Crossing the Line: An Examination of Toxic Leadership in the U.S. Army

Principal Investigators:

Teresa A. Daniel, JD, PhD

Dean & Professor- Human Resource Leadership Program

Sullivan University

Louisville, KY 40205

tdaniel@sullivan.edu

606-922-3384

Gary S. Metcalf, PhD

Distinguished Lecturer

Sullivan University

Louisville, KY 40205

gmetcalf@sullivan.edu

606-923-0862

Doctoral Research Assistants:

Helen MacLennan, PhD

Jonathan Norton

Dennis Leber

Calvin Benjamin

Sullivan University IRB Reference Number: 05212014-01

© Copyright by Teresa A. Daniel, JD, PhD and Gary S. Metcalf, PhD, February 2015.

All rights reserved.

2

Table of Contents

Page Number

Dedication 3

Executive Summary 4-7

Purpose of the Study 8

Phase 1: Study Design and IRB Approvals 8-9

Phase 2: Review of the Relevant Literature 10-19

Phase 3: Research Methodology 20-21

Phase 4: Analysis of the Background Data and Discussion of Results 22-23

Phase 5: Analysis of the Primary Data and Discussion of the Results 24-60

Research Question 1: Key Differences between Types of Leaders 24-35

Research Question 2: Characteristics of the Army that May Promote Toxicity 36-48

Research Question 3: Recommended Strategies to Deal with the Problem 49-60

The Development of a New Grounded Theory and Conceptual Model 60-62

Possible Study Limitations 62-63

Suggestions for Future Research 63

Originality/Value/Implications of the Study 63

Conclusions 64-65

Call to Action 66

Tables 67-73

Appendices 74-84

References 85-94

Acknowledgments/Declaration of No Competing Interests/Disclaimer 95

About the Principal Investigators 96

3

Dedication

Outside the wire, the enemy is the enemy; inside the wire, the command climate is the enemy.

Matsuda (2014)

It is our hope that the collective work of dedicated leaders, soldiers, researchers, scholars, and

practitioners will someday result in organizations that refuse to tolerate toxic leaders. Those who

persistently treat others badly or put their own self-interested agenda above the long-term best

interests of their organization and its people must either be coached to change or relieved of their

command—regardless of their ability to deliver results. This study is dedicated to reaching that

end.

We are also hopeful that the corporate sector and other non-military organizations will take note

of the Army’s bold efforts to publicly acknowledge and proactively tackle the problem of toxic

leaders—and be inspired to take similar action.

4

Executive Summary

Purpose— This study was designed to help the Army make better distinctions between toxic

leaders who are abusive, leaders who are simply tough bosses, and exceptional leaders so that

toxic leaders can be identified earlier and coached to change or relieved of command before the

damage to their unit is too great. In addition, the study examined the military environment to

determine if there are characteristics which tend to inadvertently encourage or promote toxic

leaders and/or abusive behaviors. The study also explored the actions—both individual and

systemic—that can be taken to minimize or eliminate toxic leadership. A further intent of the

study was to extend to a military context the earlier work of Daniel (2009a) which examined the

distinctions between tough bosses and workplace bullies in the corporate sector.

Design/Methodology/Approach—This empirical, qualitative study consisted of a series of in-

depth, semi-structured interviews with 44 officers of the U.S. Army conducted during the

summer and fall of 2014. Thirty-five of the interviews took place in person or by telephone with

officers attending the Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, while

nine of the interviews were conducted with other military personnel meeting the sample criteria.

The analysis, interpretations, and conclusions about the data were conducted in accord with the

constructivist, grounded theory methodology outlined by Charmaz (2006), using constant

comparative analysis.

Findings—Forty of the participants (91%) report that they had either personally worked with or

observed a toxic leader at some point in their career; conversely, 100% of the participants were

also able to identify one or more leaders who were exceptional. Thirty-two of the officers

(72.7%) had witnessed an individual being promoted to a position of increased responsibility

despite being widely perceived by subordinates to be a toxic leader. A total of 31 officers

(70.4%) had given an early departure from the Army serious consideration as a result of their

personal experience with a toxic leader. While 68.2% of the participants indicate that the use of

toxic behaviors is never useful or positive, nearly a third (31.8%) suggest that these types of

behaviors might be advantageous in certain limited situations.

The study’s participants describe toxic leaders as:

Excessively concerned about self (e.g. promoting themselves at the expense of the

organization, working the system to maximize personal advantage, taking credit for the

work of others);

Lacking care and concern for their subordinates (e.g. not interested in getting to know

soldiers as people, abusive and malicious personal attacks, failure to engage in

mentoring, coaching, or development, infrequent communication, transactional view of

soldiers, creation of in and out groups);

Having low emotional intelligence (e.g. frequent emotional outbursts, lack of self-

awareness, failure to listen, low empathy, and develops a climate of fear); and

Achieving results with a short-term emphasis (but with no regard for how those results

are obtained or the impact on people), leading to a negative command climate.

5

Conversely, they describe tough bosses as:

Concerned about their soldiers (e.g. treat them with respect, compassionate, supportive

and approachable);

Focused on the development of their subordinates (e.g. mentor, coach, counsel, offer

honest and constructive feedback, and allowing freedom to maneuver);

Having high emotional intelligence (e.g. empathetic, calm under pressure, actively listens

to and seeks input from others, highly self-aware, establishes climate of mutual trust and

respect); and

Achieving results with a long-term emphasis (e.g. high standards for self and others,

tough but fair in approach, holds people accountable, high regard for organizational

impact, and leads from the front), leading to a positive command climate.

The study’s participants describe great leaders in virtually the same way that they describe tough

bosses. They identified, however, one key difference. While tough bosses are perceived as

expressing concern for their soldiers, exceptional leaders are distinguished by their highly

personalized caring. The relationships that they establish with people under their command goes

beyond just showing concern—they care and connect with their people in a personal way that

makes soldiers feel genuinely valued and respected. As evidenced by their frequent

communication, mentoring, counseling, and efforts to develop the individual for future

assignments, they exhibited a holistic personal concern about their people—not just as soldiers

there to do a job, but also as human beings.

This study supports the theory that toxic leaders have a personalized power orientation given

their general need for control, their excessive self-interest, and their willingness to work long

hours to gain support and to achieve their goals—but at the expense of the organization and their

subordinates. Conversely, both exceptional leaders and tough bosses have a socialized power

orientation given their willingness to transcend their own self-interest and sacrifice in order to

achieve the mission and collective good of their people and the Army as a whole (e.g.

McClelland, 1975 and his fellow colleagues).

The study identified several potential contributing factors that may inadvertently lead to or

promote the use of toxic behaviors:

A relentless focus on mission accomplishment;

Senior leaders who are unaware of or ambivalent to the problem;

Lack of emphasis on the development of subordinates due to competing priorities for

time (resulting in infrequent mentoring and an absence of regular performance feedback);

Failure to address the root cause resulting in “toxic migration” of toxic leaders to other

parts of the organization;

An organizational culture which values loyalty and discourages the reporting of toxic

leaders;

Imitation of successful leaders who are toxic; and

A cut-throat and highly competitive culture that lacks strong checks and balances.

