Toxic leadership and its effects

We are Faith and Fury, Love and Fight.

This is the Human Equation, where every voice counts and every true cuts deep.

With your host, Joseph Pangare, hey everybody, and welcome aboard.

Here we are on the Human Equation together.

Once again, I'm glad that you're out there.

This has been a great experience for me, and I'm enjoying this new mode, talking about

things that are different than just law enforcement or justice topics or whatever.

Though a lot of things intertwine in those topics.

When we talk politics, we can't go, we can't get away from sometimes political topics

and how they're affecting everyday life, everyday parts of what's going on.

I got a lot of feedback on a previous show when we talked about relationships and why

the relationships sometimes there's problems in relationships.

One of the pieces of feedback I got, well first of all I got some great personal stories.

People were really wonderful to share their personal stories and some of them were really

hard.

Other people survived things, so therefore they told me what happened to them, how they

got over it.

I thought that's great, because some of you know I'm almost done with my latest book,

which will be called Unstuck.

It's how to get yourself moving when you find yourself stuck in any kind of a situation,

stuck in a relationship, stuck in a job, stuck in grief, stuck in any ways that we can

find ourselves stuck, unable to end procrastination is a huge one for lots of people.

So that book Unstuck will be coming out soon, probably September, so that seems like

soon to me, but when you write books, they talk years, seven months, nine months, ten

months from now, we'll do the final draft or whatever.

But the feedback I got from the relationships topic I thought was really good because

apparently obviously a lot of people do struggle with relationships.

So one of the ones that I got, one of the pieces of feedback I got said, you know, what

about the relationships at work?

What about dealing with a toxic boss or a toxic leader?

You know, what's that all about?

I said, well, yeah, that's a relationship, you know, your relationship with your leadership

of your company, your church relationships with social groups, whatever it is.

If there's someone who's got authority and controls a situation and you have to deal

with them, it's not always smooth, it's not always easy.

And one of the things I did for law enforcement, I do still write for law enforcement, I had

done kind of like a top ten list of toxic traits that leadership can display and how

they treat their people and how that affects an entire organization.

Well, as I was writing it, I realized that while I was talking about law enforcement, the

reality is this is true for any organization.

I have been part of professional organizations.

I've been part of corporate America for the last eight or nine years.

I've been part of law enforcement, I've been part of school districts.

So public and private background has shown me that these relationships we have with the

leadership is very important in how we deal with them.

And one of the biggest problems, not a good leader, good leaders easy to deal with.

A good leader has vision, a good leader has the ability to listen to their people, a good

leader trusts their people to do what's right.

They give them authority to do things.

The leader comes up with the vision and maybe the goals and a desired outcome.

And then passes it on to their team to go achieve those goals.

So one of the things that I was remembering, I was in the detective bureau on my police

department for a long time.

And I made rank in there as a supervisor.

And then I got promoted again to the executive wing of our police agency.

And I went back out to the road, to the patrol division, to the uniform division.

And when I got out there, I had seen, I always thought it was very static in my agency.

We had some older leaders, not that there's wrong with anybody being old, but the reality

is they were kind of stuck in their ways.

And they kind of dealt with the law enforcement activities, the way they did in the 60s, 70s

and 80s.

And that was a completely different world by the time I got promoted in, you know, 2015

or 2016, to the executive level.

And I could make serious changes to how things were done.

Well one of the first things I found out is that while most of the officers in the agency

knew me and knew me well because we worked together, but they never worked directly for

me.

They worked in two different divisions, two different missions, two different kinds

of things.

And when I got out there, one of the things that I realized was that my personality,

my particular traits is that I am very trusting of my people.

I had great people in a detective bureau when I made rank there.

I could trust my detectives to go three counties over or three states over and conduct

a criminal investigation that maybe involved search warrants, taken people into custody,

do and all kinds of things, seizing property.

And because I could trust them implicitly, I didn't have to worry about what they were

doing.

I basically told them, keep me informed of what you're doing.

Let me know.

So that if I'm asked why, hey, why are they in Pennsylvania kicking in a door in rural

Pennsylvania?

I can explain to the people above me what my men and women were doing in the middle of

Pennsylvania kicking in a door in rural Pennsylvania.

And what I found is that having that confidence in my people, let them have confidence in

themselves, you know, one of the key things I teach in the leadership course, and it doesn't

matter who it is, there's leaders everywhere, so the lessons are the same.

One of the things I say is, if your people respect you, if they respect your career history,

if they respect the work you've done, if they respect the decision-making that you do,

if they respect that you are trustworthy as a leader, that they can trust in you, they

will go above and beyond in many instances to try and please a leader.

They want to say, hey, look what I'm doing, I know you really want these things to come

out good and I'm going to try really hard to do them.

