Destructive Leadership

      Recently I have been thinking about destructive leadership, and I realized I have had experience with destructive leadership before. I would argue that destructive leadership does not always come in obvious forms, such as meanness, or general bullying. I say that destructive leadership comes most often from people who believe they are leading correctly, and yet they are wrong. Obliviousness can be a great destroyer of organizations more so than obvious destructive leadership can be. At least with the obvious destructive style, it can be identified and dealt with. With the obliviously bad leader, it can be hard to identify and therefor can fester for years like mold, wreaking havoc through the lives of those involved.

      My experience with destructive leadership came from my last position at the last company I worked for. I was simply an office assistant, meaning I had absolutely no say in how the company worked, or in what decisions were made. First of all, the power structure of the organization was confusing. However unmistakably the founder of the company was in charge. His leadership style was one of being aloof from the company the majority of the time, and then when he was in house, he was either shut away in his office, or having meetings with us. The reason I found his leadership style so toxic was because whenever we did have interactions, he attempted to make everything seem fine. Everyone could sense his urgent rushing around, and we all knew the state of the company was in jeopardy. However he would simply smile and tell us that everything was going to be ok. This lack of transparency made the whole business feel less than legitimate. It also made me as a subordinate feel uneasy in following his direction.   

           

            The other issue with his leadership style was the fact that he never gave clear direction for the company, and he was constantly changing the projects. I was constantly opening new projects and then closing them because he changed his mind. It made everyone in the office very uncomfortable and distrusting. Now I understand his style of leadership may not fall under the directly destructive leadership style definition. However the way he was running things, and leading the organization was frankly doing a lot of damage to the organization. Usually and incompetent leader will simply impede the progress of the organization, but in this case, the leadership of this companies founder was sending it down.  Eventually the founder of the company asked us to do something I considered un ethical, and I was forced to leave the company in order to avoid compromising my personal ethical code.

            I argue that destructive leadership does not always come in obvious forms. Through my experiences I have seen that the unassumingly bad leader, might be embracing leadership principals that are destructive. I would invite the reader to take a hard look into the leadership style of those under whom they serve. Although things might not seem on the surface to be wrong, there might be a destructive under tow, silently pulling your organization away from the safety it now enjoys.