The study’s participants also identified changes to current systems, policies, and processes that

are most likely to minimize or eliminate toxic leadership in the military. These include:

6

Increased leader emphasis on and accountability for officer development (e.g. more

mentoring and coaching, more one-on-one conversations, regular feedback on

performance, and the development of reward and recognition mechanisms for officers

who excel in subordinate development and consequences for those who do not);

Changes to the officer evaluation report (e.g. to include input from not only the

individual’s senior officer, but also a random sampling of his peers and subordinates,

plus review and consideration of recent command climate survey data);

Changes to the promotion process (e.g. consider input from multiple levels, examine the

results of command climate surveys, and solicit input from prior senior officers);

Increased emphasis on and accountability for conducting sensing sessions and the

regular use of command climate surveys (e.g. require surveys to be conducted on a

regular basis, act on the data to ensure accountability and improve trust, and increase the

frequency of sensing sessions and on-site visits to units by senior officers so that they

can personally observe the climate and talk with soldiers); and

An expansion of emotional intelligence training to officers at all levels.

Recommendations about the most effective individual response strategies for dealing with a

situation involving a toxic leader include:

Just “wait it out” knowing that the individual will soon be promoted;

Use the chain of command to report abuse; avoid the toxic leader;

Identify a person the toxic leader trusts and work through that individual;

Make it a point to learn what not to do from the toxic leader;

Communicate regularly and provide feedback intended to help the toxic leader become

more self-aware of his impact on others;

Check Army regulations to see if his actions are improper or illegal and approach the

problem from that angle;

Provide “cover” for subordinates in order to protect them;

Teach subordinates what “good leadership” looks like and regularly practice it so that

toxic behaviors are not imitated;

File a complaint with the Inspector General; and

Stay focused on one’s underlying reasons for service to the U.S. Army—to protect the

nation and the Constitution.

Limitations of the Study— This was an exploratory study. As a result, we advise caution when

generalizing our findings to the Army at-large or to any other organization. We can only indicate

that our findings are suggestive and representative of a small—but important—group of mid-

grade officers. Other possible limitations were also noted.

Suggestions for Future Research— It would be useful to examine the perceptions of Army

officers at varying ranks (including both commissioned and non-commissioned officers) and to

compare the perceptions of officers from the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. Future studies to

examine the link between emotional intelligence and the use of toxic leader behaviors would be

of use. In addition, studies to explore whether expanded training makes any difference in future

levels of negative leadership would also be of interest. Other potential recommendations for

future research were also noted.

7

Originality/Value/Implications— This is one of the earliest empirical studies of its kind which

directly explores the perceptions of Army officers about distinctions between toxic leaders,

tough bosses, and exceptional leaders in a military context, extending the earlier work of Reed

(2004), Ulmer, Shaler, Bullis, Snodgrass, Brockman, Jacobs, and Funk (2011), and Ulmer

(2012), and others. A better understanding of these distinctions may help the Army identify

toxic leaders earlier so that they can coach them to change or relieve them of command before

the damage to their unit is too great. This additional clarity may also help the Army to identify

and retain tough bosses who coach, mentor, and develop their subordinates while challenging

them to perform at ever higher levels of excellence to accomplish the mission—which is in

everyone’s best interest. Improved clarity about the distinctions is also likely to help ensure that

not all negative or poor leadership is categorized and mis-labeled as “toxic”.

The study also identified several contributing factors that may inadvertently encourage or

promote the use of toxic behaviors as a leadership style. And lastly, the study yielded a number

of recommended actions—both individual and systemic—that may be taken to individually

respond to or organizationally address the problem of toxic leaders.

Keywords: toxic leaders, tough boss, toxic leadership, dark leadership, abusive supervision,

bullying, destructive leadership, negative leadership, intent, bullying, toxicity, self-interest,

abuse of power, personalized power orientation, socialized power orientation, emotional

intelligence, command climate, U.S. Army, constructivist grounded theory

Copyright by Teresa A. Daniel, JD, PhD and Gary S. Metcalf, PhD, February 2015.

All rights reserved.

8

Purpose of the Study

This study was designed to help the Army make better distinctions between toxic leaders who

are abusive, leaders who are simply tough bosses, and exceptional leaders so that toxic leaders

can be identified earlier and coached to change or relieved of command before the damage to

their unit is too great. In addition, the study examined the military environment to determine if

there are characteristics which tend to inadvertently encourage or promote toxic leaders and/or

abusive behaviors. The study also explored the actions—both individual and systemic—that can

be taken to minimize or eliminate toxic leadership. A further intent of the study was to extend to

a military context the earlier work of Daniel (2009a) which examined the distinctions between

tough bosses and workplace bullies in the corporate sector.

Phase 1: Study Design and IRB Approvals

Study Design

Utilizing a qualitative approach, the study was conducted in five key phases:

Phase 1: The research study was conceptualized, designed, and submitted to the relevant

Institutional Review Boards of both Sullivan University and the U.S. Army for

independent review and approval;

Phase 2: A review of the relevant academic and practitioner-oriented literature on the

topic of toxic leadership (with an emphasis on leadership in a military context), plus a

review of Army research about leadership development strategies and leader

effectiveness published within the past three years;

Phase 3: 44 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 officers based at the U.S.

Army Command and General Staff College located in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and 9

officers at-large;

Phase 4: Transcription and analysis of the data; and

Phase 5: Report of the findings and discussion of the results in order to understand the

implications of the findings for the U.S. Army and its officers, as well as scholars,

practitioners, researchers, and other interested professionals.

Research Questions

Much has been written on the topic of toxic leadership and many ways to explain and define it

have been offered; however, recent internal military studies confirm that the term “toxic

leadership” is not consistently understood in the Army (Riley, Hatfield, Freeman, Fallesen, &

Gunther, 2014, p. 56). In addition, there has also been some confusion about whether all negative

leadership behaviors are, in fact, “toxic” (Oberlander, 2013, p. 3-4).

In an effort to explicitly articulate what is acceptable (and expected) leadership and what

behavior crosses the line (and is unacceptable), this study attempts to rectify this gap by

exploring three key research questions:

9

How do U.S. Army officers draw distinctions between a toxic leader whose behavior is

abusive, a tough and demanding boss, and an exceptional leader?

Are there specific characteristics of the military environment that tend to promote toxic

leaders and/or abusive behavior?

What actions—both individual and systemic—can be taken to minimize or eliminate

this type of destructive leadership?

IRB Approvals

Official approval to proceed with the proposed study was granted from the Sullivan University

Institutional Review Board on June 17, 2014 and from the Quality Assurance Officer of the U.S.

Army Command and General Staff College of the U.S. Army on July 15, 2014.

Use of Pronouns

This report uses the masculine pronoun “he” or “him” for purposes of readability. When it

appears, the statement may actually refer to both men and women.

10

Phase 2: Review of the Relevant Literature

Toxic Leadership

General

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (Online) defines the word “toxic” as being poisonous, or

extremely harsh, malicious, or harmful. The term became associated with leadership when

Marcia Whicker first coined the term “toxic leadership” in 1996 as a way to describe a highly

destructive leadership style (Whicker, 1996). Like leadership in general, though, toxic leadership

may be easier to describe than it is to define (Reed, 2004). As a result, a variety of alternative

labels have been used to describe a wide range of similarly destructive behaviors. Many of these

terms are listed in Table 1.