I also found that if I had to discipline anybody, write them up or, you know, sometimes

you have to go to charges because they violate a policy and purposely, is that there was

a genuine desire to fix the problem because they respected me, all right.

We had other supervisors and leaders in our agency that were not respected.

Their work history was nonexistent.

They were promoted or transferred or they got to run important bureaus because they were

connected, not because they had talent and this is very common in lots and lots of organizations.

You know, it's who you know, not what you know in lots of places and in law enforcement

that is sometimes, sometimes, big capital S, sometimes rampant and when I talk to law

enforcement personnel, they all have stories to tell me and they all shake their head,

yeah, you know, the best don't always rise to the top, it's who you know, blah, blah, blah,

and that's unfortunate for such a serious job.

But then in other places, I've been to other agencies where absolutely the best of the

best of the ones who lead and that one particular principle doesn't matter what organization

you're in, a church group, business group, singing group, right, with your friends.

If you are the leader or you hope to be the leader, the key is respect.

If they respect you and trust you, you run a, usually a very positive organization.

So the problem that we have in any kind of a, of an environment where we have to do things,

public private doesn't matter is that when you have a toxic leader, all right, if you have

a toxic leader that can damage the agency or the organization from the top all the way down

to the bottom, it can ruin a reputation of the agency.

It can ruin the morale and the, the viability of your organization, whatever it is because

the leadership is so poor.

So one of the things that came up, one of the pieces of information about relationships

that was brought to my attention was, oh yeah, what about the president, what about president

Trump and his relationship with the country?

He's a toxic leader, he's no good, he lies every day, he's a king, he's a dictator blah,

blah, blah, blah.

And obviously this person was affected by Trump derangement syndrome, they, they couldn't

help themselves.

And they, they took the topic of relationships and they turned it around and said, well,

isn't the president in a relationship with the, with the Congress, with his own staff

and with all of us in the American people.

And we know that the, the country is really divided, you know, Trump derangement syndrome

and people on the right, people on the left are really at odds in ways that we have never

seen before, just looking at what, what the Democrat Congress is doing with funding of

Department of Homeland Security at a time when our heightened alert for lone wolf and

organized terror attacks here in our country in the homeland is on the rise.

We've had four terror attacks by lone wolf people basically in the past couple of months.

We can only expect that that's going to go forward longer this conflict in Iran goes

on.

So it's, it's really, it's really bizarre.

But what I liked about the comment was, and again, it also led me to understanding toxic

leadership and how a toxic leader can affect an agency from top to bottom.

So what I have here is we're going to talk about some of these very common, commonly

displayed toxic leadership traits.

And when I go over them, I'm not going over them to give you fodder to go after your

boss or what I'm asking you is, if you are a leader, if you're in a position of leadership

in any organization, what can you look inward and look at these things as I talk about

them and ask yourself, is that me?

If you are a lower level manager in any organization, are you toxic to your people?

One of the things I ask in every, every leadership course, no matter whether it's corporate

leadership, church leadership or, or police leadership, I say to the, to the people in

these positions, if we could totally insulate your people, the men and women who report

to you, all right, that you are in command of in, in any way, shape or form.

If we could insulate them from any kind of negative response from you or from the organization

and say, what would they say about you?

If your people were in a room and totally could speak freely, what would they say about

you as a leader?

Would we hear words like visionary, honest, trustworthy, kind, smart, fair?

Would we hear those kind of words or would we hear unintelligent, vengeful, ego-manic,

un-talented, limited vision?

Is that what they would hear?

That's really the purpose of this is for people who want to go into leadership positions,

in any, like I said, I keep saying any organization, it's any organization, doesn't matter, you

want to go beyond the local softball team management group that's going to manage the league

in your town.

Well, that's a leadership position.

You can be in a church group.

I had somebody write to me and say, well, what can you do about toxic church leadership?

We have a pastor who's absolutely toxic to the religion, toxic to the parishioners, just

really bad.

What can I do as a mid-level manager to deal with this person, right?

So it happens everywhere and everything.

So if you're going to be a leader, some point, it's imminent, you're about to be raised

up to a leadership position or take it on, ask yourself these questions, are these traits

that I have?

Do I be, would people say I have them?

Not just stuff.

We have a very inflated view of how we do things.

What would our people say about us?

And if you are a leader already, what would your people say about you?

And do you involve yourself in any of these traits?

So let's take a look.

All right, so 10 commonly displayed traits by toxic leader.

And then I'm going to give some consequences that follow these kind of things once we cover

these 10.

Number one, you micromanage everything.

You're a micromanager.

If you constantly hover correct and override your team's decisions, you're signaling that

you don't really trust them, right?

Micromanagement suffocates creativity and slows productivity.

