How To Deal With Toxic Leadership? (+25 Tips)

Toxic bosses create a working environment that is not just hostile but unhealthy too. They are terrible when it comes to work and managing.

Toxic leadership is not as rare as it seems, however, to understand how the company and organization can deal with this, and survive the toxic leadership style.  Here is what you will need.

How Does Toxic Leadership Act As  A Silent Killer?

Toxic leadership has its own prototypes, which can be easily found in different organizations and workplace settings.

According to statistical figures, toxic leadership is responsible for a 48% decrease in work effort. And the 38% in decrease in work quality.

The Life Meets Work survey consulting revealed that the company survives the high turnover, almost 73%, because of a toxic leader.

Toxic leadership mostly just takes a toll on numbers but also the mental and physical health of the employees.

This leads to several issues like –

  • Employees might come to work late
  • They do the resignation more often
  • It causes stagnant innovation
  • It affects the low productivity
  • It causes interdepartmental conflicts
  • Also increases the high turnover rate.

What Are Some Useful Tactics That Can Help In Surviving Toxic Leadership?

When the team has to work under toxic leaders, it never gets easy and often leads to a situation that becomes worse.

It causes exploitation, devaluing, destructive, and demeaning work experience and makes it unpleasant, affecting the person‘s psyche.

Here are some of the survival tactics which can work as a first aid kit.

How To Deal With Toxic Leadership

Quitting The Job

Having someone in your life who is a toxic person m even though it’s your leader, this will ruin the peace.

And when people a lack of peace this increases the stress.

The best tactic that you can use is to get out from the position where you have to bear such behaviors.

When it’s too much, the best thing you can do is cut those people out from your life.

Stop the Blaming Game

The balming is not what you should be doing, it’s not easy for anyone to change the game as the selfish leaders have the most power and are committed to keeping the organizing keep going.

Deliver What’s Expected

There is one thing that nobody can deny is toxic leaders don’t care what you feel but they care about results.

The results make them good and put their image on the bright side.

Delivering the results can help in getting less focus from them and diverting their attention.

Never Do Power Game With The Toxic Leaders

Well, it’s unlikely that you can beat the toxic leaders in their game.

Also, this is going to be dealing with professionals.

Instead of getting the use of social control and spotlight, it will make it more invisible.

Sometimes the best you can do Is to avoid the problems so they won’t get bigger.

Fight Using The Organization Level

It’s important to fight power abuse at the organizational level. Structuring a safe working environment is import part that can cause the perennation/

Educate the manners, create the channels which can work anonymously, and do the feedback. Also, strengthen the behavior related to ethics.

Connect With More Like You

The toxic leaders have the tendency to put others in isolation and make them feel stupid as well as incompetent.

This makes the people feel fear as they struggle to share what they are going through.

This helps in empowering the toxic leaders and maintaining their position.

It’s best to find more people who are suffering like you or someone who can help.

Create The Social Control

The control of toxic leaders limits to the origin and within the culture as they use the fear of getting punishment on others.

It’s important to create social control from the outside which will need self-confidence, creativity, and courage.

Do The Self Protection

Dealing with toxic leaders can be challenging but it’s important to keep the emotion in check.

Never respond in a way that can make the situation worse.

, make sure you have all the documentation ready and use objective measurements for everything that you have achieved so far.

Keep your network active, and clear about the performance measurement.

Find the evidence and don’t burn bridges.

Attacking Won’t Help

Instead of attacking verbally, it will not help to cope with the problem.

It’s best to use humor. And when you are talking with your boss, keep the criticism out of it. Such leaders are highly sensitive and It can be used to your disadvantage.

Also, don’t get into the sibling as this could backfire.

Keep Yourself Healthy

Not just physically but mentally too, keep yourself healthy to survive the toxic leaders and their demands.

It’s better to keep a healthy lifestyle which should include good and quality sleep, eating the right food, and exercise.

This will help in building your resilience when you are working under pressure and also help in boosting confidence.

Toxic leaders take a toll on your mental health too. So take care of how you are letting all of this affect yourself.

Resort When It’s Going Out Of Hand

Lots of companies provide third-party arbitration such as reporting harassment as well as gross misconduct to the government body.

You can use this to your advantage. However, for this, you will need adequate proof so you can prove the claim.

Bide Your Time

Sometimes the best thing you can do is to bide the time until the next promotion, end of the project, and change of department.