Definitions and Descriptions of Toxic Leadership

It should be noted that nearly three-quarters of the Army’s leaders are viewed positively, as

recently confirmed by the Center for Army Leadership Annual Survey of Army Leadership

(CASAL) Technical Report 2014-01 (Riley, et al., 2014). They work hard to balance the needs of

their subordinates with mission accomplishment. However, there will inevitably be leaders in

every organization who fail to meet the expectations of the role and who are considered by their

subordinates to be “toxic”. The Army is no exception. What is currently known about toxic

leaders, as described in both the military and academic literature, will be discussed next.

Military Literature

The U.S. Army uses the term “toxic leadership” to describe destructive leader behaviors. In

Army Doctrine Publication 6-22, Army Leadership (2012), herein ADP 6-22, the Army defines

toxic leadership as follows:

Toxic leadership is a combination of self-centered attitudes, motivations, and behaviors

that have adverse effects on subordinates, the organization, and mission performance.

This leader lacks concern for others and the climate of the organization, which leads to

short- and long-term negative effects. The toxic leader operates with an inflated sense of

self-worth and from acute self-interest. Toxic leaders consistently use dysfunctional

behaviors to deceive, intimidate, coerce, or unfairly punish others to get what they want

for themselves. The negative leader completes short-term requirements by operating at

the bottom of the continuum of commitment, where followers respond to the positional

power of their leader to fulfill requests. This may achieve results in the short term, but

ignores the other leader competency categories of leads and develops. Prolonged use of

negative leadership to influence followers undermines the followers' will, initiative, and

potential and destroys unit morale.

If one needs a visual example of a toxic leader, then Hollywood has delivered on multiple

occasions, but we will highlight just one. In Stanley Kubrick’s production of Full Metal Jacket,

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman is a classic example of what most people envision when they think of

a toxic leader. In the movie, he served as the training instructor at a U.S. Marine Corp base

during the Vietnam War. He used draconian tactics to turn the recruits into hardened Marines

prepared for combat. In fact, his brutal treatment of them significantly impacted the

11

psychological health of many of the soldiers, leading to his untimely death at the hands of one of

the recruits later in the movie (IMDb, Online).

Similarly, Ulmer (2012, p. 48) describes toxic leaders as:

Individuals whose behavior appears driven by self-centered careerism at the expense of

their subordinates and unit, and whose style is characterized by abusive and dictatorial

behavior that promotes an unhealthy organizational climate.

Ulmer (2012, p. 48) further summarizes other observations about toxic leaders from available

military surveys, interviews, and literature, suggesting this typical profile:

They rarely take blame or share glory;

They are not toxic all the time, or to all people;

They are rarely if ever toxic when in the company of “the boss”;

They sometimes have good ideas and accomplish good things;

They can be charming when the occasion fits;

They are frequently described as extremely bright and hard-working;

They often have a coterie of devoted “fans” who keep appearing on their staffs;

Most have been seen as toxic by subordinates since early in their career; and

Their boss either does not know or pretends not to know, and almost never records,

their abuse of subordinates.

In the Center for Army Leadership Annual Survey of Army Leadership (CASAL) Technical

Report 2011-3 (Steele, 2011), herein referred to as the “2011 CASAL Survey”, the Army

conducted an in-depth analysis on the problem of toxic leadership, describing them as follows:

Toxic leaders work to promote themselves at the expense of their subordinates, and

usually do so without considering long-term ramifications to their subordinates, their

unit, and the Army profession.

In that study, the behaviors considered by the study’s participants to be most toxic included:

Not putting unit needs ahead of their own (22%);

Seen as “a real jerk” (25%);

Do things and behave in a way that is positive for the organization and themselves, but

which are negative for subordinates (18%);

Do things and behave in a way that is negative for the organization, themselves, and

for their subordinates (5%); and

Unit holding honest mistakes against them (21%).

The prevalence of such leadership is disturbingly high. Eighty-three percent of Army leaders

participating in the 2011 CASAL Survey indicate that they have observed one or more leaders

demonstrate negative leadership types of behaviors (e.g., over-controlling, narcissistic, self-

promoting) in the past year, and 17% report having observed five or more of these negative types

of leaders during their professional career.

12

In 2010, the U.S. Army War College surveyed and interviewed 183 officers from four divisions

just returning from deployment in Operation Iraqi Freedom or Operation Enduring Freedom. In

an expansive report titled Leadership Lessons at Division Command Level – 2010: A Review of

Division Commander Leader Behaviors and Organizational Climates in Selected Army Divisions

after Nine Years of War (Ulmer, Shaler, Bullis, Snodgrass, Brockman, Jacobs & Funk, 2011),

they describe toxic leaders as:

. . . self-serving, arrogant, volatile, and opinionated to the point of being organizationally

dysfunctional. Most of the identified “toxics” were described as very persuasive,

responsive, and accommodating to their seniors. The common view was that (a) there are

fewer of them in the ranks of Colonel and General now than in some undetermined point

known as “the past;” and (b) that they are still with us in all ranks from Captain to

General. Opinions vary on the degree of damage these small numbers inflict on the

institution, but all agree it is not insignificant (p. 44).

Similarly, in results from a study conducted at the Command and General Staff College in 2009,

Reed and Olsen (2010) confirm that common toxic behaviors include: having an arrogant or

superior attitude, unreasonably holding subordinates accountable for matters beyond their

control, wanting things done his way or no way, valuing his or her career over the good of the

organization, losing his or her temper, and ignoring required counseling activities. However, as

Reed (2014) further explains:

Just because a supervisor has a bad day and barks at a subordinate does not necessarily

mean that he or she is toxic. The pattern of behavior over time as perceived by

subordinates and the cumulative impact on organizational climate and effectiveness tell

the tale.

Doty and Fenlason (2013) describe toxic leaders as selfish individuals who destroy the morale of

their subordinates and units. They suggest that these leaders may possess high levels of

narcissism which makes them more likely to disregard the needs of others when seeking to

achieve their goals. It may also contribute to their higher feelings of concern about their own

prestige, power, and need to get ahead of others (Krasikova, Green, & LeBreton, 2013).

Williams (2005) conducted a comprehensive literature review and concludes that toxic leaders

possess at least one or more of these personal characteristics: incompetence, malfunctioning,

maladjusted, sense of inadequacy, malcontent, irresponsible, amoral, possess cowardice,

insatiable ambition, egotism, arrogance, selfish values, avarice and greed, lack of integrity,

deception, malevolence, maliciousness, and malfeasance (p. 9-13).

Unfortunately, the problem is not a new one. George Reed (2004) was writing on the topic nearly

a decade ago, describing toxic leaders as individuals who:

. . . are focused on visible short-term mission accomplishment . . . provide superiors with

impressive, articulate presentations and enthusiastic responses to missions . . . but they

are unconcerned about, or oblivious to, staff or troop morale and/or climate . . . [and] are

seen by the majority of subordinates as arrogant, self-serving, inflexible and petty.

13

He explains that the three key elements of what he refers to as “the toxic leader syndrome”

include:

An apparent lack of concern for the well-being of subordinates;

A personality or interpersonal technique that negatively affects organizational climate;

and

A conviction by subordinates that the leader is motivated primarily by self-interest.