So if you have a group of people, like I said, and you give them an assignment, but you

don't trust that they're skilled enough to do it, you don't trust that they're going

to get done on time, that there's going to be quality work.

So therefore, you're hanging on top of them.

You're countermanding every decision that team makes.

In the long and short of it, if they really don't have the talent or the skill to do the

project properly, then get them the training, get them the skill that they need, get them

the mentoring that they need so that you can trust them.

If you do have a talented team and you still don't trust them, maybe that's something that's

a trait, a problem that you have, you know, another truth that I found over the years

of being in leadership positions was that if your team fails at a project or an assignment

or a mission, whatever, if they fail, it's your fault.

Even though they didn't do well, it's your fault as the leader.

And you'll see a couple in here, one of these things in here is that you take credit

but you shift blame.

So keep that in mind.

You are responsible for them when they do great and you're responsible for them when they

don't do well.

Your key as a leader is to figure out why and then adjust the negatives into positives.

That might mean shifting people around, that might mean getting people training.

It could mean letting someone go.

That's a reality too.

Sometimes there are toxic employees that damage a workplace and they're just not part of

the team.

They're not getting the job done.

So number one was micromanaging.

Number two is exactly what we're talking about here.

You take credit but you shift blame.

If there's a success, it's yours.

If there's a failure, it's theirs, their team, right?

Your team will quickly lose motivation and respect and this behavior destroys psychological

safety.

So what is psychological safety?

You want employees, team members, that you oversee, you command, whatever, whatever term

you use in your organization.

You want them to be confident in their own skills and decision making so that they can

move on a dime.

They may have to shift, make decisions if they're scared to death of how you're going to treat

them because they made a decision that you don't agree with and you belittle them.

You cause problems, you countermand it to the point that they do not feel psychologically

safe to make those decisions.

They're not going to make those decisions and they're going to bring everything to you

constantly.

What about this?

What about this?

What about this?

And is that what you want as a leader, right?

Is that what you want as a leader?

So that's a big negative.

Number three is very, very common.

You lead through fear, you lead through fear, yelling, intimidation, threats or humiliation

might get short-term compliance from people but they create long-term resentment and turnover.

So this is a topic now, if we look out in the world and we see a lot of companies are

talking a big problem that they're having is turnover.

People come, they get trained, they get involved in projects and then next you know they

leave to go get another job, a better job, more paying job, more challenging job, more

satisfying job, an easier job, whatever the case may be, when you have a talent drain

in your organization, the organization suffers and there's actually, there's a meme out

on social media that looks at this really well.

It's meant to be funny but in, you know, sometimes in comedy and funny-ness there's truth.

There's a manager, she's a high-ranking person in this organization and she's asking

a mid-level manager for their opinion and they say, you know, we have such a huge turnover.

What could it be?

I can't put my finger on why so many people would leave our organization such a great company

as we have and the mid-level manager is listening to her and she says, well, maybe it's the fact

that, you know, we're very strict on work schedules and that we don't have a lot of flexibility

to cover some of the things of people's lives, you know, when they have to be somewhere

or do something with their family, we're very, very strict and the high-level manager says,

no, no, that can't be it.

So the mid-level manager goes, well, maybe it's the fact that we don't pay them a better

wage, you know, we have limited employees, we've cut back on a lot of employees.

We've given our people a lot more work, but we haven't compensated them.

Maybe that's part of the problem and the high-level manager says, no, no, no, that can't be it.

I, that can't be it.

Then the mid-level manager says something to the effect of, well, maybe they feel, you know,

we don't trust them and allow them to make decisions and follow through on projects

and ideas and use their skill sets to create a great product and the high-level manager

once again says, no, no, no, that can't be it.

I don't know what it is.

I can't put my finger on why people would leave our company.

Obviously, all the things the mid-level manager brought up are problems that need to be addressed

in the organization and the leadership is not doing it.

All right.

So leading through fear, intimidating, yelling at people, yeah, you get them to shut up,

but then you'll get them to shut up and they back down and they stop.

And you can split an organization by doing that.

You play favorites is number four, we guide, we rewarding loyalty over competence

or giving special treatment to certain employees, fractures, team cohesion and breeds hostility.

Absolutely true.

It's normal that when you rise into a leadership position that you, you look at the people

that you know really well that you've worked with really well and you give them opportunities

that first sometimes may be before or better perks or rewards because you know them,

your friends with them and that's inappropriate as a leader.

So when I made Lieutenant, my partner of 10 years, we were blood brothers, families

were very close, everybody was very tight and we both got promoted to the rank of sergeant

at the same time.

We had different jobs, but you know, we were both sergeants and then I got promoted

to Lieutenant and this individual was still a sergeant.

And again, one of my best friends and I had to be very, very much aware of the fact that

first of all, I knew this person was an amazing individual, great human being, tremendous

cop, great investigator.

