphasis on team building, trust, collaboration and open dialogue with two retired officers who in their command years practiced just the opposite and where it is so engrained that it is difficult for each of them to engage in staff discussions on trust, fear free dialogue, micromanagement,and collaboration. There is a old staff (among younger officers) saying —-some officers think they are visionaries but in reality they have no vision.
Hate to say it but my friend was so right then and still is right—before one can talk about changing toxic leaders the culture must change—meaning we must grow a complete new group of officers at the LT/CPT/MAJ levels who are committed (second nature to them) to team building, trust, open dialogue in a fear free environment and collaboration before we can
even think of trying to filter out/change identified toxic leaders. It is to the point that this group must drift out on their own and be replaced with the younger generation before we can see any progress.
I have come to the conclusion that in fact mission command is failing/has actually failed as the bear did not like being feed marshmallows (ADP 6.0).
The coming deep RIF in personnel will only re-enforce the bears’ attitude.
We need to usher in a new era of professional, capable, collaborative combat leaders by tackling this toxic leader issue head on, and frankly, writing about it.
When I was a new 2ndLt, I read a number of readings and books about leadership, and one would think that the principles offered by former military professionals would have served as appropriate guides to grow good leaders, along with positive examples provided by senior leaders as we came out of the Gulf War era (the O-6 of today was an O-1/2 during DS/DS).
I suspect that the opposite happened because we failed to do what MAJ Byerly outlined above, and also failed to continue to define the underpinnings of good leadership as our forces shrunk, transformed, and then exploded to meet the demands of the Long War.
Put another way, we did a lot of learning from the culture pimps and the IED defeat gurus, but we let leadership development stagnate and didn’t drive a steak knife through the heart of the toxic leaders who were among us. That is admittedly a generalization, because we have a ton of talent in the current force. Effective leadership that leverages collaboration, mission command, trust, and professionalism, still needs to be more uniform.
We need a new professional reading list that addresses the issue of toxic leaders head on, refusing to mince words or couch principles in dated, esoteric terms.
Our audience is the young officer entering a military faced with incredible challenges, both internal and external. I don’t see these young leaders finding relevant material from an Amazon search string of “combat leadership”. To be sure, many principles are timeless, but one of the more relevant books, “Taking the Guidon: Exceptional Leadership at the Company Level” is dated circa 2001. We have new challenges of force drawdowns, PTSD at elevated levels, and hyper-focus on politically-correct issues that are rarely addressed properly, and if they are dealt with you’ll b lucky to see it in a journal article that requires some dedicated research to find.
I’m in the process of finishing up a self-critical piece of sorts I’ve been writing to document the rise, fall, and rebirth of a toxic leader that I watched occur over the span of eight years. When I wrap it up I’ll look to turn it into a blog or journal entry, but following that, then what? How can we get material like that distributed through the force to the point that it changes the mindset of junior leaders at the elemental level?
I’d like to embark on a project with other willing professionals to compile a collection of essays that wrestle with the issue of combat/military leadership in the post OIF/OEF era.
We all recognize that we’ll have our share of asymmetric threats to face in the future. Toxic leaders within our ranks should not be on of them.
Wow! Everyone missed the key factor that has created an environment where “toxic leadership” has supposedly flourished and because it’s incredibly hard to address. It is not necessary to like your boss. Interpersonal skills and communication while important are not THE fundamental factor. Tough to please, never say thank you commanders only alienate when one thing is missing. Integrity.
A martinet who is committed to his unit and his people can still be an effective leader. A micromanaging, never is good enough boss is still bearable when he fights, protects and advances the interests of the mission, unit and troops.
“Toxic leadership” (which is a overused buzz word) is just the manifestation of a system that in actuality places personal advancement over every other value the services espouse. It’s no small irony that our creeds say never to leave anyone behind but “toxic leaders” do it at the drop of a hat or the appearance of an opportunity to advance.
All of you can kick around “counseling”, “360 observations” and telling subordinates about their flaws till you’re blue in the face but it’s all a waste when integrity is in such short supply these days.
Need evidence? Open the newspaper. Command influence in the Marine urination case, along with nepotism for a former commandant’s son, the decision to not pursue an innocent CPT’s courtmartial and instead administratively separate him and send his lawyer for a psyche eval. http://gruntsandco.com/pc-claims-another-marine/ The slap on the wrists of an Army BDE commander (Johnson) and the relief of COL Z are examples. http://blogs.militarytimes.com/outside-the-wire/2011/01/05/ousted-172nd-infantry-brigade-commander-not-liked/
The shameless political pliability of our General officers are evidence of the lack of integrity readily present and yet rewarded with the highest levels of responsibility. These range from Gen Allen’s comment that Ramadan was contributing to green on blue attacks in Afghanistan to Gen Dempsey saying with a straight face that telling SF to “stay in Tripoli” wasn’t a “stand down”. Gen. Sacolick, director of force management and development for SOCOM said, “The days of Rambo are over, The defining characteristic of our operators [is] intellect.” in response to initiatives to facilitate women serving in our most demanding SOF. Not to be outdone Gen Dempsey actually implied that the rivalry between combat arms and support specialties is fueling some of our sexual harassment issues. Uh, how does that explain most of the assaults are being done by the support soldiers in those coed units?
Guys! INTEGRITY is the problem! You can’t counsel someone to not be a self serving prick. You just teach him to hide it better.