Reed clarifies his description of toxic leaders by further explaining what it is and, importantly,

what it is not:

A loud, decisive, demanding leader is not necessarily toxic. A leader with a soft voice

and façade of sincerity can also be toxic. In the end, it is not one specific behavior that

deems one toxic; it is the cumulative effect of de-motivational behavior on unit morale

and climate over time that tells the tale [emphasis added]. Toxic leaders might be highly

competent and effective in a short-sighted sense, but they contribute to an unhealthy

command climate with ramifications extending far beyond their tenure.

Even earlier, Stanley Reed profiled the issue in a book published in 1993 titled The Toxic

Executive (Reed, 1993) wherein he defines toxic leaders as:

. . . those who abuse the power they wield, particularly over subordinates, to serve and

satisfy personal needs (which are usually inconsistent with the organization’s goals).

Academic Literature

In addition to studies about toxic leaders in the military context, considerable work has also been

done in the social, behavioral, and cognitive sciences as well (e.g. Padilla, Hogan, & Kaiser,

2007; Lipman-Blumen, 2005: Kellerman, 2004, just to name a few of the luminaries in the field).

Lipman-Blumen (2005) suggests that leaders are toxic:

. . . when they inflict serious and enduring harm on their followers by using influence

tactics that are extremely harsh and/or malicious. In short, toxic leaders exhibit

destructive behaviors that work to decay their followers’ morale, motivation, and self-

esteem.

She reports that toxic leaders utilize a range of destructive behaviors from undermining,

demeaning, marginalizing, intimidating, demoralizing, and disenfranchising followers, to

“incapacitating, imprisoning, terrorizing, torturing, or killing others, including members of their

entourage” (p. 19). She further clarifies her views by explaining:

To count as toxic, these behaviors and qualities of character must inflict some reasonably

serious and enduring harm on their followers and their organizations. The intent to harm

others or to enhance the self at the expense of others distinguishes seriously toxic leaders

from the careless or unintentional toxic leaders (2005, p. 18).

14

The description suggested by Ashforth (1994) of the petty tyrant fits the general description of

toxic leaders described in the military literature:

They are unconcerned about, or oblivious to staff or troop morale and/or climate. They

are seen by the majority of subordinates as arrogant, self-serving, inflexible, and petty.

Sutton (2007) suggests that two key elements must be considered in the determination of whether

an individual is “toxic”: (1) after talking with the individual, does the “target” feel oppressed,

humiliated, de-energized or belittled by the person?; and (2) does the alleged negative leader aim

his venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those who are more powerful? (p. 9).

The first element assesses the effect of the leader on others, while the second element reflects

Sutton’s “kiss up and kick down” concept. By this, he means that a negative leader will work

hard to make a positive impression on his superior regardless of the impact on his people (p. 9).

Pelletier (2010) identifies several dimensions of leader toxicity. These include: leader breakdown

of subordinate self-esteem, threats to job and /or personal security, promoting a culture of

inequity, intimidating employees both physically and mentally, and a lack of honesty. Whicker

(1996) describes toxic leaders as:

. . . maladjusted, malcontent, and often malevolent, even malicious. They succeed by

tearing others down. They glory in turf protection, fighting and controlling rather than

uplifting followers (p. 11).

While using the term “bad leadership” to describe the behaviors often deemed by others to be

“toxic”, Kellerman (2004) proposes a typology that includes seven groups of behaviors::

“incompetent, rigid, intemperate, callous, corrupt, insular, and evil” (p. 38). She suggests that the

first three types of bad leadership are bad as in ineffective, while the remaining groups are bad as

in unethical (p. 39). Kellerman further suggests that a leader who has an excessive need for

power is likely toxic and that “in its more extreme form, a craving for power can be dangerous”

(p. 20).

Other persistent behaviors of a toxic leader include, among others: avoiding subordinates,

behaving aggressively toward others, blaming others for their own problems, being overly

critical of work that is done well, and intimidating and humiliating others (e.g. Ashforth, 1994;

Kellerman, 2004; Lipman-Blumen, 2005; Daniel, 2009a).

Prevalence of Toxic Leaders

In the 2011 CASAL Survey—the largest scientific survey specifically focused on the topic—one

in five (20%) Army leaders confirmed that their immediate superior demonstrates toxic

leadership behavior (Steele, 2011). To be fair, though, almost all (97%) had also observed an

extraordinary leader in the past year but 42% of the participating leaders still classified the

problem as “severe”.

By any measure, these results suggest that the Army has a serious problem given the potentially

devastating effects that such a high percentage of toxic senior leaders could have on mission

accomplishment and the overall well-being and retention of soldiers. There is a bright spot in the

15

military literature, though. Senior officers report experiencing less negative behaviors from their

superiors. As a result, the experience with leader toxicity seems to decrease as one’s rank and

length of services increases (Riley, et al., 2014; Reed & Olsen, 2010).

Use of Power— Personalized vs Socialized

At its core, leadership is about power and influence which leaders use to get things done. While

there are numerous types of power, our interest focuses on the theory espoused by McClelland

(1975). He suggests that there are two primary forms of power: personalized power—that is,

power used for advancing personal gain and influence, and socialized power—when the leader’s

power is used for the benefit of others.

With personalized power, the view is selfish and a leader typically achieves short-term results

based on self-interest. Common behaviors include: being rude and overbearing, exploitative,

dominant, risk, defensive, impulsive, and erratic. It has been theorized that a personalized power

orientation might drive people toward occupations promoting aggressive strategy and forceful

action—like the military (Magee & Langner, 2008).

With socialized power, the leader’s view is primarily focused on others, is longer-term in focus,

and empowers others to achieve collective goals. Common behaviors include: collaborative, non-

defensive, develops people, and being a source of strength to people and the organization which

he serves. These two forms of power are not mutually exclusive. A leader can use his power to

benefit others, but can also gain personally. The real distinction is that when personalized power

dominates, the leader gains—most often at the expense of his subordinates.

Toxic leaders appear to be characterized by a personalized power orientation given their general

need for control and their excessive self-interest (Padilla, et al., 2007). They are willing to work

long hours to gain support and to achieve their goals—at the expense of the organization and

their subordinates (Padilla, et al., 2007; Schilling, 2009; Williams, 2005). In the extreme, toxic

leaders can become “intoxicated” by power and even engage in wrong-doing simply because

they can—and because they feel confident that they can get away with it.

Impact of a Conducive Environment

A conducive environment can contribute to a toxic command climate (Padilla, et al., 2007). Key

factors which enable a toxic leader to thrive include: instability, perceived threat, cultural values,

and the absence of checks and balances (Padilla, et al., 2007). War is most definitely a time of

instability that includes a real threat. Not surprisingly, war time is a particularly stressful time for

people in the military and a leader’s style can quickly become more authoritative (Doriane &

Manon, 2013) which may serve to strengthen the perception of the leader’s power even more.

This is often a time when a leader’s potential for toxicity may be first exposed.

The hierarchical structure of the Army may also be a contributing factor. Senior leaders have

almost total control over their units without many checks and balances, and this latitude is

expanded even further in a combat situation (Aubrey, 2012; Padilla, et al., 2007). Army Values

also heavily emphasize subordinate cooperation and loyalty (Padilla, et al., 2007; Reed, 2004),

making subordinates unlikely to question the leader’s power and authority or to report

irregularities. In addition, the Army’s intense focus on the achievement of mission results (more

16

than soldier development and human relationships) may also contribute to the emergence of

toxic leaders (Aubrey, 2012).