When things came up, I couldn't just always give it to him, right, the best assignments

to let him do things that you know, I wouldn't let other people do.

That wasn't a good management skill set.

So I had to let other people try and I wanted people to know I'm not going to always pick

my favorite, right, because everybody knew we worked together for many years.

So I had to make sure I went out of my way as the leader to let everyone be confident

in me that I would trust them and try and teach them and let them try things too.

All right, number five, you don't listen.

If employees feel dismissed, interrupted or ignored, they stop offering ideas and eventually

they stop caring.

So if you're not listening to your people, if you're not letting them tell you what's

good, who knows how to make a better widget than the men and women down on the production

line making the widgets?

Who knows better to people up in the offices in the suits looking down over everybody or

to people actually making the widgets, right, of course, it's to people making the widgets.

All right, so you have to go down to them and get their ideas, hey, how could this be

better?

Here's a problem we found, et cetera.

All right, so listening is important.

If you're emotionally volatile, if you have mood swings, unpredictable reactions, or

emotional outbursts that force employees into survival mode, constantly guessing the

version of you that they're going to get.

This is very common in lots of workplace.

You can't, you know, the boss, it's my way or the highway and today is a good

day, tomorrow's a highway, very damaging.

Number seven, you set unrealistic expectations.

You demand constant overtime work by people, impossible deadlines are created and perfection

creates burnout and demanding perfection creates burnout that drives good employees away.

You want to get the job done, you want the team to move forward as a team with common goals.

And as the leader, you have to develop those, you have the vision, then trust your people

to get it done.

Okay?

Number eight, you withhold information.

Keeping employees in the dark, whether intentionally or through disorganization creates confusion,

mistakes and mistrust.

So if you hear there's a new policy coming out and, you know, you say, you know, that's

going to interrupt how I do things, I'll hold off on, no, you have to tell people what

the new policy is.

Tell them what you expect of them, right?

Don't let there be guessing going on.

Be very, very clear and transparent, give them the information that you get.

Number nine, if you avoid accountability, if you never admit mistakes, never apologize,

or always find someone else to blame, your team learns that dishonesty is dangerous and

it can affect them negatively and they lose trust in you.

So what did I say early on here, an hour, a little talk here, is that if they trust you,

they will go out of their way to try and do the right thing, to improve, to be better,

to come up with ideas, if they trust you, to be a good, fair, decent leader.

And that's what you want to aim at.

And then number 10, you discourage growth or independence.

If you feel threatened by strong performers, you block their promotions, you block assignments

for them, things that would be helpful to their career, you refuse to delegate to them

because you know, you're threatened by them.

They might be really good, but hey, you're the boss.

You're not leading, then you're limiting.

So a conversation that I've had many times in many different groups is that I always viewed

myself as a person who my obligation was to the people below me.

So what I always said is, the higher you go in any organization, the more you owe to the

people below you in the organization, you know, it's not the, okay, now I'm in charge.

So we're just going to do it my way and that's it.

Now my job as a leader was to build my people up, was to help my people become really good

at their job, to help them get extra skills, help prepare them for promotion.

You know, succession planning is something a lot of places do and a lot of places don't

because they're afraid of it.

And I always felt in my heart that when I saw my people rise in their career and do better

than I did, I was proud of them.

I was happy for that.

I felt like as the leader, I accomplished my goal, which was to make them better.

Right.

So if somebody on my team that I was mentoring and teaching and they did great, I felt

like I was a brick in their wall, right?

And that's a very satisfying thing for me anyway.

So those are the 10 kind of toxic leadership traits that if you have any of them, you need

to look closely in inward and say, why am I like that and how can I fix them?

I will be back in a minute.

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Alright, here we are, we are back.

Here on the human equation, I'm your host, Joe Pangaro.

You can reach me via email here at the network at jpangaro, p-a-n-g-a-r-o, j the letter

j, p-a-n-g-r-o, at americaoutloud.news, jpangaro at americaoutloud.news.

And I like to hear from everybody, those who agree with me, those who disagree with me.

Just be civil.

I'm civil, right?

I don't call you names.

Tell me what you like, you don't like, agree or disagree.

So before we go on, the next thing we're going to talk about are the effects.

How toxic leadership harms employees and organizations.

Here's some of the effects.

We just went over some of the traits of a toxic leader, poor leader, but now we're going

to go over the things that the results and what to do, alright?

But first I want to tell you about an amazing, awesome, great time we're going to have this

summer.

July 2nd through the 4th, America Out Loud, our network, is putting on a conference

of sorts for patriots, for people who love freedom, freedom of speech.

We're going to be celebrating the 250th year of the United States of America and the 10th

year of our network, America Out Loud.

So you're all invited.