You might use this to use the same attitude to fend off the toxic environment.

So simply bide your time, especially if you are going to deal with the leaders for a short time.

Take Help Of Passive Behavior

Sometimes to deal with this, the best thing you can do is to do your job in the right way and keep away from troubles.

Also to be passive and remain out of the sight of the toxic leaders as long as it’s possible.

Allow yourself to focus on what you can do to keep this away from you and avoid doing anything that can lead you to negative attention from your leader.

What To Do When You Are The Toxic Leader?

Well, not all times people want to be toxic leaders; sometimes they are doing it without knowing.

Also, there might be reasons like they might be suffering from work-related stress, financial crises, or household issues.

Sometimes people do things unwittingly because they have been told at the beginning of their career.

And sometimes they become the monster that they fear most, so the monster doesn’t overtake them.

Well when you know that you are the toxic leader, here is how you can deal with this.

How To Deal With Toxic Leadership

Talk To The Team And Subordinates

The best way to come clean is to talk with your team.

Instead of letting it go, talk to your subordinates and ask what behavior makes them feel discouraged.

Also, talk about the inappropriate things you might have said or done. s

Discuss the methods which they believe could help them in making their working environment better and improve.

Admit Mistakes And Apologize

The key trait of toxic leadership is they never accept the blame. Instead of that, they put the mistakes on others.

Admitting what’s wrong and what you did, it’s a sign of accepting the way you were and also making sure that you are no longer that kind of leader.

Your subordinates can also help you in becoming the better version and admire as well as show respect.

Move Forward

The next thing you can do is meticulous planning and accounting for the aftermath that you did.

Not just that, being a leader makes you responsible for how things will turn for your team.

It’s your role to make a path that leads everyone forward and also not making the exercises for the mistakes you did and negligence.

Include Your Team To Your Plans

While it might not be the possible solution to be democratic when it comes to decision-making, you can ask the pension and thoughts of your team to share.

Also, listen to your team when they say something, make them feel that whatever they say is getting ears and will be taken action if it’s good.

Go Easy

Mistakes are a part of life, no matter how amazing a plan you make, there is always a chance of doing something wrong.

For your team, there will be some members who might have less experience or someone who is overworked.  They might be stressed or tired or feeling they need time to get better.

Unless they are doing this deliberately or sabotaging the work of others, it’s better to give them the space.

Also, go easy on them as they will get better. As a leader, it is your responsibility to make sure no one is left behind.

Also, listen to them and see if they are going through something which can be helped.

Never use the methods like bullying and over criticizing which are forms of toxic behavior.

Self Reflect On Your Action

There is no one in this universe who can be perfect. And everyone has their bad days which can ruin someone else’s days.

Showing bad behavior can cause problems for you as well as affect others.

Instead of falling into a criticizing pit, indulge in self-reflection more often.

See advice to people whom you trust, it can be family or friends.

Talk about your attitude and how it’s getting better or there are signs of toxic behavior that should be addressed.

Find The Root

It’s important to know what led you to become the toxic behavior and how your leadership switched as well as when.

When you have the knowledge of what happened, you can take care of that in the future as well.

Is there any possibility of reacting that way because you faced a similar thing etc?

Knowing the reason can also reduce the chances of repeating the same thing in the future.

Get Professional Help

Sometimes the problem can be deep-rooted. A lot of toxic leadership can be related to your childhood trauma or mental health reasons.

It’s better to get professional help so I won’t affect your professional as well as personal life.

Take Prevention For Future

Make sure your workplace has the parenting tactics ready so the team doesn’t have to face such things in the future.

Also, it will help you in getting a positive image in front of others.

Having a workplace where the employee has safety against all of these can also boost the efficiency of the work and results.

Move on From What happened

Taking the response and making sure you are moving towards a better future is enough for you. When you know you did enough to be a better leader, it’s best to forgive and forget.

Focus on how you can make your leadership better and follow what can improve you as well as be the better results in the organization.

Get Better Connection With Team

Your team should get the assurance that what happened will no longer affect them in the future. Working under the tox leaders is not just physically exhausting but mentally bad too.

So having better communication with them, it will help you in creating a strong relationship.

Also when you have good bonding and strong communication, you can also do better as the team as well as subordinates will keep you in check.

More To Explore:

Was this article helpful?