Leaders in all organizations have many temptations due to their privileged access to power,

influence, and resources—and the military is no exception. Daniel (2013a) notes that senior

leaders have many temptations due to their privileged access and decreasing checks and balances

as they move up the organization. As a result, highly intelligent people can be seduced into

taking more risks and making poor decisions as their ego becomes ever more inflated due to their

organizational success. This combination of factors can lead to an individual’s sense of

entitlement that they are “special” and exempt from the rules that they apply to others.

Similarly, Kipnis, Castell, Gergen, and Mauch (1976) argue that the acquisition and successful

use of power tends to corrupt the power holder in several respects: (1) power becomes an end in

itself; (2) the power holder develops an inflated sense of self-worth; (3) power is used

increasingly for personal, rather than organizational purposes; and (4) the power holder de-

values the worth of others. In addition, they may attribute the successes of their subordinates to

themselves, prefer greater psychological distance from them, and view them as objects to be

manipulated.

Consequences of Toxic Leadership

Toxic leaders invariably leave their organization in far worse shape than when they started

(Ashforth, 1997; Lipman-Blumen, 2005; Kellerman, 2004). The cost is quite high for allowing

toxic leaders to operate without consequences. Under the worst case scenario, toxic leadership

can lead to mutiny and death (Haslam, Reicher, & Paltow, 2010). Additional outcomes include

an erosion of trust, reduced unit effectiveness, commitment, and retention, break-downs in

essential communication, and diminished follower well-being (Ashforth, 1997; Duffy, Ganster,

& Pagon, 2002; Steele, 2011). Toxic leaders can also destroy a unit’s cohesiveness which can be

devastating in a combat situation.

According to the most recent findings of the Army’s annual leadership survey, the Center for

Army Leadership Annual Survey of Army Leadership (CASAL): Main Findings Technical Report

2014-01 (Riley, et al., 2014):

The presence of negative leadership behaviors is associated with adverse effects on unit

cohesion, unit discipline, and the level of trust among members of units and organizations

(p. 62).

Leaders who demonstrate a combination of negative behaviors have similar detrimental

effects on subordinate outcomes which include adverse effects on work quality,

motivation and commitment to the Army, and lower levels of morale (p. 63).

According to the American Institute of Stress (2014), workplace stress (the reaction experienced

by many under the command of a toxic leader) costs organizations over $300 billion annually in

lost productivity due to absenteeism, turnover, workers’ compensation claims, and increases in

healthcare expenditures.

Moreover, suicides have also been speculatively linked to the damaging impact of toxic leaders.

The Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Service Members (2014) recently reported a rise

17

in suicide deaths from 2004 to 2009. These increases are observed in currently and previously

deployed soldiers, but also among soldiers never deployed. Increased stress and anxiety about

their own personal safety, as well as concerns about how the toxic leader can impact their life

and career, are seen as contributing causes.

Researchers are studying linkages between the attempted or committed suicides of nearly 30

soldiers in Iraq and how working for a toxic leader may have played a role in their actions

(Zwerdling, 2014). While the evidence of those studies did not show that the toxic leaders of the

soldiers caused them to attempt or commit suicide, interviews with friends and family of the

soldiers confirmed their perception that a toxic leader had been a factor in the soldier’s decision

to take such drastic action. Dr. Dave Matsuda, who was commissioned by the Army to study the

high suicide rate, provides a painful example of the experience:

Oftentimes platoon leaders will take turns seeing who can smoke this guy the worst.

Seeing who can dream up the worst torture, seeing who can dream up the worst duties,

seeing who can make this guy’s life the most miserable (as reported in Chamorro-

Premuzic, 2014).

Numerous other studies suggest that additional consequences include lower retention rates,

domestic violence, absenteeism, increased alcohol consumption and drug use, lack of

productivity, lower levels of job satisfaction, and reductions in motivation (Reed & Bullis,

2009).

Possible Reasons Toxic Leadership is Tolerated and/or Inadvertently Rewarded

If the consequence of their destructive behavior is so bad, a reasonable question to ask is this:

how is it that toxic leaders get promoted and/or remain in positions of leadership? Simply put,

they get results. Williams (2005) aptly explains it this way:

Toxic leadership exists in the U.S. Army and the Army seems to tolerate it. Perhaps the

most obvious reason, albeit disturbing, is that toxic leaders seem to get the job done, at

least in the short-term. The harsher toxic leaders who bear traits the Army values such as

rigid, controlling, enforcing, and confident, but take them to the extreme, will find more

success. Their supervisors are either oblivious to the toxic behavior or, more likely, they

are so satisfied with the results in terms of mission accomplishment that they choose to

overlook the human cost of getting the job done [Emphasis added].

Ulmer (2012) provides further elaboration on the likely reasons that toxic leaders can exist for so

long without consequence:

As a culture we value cooperation, loyalty and respect for authority. We honor a “can-do”

attitude. We build unit pride and are uncomfortable with malcontents. We rightly prize

mission accomplishment . . . . Subordinates are reluctant to identify their boss as toxic.

They feel a loyalty and do not want to embarrass their unit. They want to “survive”

themselves and not be written off as troublemakers. In addition, it takes a very strong and

perceptive boss to identify a subordinate as toxic and take action.

Reed (2004) similarly notes that:

18

Perhaps there is something about military culture combined with various personnel

policies that contributes to suffering such leaders in silence. After all, soldiers want to be

proud of their units, and the Army value of loyalty militates against airing dirty laundry.

Subordinates might not report toxic leaders because nobody likes a whiner. We expect

professionals to perform the best of their ability despite a supervisor’s leadership style.

Ulmer (1998, p. 141) further explains why:

The Army does not enforce guidelines about leadership style except at the extreme edge

of the acceptable behavior envelope. Our monitoring system reacts promptly to selected

misbehaviors such as driving under the influence or misusing a government sedan. But

our sensors and mechanisms for responding to arrogant, abusive leaders who have not

created a public spectacle are less well developed. Perhaps reluctance to inhibit

subordinate initiative has prevented the required surveillance of leadership techniques.

No doubt the lack of reliable information about the prevailing relationships between

senior and subordinate one or two levels down the chain of command has precluded

timely interventions by senior officers whose keen interest in good leadership is

unquestioned. Whatever the cause, the dearth of practical guidelines and, more important,

the lack of systematic monitoring, permit a potentially unhealthy range of leader

behaviors. Nonproductive behaviors may be seen by peers and subordinates as

institutionally acceptable if not condoned.

Moreover, toxic leaders bring credit to their senior leaders due to their high achievement. As a

result, their commander often looks the other way, leading to a “sociopathic [leadership] model”

where bad behavior is encouraged, replicated, and rewarded (Reed, 2004). Reed and Olsen

(2010, p. 60) summarize the overall situation succinctly:

Toxic personalities exist in organizations because people tolerate them, change to

accommodate them, or protect them.

The bottom line is that the resulting damage to the organization’s culture and climate caused by

the toxic leader may last for many years—long after the person has moved on.

Tough Bosses and Workplace Bullies

Academic Literature

Daniel (2009a) was the first study in the corporate sector to make a distinction between a tough

boss and an individual perceived to be a workplace bully (anecdotally believed to be closely

aligned with the Army’s concept of a “toxic leader”). Participants in that study were clearly able

to delineate and vividly describe the differences.