There's going to be tons of presentations and get-togethers and cocktail hours and rooftop

fireworks all to celebrate America.

It's going to be a wonderful time, we'll all get to meet each other in person.

You know, we hear each other on the radio and on the programs, but we'll actually be

able to sit down, break bread, maybe have a fine aromatic tobacco product as we watch

some fireworks and have some cocktails, get to know each other, ask questions, talk to

each other and create even more dialogues.

So what you do is you go to AmericaOut Loud.News, AmericaOut Loud.News, that is the network's

website and you can go on there and you will see the event that's taking place in July

2nd through the 4th in Nashville, Tennessee, it's going to be an amazing, great time.

You want to be a part of it, get your tickets now, get your hotels booked, airfare, whatever

you have to do.

If you're going to ride a horse into town, you want to get that ready because July is coming

very quickly and it's going to be a great time.

I think we're all really going to enjoy it.

So I want to tell you about that so that you can look into it.

I'm all set, I'm ready to go and I would like nothing better than to meet all of you

out there.

You know, that's interesting, I ask the great Malcolm Out Loud, the leader of this organization,

by the way, is an excellent leader of an organization.

I ask him all the time, hey, how's the program doing because they watch the numbers, they

pay attention to the numbers, who's listening, who's downloading podcasts.

So any shows that you miss on Thursday or Friday night at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time,

you can go and get in a podcast, you can go listen to it in your car, you can listen

to it going to bed, you can listen to it when you're gardening in your backyard, whatever.

But go back and hear some of these other shows because there's tons and tons of content,

not just of mine, but all the other fantastic programs that are out there.

All right, so let's talk about how toxic leadership harms employees and organizations.

And I'll tell you, if we have time, before our time runs out here today, when we cover

these, if I have some time, I want to go over some of the top 10 things going on in the

world, you know, a little current events because there's so much going on.

I'm going to have to do a program on all the investigations that are going on in Washington

and who did what to who. And I'm going to have to cover all of that pretty soon.

But we'll try and get to some of that at the end of this block, if we still have time.

All right, so how toxic leadership harms employees?

Toxic leadership does not just create a bad day at work.

It has measurable lasting consequences.

So for those of you out there in HR, human resources,

you know that over the course of time, there are the ideas and the concepts of

workplace harassment, sexual harassment, workplace harassment, workplace violence, and

you know, a hostile work environment, which is the coined phrase, hostile work environment.

They've evolved over the years.

It started out with sexual harassment in the workplace.

Most of the victims were women who were treated very poorly by co-workers, leaders in their

organizations and they got together and sued and court cases were developed.

That says what you can and can't do.

How can you treat somebody in a workplace negatively, right?

So we all know those rules.

And then that developed into other kinds of workplace problems where,

you know, if you are in a leadership position, how do you treat your people?

You know, you have to treat them with a basic common decency.

You can't create an environment that is so toxic that people are sick to their stomach,

can't come to work.

They can't do their jobs.

They have to quit sometimes because it's so horrible.

Well, there's court cases out there that say you can't do that.

It's not appropriate.

Doesn't mean you can't be in charge.

Doesn't mean you can't enforce rules.

It just means you have to do it appropriately, right?

Fairly with justice.

So keep that in mind.

All right.

As we go forward, that's where all of these things come from.

Then they keep developing.

You know, as people find more and more reasons that that their workplace is difficult or toxic

because of a leader or policy or because of the governing board or whatever,

there's more lawsuits and then more court cases come down.

And then that means there's more rules and more potential violations that can take place by

companies and management in companies and that can be civil, criminal, big fines, all kinds of

things that you could be personally responsible for.

So toxic leaders, the number one of the things is you can result as having someone who's a toxic

leader in your organization is declining morale.

Employees under toxic leadership often feel defeated, anxious or undervalued.

Over time, they disengage emotionally from their work.

So that's, you know, you heard on a social media, the quiet quitting.

What is quiet quitting?

That's when people, they're pretty much done with your company.

They don't like it.

They don't like the pay.

They don't like the work.

They don't like the management.

They don't like the mission.

All the things they don't like about your company.

But they don't have another job to go to.

So they just quietly backing off, going slower, not putting their heart into it.

The morale goes down and when your morale goes down, the whole organization goes down.

You know, in my career in law enforcement, I had amazing leaders and I've had some horrific

leaders that were just really, really poor at all different levels of leadership.

And it affected the whole organization, the whole agency.

So the fish rots from the head down.

Well, when you have a great leader at the head of the organization that has vision,

that has decency, has just a sense of justice, mission, mentoring abilities.

The department soared.

We soared.

We had such an amazing cutting edge law enforcement agency.

It was a great place to work.

Everybody loved commoner work.

You couldn't wait to the next day.

We were supported.