Perceptions of a Workplace Bully

Workplace bullies were identified by the following characteristics: (1) frequent misuse of power

and authority; (2) focus on personal self-interest, as opposed to the good of the organization; (3)

prone to emotional outbursts; and (4) often inconsistent and unfair in their treatment of

employees.

19

Workplace bullies engage in behaviors at work that are perceived by their subordinates as

overwhelmingly negative, including a need for control, exploitation, intimidation, threats,

humiliation and embarrassment, a failure to communicate, manipulation, engaging in a pattern of

obstructive behavior over time, ostracizing and ignoring employees, and gossiping or spreading

rumors about their targets. Participants also suggested that the corporate bully operates with

“malice”, suggesting that it is an intentional form of abusive behavior (Daniel, 2009a).

Perceptions of a Tough Boss

On the other hand, participants described tough bosses quite differently. Although they were not

always perceived as easy to work for, they were viewed as: (1) objective, fair and professional;

(2) self-controlled and unemotional; (3) performance-focused—insistent upon meeting high

standards and holding employees accountable for meeting those expectations; and (4)

organizationally oriented—consistently operating to achieve the best interests of their company.

Importantly, the actions of a tough boss were perceived by subordinates to be overwhelmingly

positive, engaging frequently in these types of actions: highly interactive, use frequent two-way

communication and really listen to their employees, and mentor subordinates through coaching,

counseling and frequent performance feedback. As a result, subordinates indicated feeling a great

deal of respect and loyalty to such leaders, viewing them as being both "tough but fair" and

strongly focused on the long-term best interests of both their people and the organization

(Daniel, 2009a).

Military Literature

Most discussions about abusive workplace conduct in the corporate sector focus on “workplace

bullying”. Alternatively, the military has emphasized the concept of “toxic leadership” as the

preferred umbrella term for similar forms of abusive and destructive behavior at work.

We have been unable to identify any prior studies comparing toxic leaders with tough bosses

with one exception. In a significant study titled Leadership Lessons at Division Command Level

– 2010: A Review of Division Commander Leader Behaviors and Organizational Climates in

Selected Army Divisions after Nine Years of War (Ulmer, et al., 2011), participants were able to

make a clear and discernible distinction between tough bosses and toxic leaders (similar to the

distinctions found earlier in the corporate sector). They describe toxic leaders as follows:

By “toxic,” it seemed clear that officers were not describing the “tough but fair,” or even

the “over-supervisor,” or the “not really good with people,” or even the “rarely takes

tactical initiative”. Toxic officers generally were viewed as self-serving, arrogant,

volatile, and opinionated to the point of being organizationally dysfunctional.

Importantly, the report made further distinctions as follows:

. . . an assessment of a leader as inferior or even unsatisfactory based on decision-making

inadequacies, clumsy interpersonal skills or lack of drive did not automatically label him

as toxic. It is also possible to “make tough, sound decisions on time,” “see the big picture

[and] provide context and perspective,” and “get out of the headquarters and visit the

troops” . . . and still be conspicuously toxic as judged by a majority of subordinates (p.

44).

20

Phase 3: Research Methodology

Use of a Grounded Theory Method

While a detailed summary of the study’s research design is included in Appendix I. This section

will simply provide a brief overview of the highlights of how we went about the study. We used

a qualitative strategy of inquiry based on a grounded theory methodology. With this method,

theory is inductively derived and emerges from, and is grounded in, the experiences of those

living the phenomenon of interest (Glaser & Strauss, 2009; Glaser, 1978; Strauss, 1987; Strauss

& Corbin, 1990). What this means is that the theory is discovered, developed, and provisionally

verified through systematic data collection and analysis of data pertaining to that phenomenon

(Strauss & Corbin, 1990, 1994, 1998).

Grounded theory was selected because it is a method “which helps researchers understand

complex social processes”. Its use is strongly advocated for leadership research (e.g., Conger &

Toegel, 2002; Parry, 1998). It is also a useful method of inquiry when exploring relatively new

concepts in more depth (Suddaby, 2006; Conger, 1998).

Data Collection

A series of semi-structured interviews with forty-four (44) officers of the U.S. Army were

conducted during the summer and fall of 2014. Thirty-two (32) of the interviews took place in

person with active duty officers attending the Command and General Staff College (CGSC)

located in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Three (3) additional interviews with the CGSC group were

scheduled immediately following the site visit and took place by telephone. Nine (9) additional

at-large interviews of officers meeting the sample criteria were conducted by telephone. The size

of the sample and the methods of data collection appear suitable for drawing relevant

conclusions and recommendations (Creswell, 1998, p. 64; Charmaz, 2006, p. 114; Morse, 1994,

p. 225).

Fourteen (14) questions were used as prompts in an effort to help guide participants through the

primary research questions (see Appendix II). Each interview lasted approximately one hour

and was tape-recorded after receiving informed consent and demographic information from each

participant. The audio files were transcribed verbatim by a professional transcriptionist who had

previously signed a confidentiality agreement. The audio files resulted in written transcripts

consisting of 464 single-spaced pages, 266,537 words and 20,405 lines of data included for

coding and analysis.

Participant Demographics

Table 2 shows the available comparisons of the study’s participants based on gender, race, age,

marital status, highest educational level, years of military experience, current or last rank, current

duty status, and whether or not they had experienced combat duty. 86.4%% of the study’s

participants were Active Duty, and they were overwhelmingly male (95.5%) and Caucasian

(86.4%). Nearly three-quarters of the officers were married (72.7%) and they were impressively

educated with 47.7% having earned a bachelor’s degree and 52.3% having attained a graduate

degree. Most of the participants held the rank of Major (72.7%) and 84.1% of them had 10-19

years of service. They were a highly experienced group with 86.4% of them having served in

combat. Notably, nearly half of them (47.7%) had served in two wars and 6.8% had served in

three wars.

21

Data Analysis

The analysis, interpretations, and conclusions about the data were conducted in accord with the

constructivist, grounded theory methodology outlined by Charmaz (2006), using constant

comparative analysis. Open and axial coding was utilized to generate and link categories, while

theoretical coding was used to integrate and refine the categories. It is through the theoretical

coding process that the theory and conceptual model formed to explain the phenomena under

review. As a result, there was a cyclic interplay between data collection, analysis, and theory

building (Parry, 1998).

22

Phase 4: Analysis of the Background Question Data

Prevalence of Toxic Leaders

Of the 44 officers participating in this study, forty (91%) reported that they had either personally

worked with or observed a toxic leader at some point in their career. This result was significantly

higher than the 20% prevalence rate reported previously in the 2011 CASAL Survey (Steele,

2011). Several officers report experiences with more than one toxic leader, and one of them

reports dealing with as many as eight different toxic leaders in his career to-date. Only three of

the officers (6.8%) had not worked with or observed a toxic leader, and one participant elected

not to respond to the question (2.3%).

Prevalence of Exceptional Leaders

The participants were unanimous (100%) in their ability to identify one or more leaders who they

believe to be exceptional. One of the participants was even able to describe eight exceptional

leaders that he had worked for or personally observed. This finding is consistent with the 97%

prevalence rate of great leaders earlier reported by Steele (2011).

Promotion of Leaders Widely Perceived to be Toxic by Subordinates

Thirty-two of the officers (72.7%) had witnessed an individual being promoted to a position of

increased responsibility despite being widely perceived by subordinates to be a toxic leader. This

result suggests that senior officers are either unaware of or ambivalent to the toxic leadership

style exhibited by the individual receiving the promotion.

I do believe I have seen some individuals where I've been like ‘oh my God, I can't believe

he got promoted’ and some of them are Lieutenant Colonels and Colonels now. I'm really

shocked because some of them were individuals that got fired from every position.

However, because they didn’t get relieved, they were released. They were also provided a

good OER because nobody wanted the issues from IG about a bad report card because

people failed to counsel and do what they were supposed to do. As a result, those

individuals are moving up.

Consideration of Early Departure from the Army

A total of 31 officers (70.4%) said they had given an early departure from the Army serious

consideration due to their personal experience with a toxic leader, and several of the participants

had actually had resigned or retired in direct response to a bad experience. This finding is

slightly higher than the 61% response to a similar question as reported in an earlier study by

Reed and Olsen (2010).

You know I actually thought about that... I realized that this guy was a jerk, he was a

bully. If he had been my first experience, it probably would have persuaded me to get out.

I would have been like, “yeah, this isn't what I signed up for, I'm a grown man. I don’t

need to be treated like I have no opinion. I'm not a robot”.

When I came on board, 9 out of 12 civilian personnel were actively seeking new

employment as a result of him [the toxic leader].

I was one of those guys who always wanted to be in the military. It's the only thing I've

ever wanted to do. I always believed I was going to do it as a career and within 6 months

23

of getting to my very first unit as a Lieutenant, I was actually typing up a letter of

resignation.

They left because they said “If this is how this organization rewards this behavior [toxic

leadership], it's not an organization I want to be a part of. Because he looks at this guy

[the toxic leader], and he’s saying: This is success? This is a second command position

for him. Apparently our organization thinks he is doing well. If this is okay in this

organization, it's not one I want to be a part of. So we had those four Captains getting out

and then one of our Majors getting out. That’s a lot of talent [leaving] . . . These are all

Special Forces officers that have said “I'm not doing this anymore” and I would like to

believe that these are high caliber people. When you look at it from the perspective of

these people all being from the same group, four Captains in one company and one

Major is almost an entire company of officers in a Special Forces battalion. That

company has six Captains and a Major and we just lost.

Usefulness of Toxic Behaviors

Thirty of the participants (68.2%) indicate that the use of toxic behaviors is never useful or

positive.

I don’t think [the use of toxic leadership behaviors] are ever appropriate . . . you can be

a tough leader and have high expectations and still not be toxic. So I think you can still

accomplish results not using toxic methods. There is a time to be direct and say ‘This

needs to be done’. . . ‘You know, gentlemen, we’ve got to execute’ . . . but it doesn’t have

to be belittling or insulting or unethical in the process. You can still do all that and

accomplish the mission and be tough.

What happened in my experience is we all bonded together at the lower levels to hold

together and wait him out. In doing that, we actually had better unit cohesion because we

were all united against that guy but determined to still be successful.

Interestingly, though, fourteen of the officers (31.8%) suggest that the use of toxic-like behaviors

might be effective and necessary in certain limited situations.

I think that if there's something you’ve got to get done and you’ve got to get it done right

now, yeah sure, that toxic leader can get it done. But I think the long term effect of that

small objective that you accomplished will be much worse.

The only time I think it [toxic behaviors] might be useful is ‘if you have to manhandle

someone to save their life, put their head down, or something like that . . .

24

Phase 5: Analysis of the Primary Data and Discussion of the Results

The study was primarily designed to explore three key research questions. Each question is

noted, along with the relevant findings from the study.

(1) How do U.S. Army officers draw distinctions between a toxic leader whose behavior is

abusive, a tough and demanding boss, and an exceptional leader?

The officers interviewed for this study were able to make a clear and discernible distinction

between tough and toxic, confirming the earlier findings of an extensive study by the U.S. Army

War College (Ulmer, et al., 2011). They were also able to clearly identify the qualities of a

leader who was exceptional. Table 3 provides a composite side-by-side comparison. Each type

of leader is discussed in more detail below.

How Officers Describe Toxic Leaders

The composite picture that these officers paint of a toxic leader is fairly bleak as further

described in Table 4. They describe toxic leaders as:

Excessively concerned about self (e.g. promoting themselves at the expense of the

organization, working the system to maximize personal advantage, taking credit for the

work of others);

Lacking care and concern for their subordinates (e.g. not interested in getting to know

soldiers as people, abusive and malicious personal attacks, failure to engage in

mentoring, coaching, or development, infrequent communication, transactional view of

soldiers, creation of in and out groups);

Having low emotional intelligence (e.g. frequent emotional outbursts, lack of self-

awareness, failure to listen, low empathy, and develops climate of fear); and

Achieving results with a short-term emphasis (but with no regard for how those results

are obtained or the impact on people), leading to a negative command climate.

Toxic leaders often set out to accomplish Army objectives (or try to appear that they are doing

so) in the short-term, but at the expense of their subordinates and usually without considering the

long-term impact of their actions (Steele, 2011). They typically obtain results not through—but

at the cost of their soldiers (Ashforth, 1994, Tepper, 2000). Overwhelmingly, participants

suggest that the actions and motives of toxic leaders are consumed by excessive self-interest.

He was pretty deceitful. You know when leaders would come to visit he would tell them

things that we knew weren’t exactly true. It was always designed to make him look good

and not necessarily us. You know it was always designed to make himself look good.

…their whole command time revolves about “what's best for me? What can I get out of

this? How can I line my pockets? How can I increase my retirement? How can I increase

the benefits that come to me?” . . . To me, that's a toxic leader.

As you go higher, a lot of people move from selfless service to self-serving. [Their

attitude is like “I'm entitled to this” and you can see it in the way we travel. Some leaders

want the best rooms. God forbid they have to sleep in a Motel 6 for a conference or

something—that's unacceptable. They want a Sheraton or a Hilton or something [that is]

25

the highest class in the big city. [Their attitude is]” why should I have to share my rental

car with anybody else?” I want to go where I want to go.

What is the intent of this leader? Is it to get promoted or is it to make this organization

better? Is it to make us operate as efficiently and effectively as possible? If your

intentions are for personal gain I think you’re toxic. I think I used to have a saying in my

last organization and I said ‘you can't be in a leadership position and be concerned

about promotion at the same time’.

I've had some tough leaders who have been hard on me but I think it's always been about

intentions. If you're hard on me because you want me to be better or you want to make

your organization better I'm all for it. Salute smartly and let's go, you know. If you're

hard on me because you're picking on me because I'm the fat guy in the crowd or I'm the

guy you think might be homosexual or I'm the guy…that's different… When intentions

become more about how can we make you look better than how can you develop that

whole organization that’s how I differentiate [whether] you have the best interest of the

soldier at heart when you make a decision. If not, I think you’re toxic. I think if you’re not

taking people into consideration. You don’t have to yell, cuss and fuss at people to be

toxic. I think the lack of concern for people makes you toxic. I think when you become so

concerned with self that you disregard the greater good, I think you're toxic.

I think that they get lost in the position in their situation and give in to this temptation

and pride. I think that they just do not know how to differentiate between being tough and

being toxic. When we follow leaders to do our patriotic duties, pride can be a good thing.

We know that in the military. We have a lot of pride in what we do and that’s fine, that’s

great. But I think people can give in to the other side of pride—the negative side of

pride— where it’s all self-centered and all self-focused.