It was awesome.

And then we had the next chief that came along.

And he was a very, very poor leader.

He was all ego driven.

He was the kind of person that spoke a good game about.

Boy, this is going to be great when I take over.

And we're going to make this department's going to be even better.

But this person had some real bad personality flaws in that he could not see beyond his ego.

And if anybody, you know, he, I don't want Yesmen.

I do not want Yesmen and women.

I want you to give me ideas and opinions until you gave him ideas and opinions that were different

than what he wanted to do.

And then the entire agency was splintered and shattered into those people who

survived being around because he would go after you personally.

He would go after you for your career.

Or those who tried to basically kiss his, kiss his feet and appease him

so that they didn't get wrapped up in it.

And he was very clear that if you were on his team, he overlooked mistakes.

He overlooked problems.

He overlooked your flaws.

But if you were not on his team, no matter what you did,

you were going to get smacked.

Your career was going to suffer.

That really damaged our agency and damaged the morale of everybody.

It was really horrific to see us go from from the mountaintop to below the valley.

And it was all all because of one leader and the effect that leader had on the agency.

So number two, increased turnover.

Well, we started talking about turnover before.

People don't leave jobs.

They leave bosses.

That's the saying, right?

They don't leave jobs.

They leave bosses for the most part.

Of course, there's all kinds of things, you know, the pay scale,

the kind of work you're doing.

Are you appropriately compensated for it?

Your time, do they look out for your, you know, your time, your well-being?

But for the most part, toxic leadership is one of the top reasons that employees quit.

Costing companies, thousands and thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars,

over the course of the country, for recruitment and training.

And then they leave and go somewhere else.

I know a young man.

He was in a financial business, really smart, smart guy.

Got a degree from a great school.

Had a lot of great ideas, ambitious, just a tremendous person to have in your organization.

And he got hired by this big company, and they are a big company.

They have a good reputation amongst the business world in which they function.

And they talk to good game about, oh boy, you know, you are so good.

We're going to bring you in, and you know, within six months,

I'm sure you're going to get some kind of a promotion,

or you're going to be leading a team, you'll be doing projects.

Well, the guy was there for two years doing a great job.

Got great evaluations.

Never once, got a substantial raise.

Got a small one percent raise here and there.

Never got a bonus.

Never got put in charge of a team.

Kept being told, yeah, yeah, yeah, down the road, down the road, down the road,

to leak.

Got sick and tired of it.

And said, you know what?

I have talent.

I have skill.

The people here are lying to me.

They're lying to everybody about getting moving up and more money and all that,

even though the company was doing great.

So, quiet quitting went on.

And then the guy found the job and left that company and went to this new company.

He got a 54 percent raise in pay just by going to another company.

So, I think many of us know that money is important in your job and your career.

But it's not everything.

You know, job satisfaction is hugely important as well.

Money helps, though.

I mean, you get compensated and that's what helps you do your job.

So, you have increased turnover when you have toxic leaders.

So, my thought always for a board of directors or whoever is the ultimate, the ownership of

the company, you need to be aware of who your leaders are and how they treat their people.

How are they handling the company?

How are they handling the personnel?

How are they interacting with these people?

Because your people are your most important asset in any company.

It's the people that you have that do the work.

That are the most important people.

And if you have toxic leaders treating them horrible, you're going to lose people.

And you're going to have to keep training.

And just like that woman in that meme I talked about,

if you're blind to the fact that, you know, your leaders are bad.

You're not paying enough.

There's not enough growth for the employees.

You're going to lose people.

You're going to be mediocre, right?

So, it's one of the problems.

Number three, reduced productivity.

Fear, confusion, and constant stress drain cognitive energy away from people.

Employees spend more time managing the leader's behavior

than doing their actual work.

That is so true.

It's amazing.

And this shows you how the leadership,

riding from the head down can affect your organization.

If you have a poor leader,

a argumentative leader, a vindictive leader,

an egomaniac who nobody is ever right, but him or her,

you start to see employees back down, back away.

They slow down because, you know, hey, if you're moving fast,

doing your job and you're really pushing forward, pushing boundaries to make things happen,

you're going to get ahead.

But if you fear that every time you do something,

that it's a threat to the boss or the boss won't like it or the boss will yell at you in public

or you'll have some other negative activity,

you stop doing those things and you simply do just enough to survive.

Just enough to survive in your job,

either as a permanent response or until you can find something better and get added air.

And then, of course, you're dealing with losing personnel again.

I remember when I came out to the patrol division,

the leader of our agency was very, very poor leader.

He did intimidation.

He led by fear.

He rode everybody up.

Unless you run his team,

then you would get away with everything.

And it was obvious to everyone who was on the team and who wasn't.

And I'll never forget this young officer who, you know, he was a good officer.

He did his job.

He did it very well.

He helped the public, you know, really a good guy.

And then one day, he stopped the car and he got like,

I think he got two guns out of the car.

A big, giant bunch of heroin and a bunch of money.

It was a great stop and arrest.

A great investigation from beginning to end.

He did everything by the book and it was awesome.

I came in the next morning.

I read these reports and I said,

I'm going to write this kid up positively for doing such a great job.

You know, I want to motivate him.

That, hey, the lieutenant saw what a great job you did.

I was in narcotics for years, major crimes.

So I was a lot of respect for my career.

And I said, that'll mean a lot for this kid.

It'll motivate him to go do another one, right?

That was that was my thought.

I call him into my office.

And I'm going to give him this positive write-up.

This thing, he's probably going to get an award for it at the end of the year.

And he shows up.

I hear him arrive at headquarters.

He comes into my office.

He stands in front of me and he says,

how many days off is it?

And I didn't quite get what he said.

I said, what's that?

He says, how many days off is it?

I said, how many days off is what?

Just whatever it is I did.

You know, where do I sign?

Just tell me how many days off it is.

This was an example of how this attitude of this chief permeated this agency.

That if you were getting called in.

You were getting called in because you did a good job.

You were getting called in.

You were going to get hit with days off.

Loss of pay.

Demotion.

Transfer.

It was always negative.

And here this kid did this great job just the day before.

And instead of anticipating that he was coming in to get an out of boy,

he came in.

Who knows what else I did?

I don't know.

Maybe I parked the car at the wrong angle.

And they're going to give me two days off.

That is toxic, toxic leadership.

And the agency really plummeted.

Under the leadership of this individual.

All right, so reduce productivity.

We called it the zombie squad.

Do just enough to not get in trouble.

But don't do anything more because you're going to draw attention to yourself.

And unless you're on the team, it's going to be punished for you being aggressive or whatever.

All right, so number four, loss of innovation.

When people are afraid to speak up, organizations stagnate.

Creativity requires psychological safety,

not fear of retaliation.

So when I joined the corporate world after my retirement,

I went into a company that had a umbrella company and they had 10 companies underneath it.

I was one of them.

I was leading one of the companies.

It was exciting for me to be a part of the corporate world.

To be a part of the executive management of a $100 million company.

This was very, very exciting.

And something I never thought I would be involved in.

But I was.

And my opinion was not just about my company that I was running in the organization.

But I was part of the management team of 10 different leaders that reported to the owner.

And he wanted input from everybody.

What's going on with company A?

How can company B help companies?

Are we too siloed?

Should we get together?

You know, what is something?

What skill set do you have that you can offer to company D?

So we can do better at whatever we're doing.

We talked about our problems, employee problems, policy problems, work loads, logistics.

And we all got to offer our opinions on things.

And the company grew in the next five years.

We went from a $100 million company to a $500 million company.

Because we pulled all the talents of everybody in the leadership team.

And then we pushed that down to our people.

And it was an amazing thing to see.

And I juxtaposed it onto my police agency where we had a poor leader

who attacked everyone that didn't agree with everything he said and did.

And the agency went down, productivity went down, morale went down, cops were leaving.

It was crazy.

It was crazy to see the two specific examples.

So if you do any of these things, you want to ask me, so what am I doing?

Am I doing the right thing?

All right, damage reputation.

Word spreads quickly internally and externally that toxic leaders can

tarnish a company's brand, making it harder to attract talent and customers.

We had at one time everybody that wanted to try and change laterally.

And go to a different PD, wanted to come to our PD.

We were progressive, we were, we had good equipment, we had great leadership.

And over time, when this bad guy took over, the application stopped coming.

Nobody knew what it was like to work there.

We had cops leaving every chance they could going to departments that were not as good.

But it was better than being where they were.

Number six, you might get increased absenteeism and burnout.

This is another thing of like quiet quitting.

You know, hey, I have this PTO, I have time, I have sick time.

I just don't feel like going to work today.

And you call out, no matter there's a project going on, it doesn't matter.

There's a project that's important.

I don't care, they don't care about me, so I don't care about them.

That's detrimental to your organization and that's a result of toxic leadership.

Number seven, ethical and legal risks, leaders who bully their people,

discriminate against their people, retaliate, expose organizations to lawsuits,

investigations and public scrutiny.

Now this we see across the board of business everywhere.

When you have a poor leader and everyone is at odds with each other,

this is where hostile work environment lawsuits come in because people are so sick to their

stomach, they get put in bad positions, they have all kinds of problems because of the toxic

leaders behavior that it really damages it.

And now you can be sued for the things that you do, right?

That's why everybody has an HR company now.

HR departments in their company are not there for the employees.

They're there to protect the company, right?

And sometimes they got their hands full when you have bad leaders that are constantly causing problems.

All right, you can have number eight, breakdown of trust.

Once the trust is gone, collaboration collapses, teams become fragmented, defensive

and unwilling to take initiative.

This is exactly what I was talking about in my two companies.

In the private sector company, it brought everyone together because the leader was excellent.

He trusted us. He says, hey, I hired you all.

I'm paying you all a lot of money because I want your skills and your experience.

Here's what I want to do.

You figure out how to do it and he gave us the authority to do it.

And we worked between companies to make things happen.

And it was just, it was a great experience as opposed to the police department where you had

a toxic leader who damaged everything and everyone just because of the way you behaved.

All right.

So you can have that breakdown of trust.

I'm going to cover real quick here.

So why do people become toxic leaders?

That becomes the question, right?

We started that out in this program saying why would somebody want to be like that?

Either they don't realize they're doing it.

They've never been told that they're being like that or they're purposely being like that.

So here's some ideas of why do people become toxic leaders, right?

And again, this is for you to look inward and think about yourself.

Toxic leadership rarely comes from a single cause.

More often it's a combination of personal history, workplace culture, and internal pressures.

And here are some very common reasons that people are poor.

They learned it from their own leaders.

At some point they were taught how to be a leader by watching somebody who was, who led them.

And if they led them bad, they'll learn.

That's why they say, you know, children learn what they live.

Well, it's the same thing throughout our lives.

The chief that followed the bad chief was not a bad man.

He was a good man, but he learned from the bad chief.

And he followed up and behaved exactly the same way.

And the department stayed miserable for another seven or eight years, right?

So it happens.

They have insecurity or fear of failure.

Internally, they say to themselves, you know, maybe it's kind of like imposter syndrome.

I really don't deserve to be here, especially for those people

who were promoted or were put in positions that they didn't really earn, but they knew somebody.

They were relative.

They were, you know, somebody's a friend or whatever.

And they got put in a position.

They really couldn't handle it.

They can be very, very threatened by everyone.

And I think that's what this chief had a problem with.

All right, number three, lack of training.

Many leaders are promoted for technical skill,

not leadership ability.

So without proper development,

you can't be a good leader.

That's where when I started my training course for police officers, for sergeants and lieutenants,

it was because a lot of these people that get promoted,

you have some people who are just absolutely amazing leaders.

And they get recognized for their leadership.

And they're promoted, right?

Other people pass the test.

And it doesn't matter if they're going to be a good leader or not,

they pass the test.

They did really high scoring on the test.

And they get put in those positions.

So what I found is that there was a real desire for leadership courses to teach people,

okay, you might be a knucklehead in your life.

But now you're in a position of authority.

Let's have this course help you to understand the concepts of leadership

and bad leadership so that you can be a good leader.

All right, stress and burnout.

Some leaders can be overwhelmed because they're just overwhelmed.

They either they can't handle the position.

It's too much work.

It's beyond their skill set.

And they lash out.

They withdraw or they make bad decisions because they're just

overwhelmed at the position where they're burned out.

They have a desire for power or control.

Some individuals generally enjoy authority and they misuse it.

They equate leadership with dominance.

So one of the questions I ask, I say,

does being in charge make you a good leader?

And most times people will say, no, it just makes you in charge.

And that's true.

Just because you happen to be the person who is in charge does not mean

you are a good leader.

You need to understand the skill sets of leadership.

You need to understand what it means to lead.

To be a good leader and all of those things we talked about.

All right, and number six I have here.

Some leaders simply don't realize the impact of their behavior.

They may think that they're being direct, efficient or they have very high

standards, but they're unaware of the damage that they cause.

When you don't have to suffer the consequences of your decisions,

it's easy to not worry about the effects they have.

Because hey, I made a rule.

It's for you to follow, not for me.

And if you don't, you'll be punished.

But I don't have to answer to anybody.

I don't answer to anyone.

I go about my business because I am in charge.

And that can be certainly be a blind spot.

And that's what I've tried and thinking about that blind spots.

That is what motivated me throughout my career, no matter public or private sector,

that as I moved through the ranks in public and private sector positions,

as I was given more and more responsibility, my constant question was,

am I doing the right thing for the right reason at the right time and in the right way?

Those were important questions that I learned on a leadership course that I went to.

And the man that taught it was really an amazing leader in his company for years,

and now he was passing on his wisdom.

And those four questions, am I doing the right thing in the right way at the right time

for the right reason? They helped to guide me to be the best leader that I could be,

and I hope that my career, wherever I was, helped people to be their best,

that I hope that I was a brick in their wall.

All right, everybody, listen, I'm running a little long here.

I just want to say you're part of the solution, not a part of the problem.

Think about what we talked about, and we'll see you again soon.