While their shortcomings are generally well-known to the soldiers in their unit, they are often

quite responsive to and well regarded by their more senior colleagues—often referred to as the

“kiss up and kick down approach” (Sutton, 2007). They are widely regarded as self-promoting,

and often take credit for the actions of others.

For the most part, the toxic guys I’ve experienced were pretty smart about it. They knew

their audiences; they knew where their scope of control was so it was almost a Dr. Jekyll,

Mr. Hyde type of relationship with a lot of them. When they were around a superior or

anyone who could have any sort of votes on them, they were very respectful. They knew

all the right answers, and would be calm and approachable. And then they would go back

down to people who were beneath them and just let loose fire.

We used to joke that this guy [the toxic leader] thinks we’re doing things because of him

but everything that’s happening is happening in spite of him and he has no idea . . .And

what’s frustrating is that this individual just made below the zone forward Colonel, so he

has been rewarded every step of the way. He’s left a trail of tears behind him because his

bosses always think that he’s phenomenal because he produces such good results (and to

be fair, he is very competent individual). But they don’t realize that he destroys everyone

below him. . .

26

. . . that's kind of how those people work. Everybody at their level or higher just thinks

they're a charming, hard working person. Then people underneath them just think they're

the devil and wonder: “what do they see in him? Why do they like him? Why do they

promote him and give him good evaluations?” He's horrible but that's their [the toxic

leader’s] modus operandi. I think they kick butt and they work their people hard and then

take the credit for it.

Toxic leaders tend to act aggressively toward their subordinates, are highly critical, demand

almost blind loyalty, blame others, are threatening, and often seek to intimidate—through both

verbal and physical attacks, plus explosive and emotional outbursts.

Another one of his traits is he would explode at the team. So, we’d be in a meeting and

the meeting would be going along quite fine and then he’d bring up a subject and you

could see him continue to get madder as he starts talking about this subject. And then he

starts yelling at the team and then telling us we’re all going to get fired and he’ll kick us

out of the Army today which we all thought was kind of comical because you know we

knew he couldn’t do that but he was still trying to intimidate us to be loyal to him. He

demanded our loyalty saying things like ‘You have to be loyal to me’. ‘if you’re not loyal

to me then you know I don’t want you in my Army’. So he encouraged us to be supportive

of him over what we might consider to be the better interest of the actual military.

He had a reputation of being a massive hothead. He would scream at everybody. He

never had an even keel, he always had an extreme reaction to everything . . . he would

tear you apart. He always resorted to personal insults and was never professional. So,

the one thing I’ll say about him is that he was extremely consistent. He did treat everyone

the same way—like crap.

We all felt demoralized and just kind of beaten down—like a beaten dog.

Toxic leaders also frequently engage in vindictive, threatening, and mean-spirited public

diatribes intended to demean or undermine people in their command.

If I were a civilian and came across him in that world, I would have put him on the

ground [meaning to hit him], but you have to respect that rank and you have to hold your

composure. But for somebody to make you that mad—just by his arrogance, cockiness,

narcissism— is pretty extreme. Another favorite word for him was bipolar. He was

certifiable.

[Thinking about a leader who issued out an Article 15 to a field-grade NCO over an

incident] . . . the guy demoralized him, bullied him, hazed him and to the point that there

was just nothing left of this NCO. What ended up happening is that after he gave him that

Article 15, the soldier left and about an hour or two later committed suicide.

There's nothing wrong with being tough . . . establishing clear standards. The Army’s

great [about that]. You're given a bunch of standards to operate off of, hey got it, do it,

too easy, if I step outside those boundaries, by all means, I will take a correction. I will

even take a correction in the form of expletives . . . absolutely. Because sometimes when

you deviate from standard, it is that serious. But for minuscule stuff, just for your own

27

enjoyment, just to see somebody get nuked and know that they can't do anything back to

you because of your rank, that's toxic.

It’s those kinds of leaders that usually belittle people in public and if you get to know that

leader, you find they’ve got some significant self-esteem problems. They feel they have to

one up everybody. They're threatening and, in some cases, it got so bad in my first

combat tour of Desert Storm that we had to take all the ammunition from our guards

because our Battalion Commander was the most evil man I had ever met and people were

going to kill him. So usually those kind of people that demean and demoralize and/or

don’t communicate whatsoever are the ones that create that kind of [negative]

environment.

He had this chip on his shoulder that said he had to be in charge and everyone had to

know it. Everyone had to respect him… All you had to say was he might show up and

people started freaking out. He completely interfered with the mission, completely

interfered with everything . . .I understand that the guy had standards but no one cared

about the standards—they just cared about getting through the meeting so he would go

away…because it didn’t matter how well you did, you were going to get blasted anyway.

I think when they cross the line is when it's personal in nature. When people are vulgar

and demeaning and insulting, and I think when people become too mission focused that

they take the people element out, it leads to some toxicity in their leadership. When they

become bigger than the organization and, in their eyes, they are the representation; like

this organization’s success and failures directly correlated to them. When they provide

feedback and in the feedback it's about I and me and what they can do for you,

and…when they personalize that, I think a lot of times… you know egotistical, egomaniac

kind of and their focus is really not on the development of you or the betterment of you.

It's really the betterment of themselves.

Toxic leaders often act as if the rules that apply to others do not apply to themselves.

My last boss specifically he crossed a lot of lines of what…we consider to be acceptable.

He felt he was above the rule. So when it came to like the basics like taking the Army

physical fitness test, instead of taking it he would just sign off on his piece of paper, give

it to his NCO, say “sign this”, and that was his test - so obviously an ethical violation. It

was in a deployed environment so we weren’t permitted to drink there—yet he still drank.

He had a girlfriend that was you know on the “local economy”. If there was a rule that

could be broken, he would break it. I thought he was the worst person I've ever worked

for.

[The attitude of the toxic leader is that] “I have the rank. I have the position. I can do

what I want and I dare you to go tell someone”.

They also tend to be highly controlling and impersonal with soldiers which results in a highly

transactional and one-way relationship. In addition, they are often brutal and de-humanizing to

the men and women under their command, regarding them just as expendable tools in their

efforts to achieve the mission:

28

We spent all day several days running back and forth and counting containers and

writing down serial numbers … and specifically one day after 21-22:00 hours we were

literally exhausted and he wanted me to continue working. I gave him another two hours

until 12:00 at night and at quarter ‘til 9 he tells me that he wants me to do express with a

serial number on the containers that we had received, only one problem by that time I

was seeing double already. So no way I could actually do an accurate job of writing

down serial numbers after working continuously from 5 o’clock in the morning until 12

o’clock at night. If we were working in a regular environment [meaning 70, 80, 85

degrees], that’s no problem . . . but it was over 120 degrees.

He was not interested in the well-being of those soldiers because they did not affect him.

He didn’t even know the names of the people in his organization.

044:[When working for a toxic leader], you’re so overwhelmed by the stress that they

create and the lack of satisfaction in your job that you just forget about the greater good

and you’re like “man, I would just rather jump off a bridge than go to work today”.

I think that's the difference, forcing standards is fine, standards are standards, the wind

shifts to personality based self-promotion that type stuff absolutely not but I think there

will always be places for hard leaders… But just the other end of it is when you're just

creating those personal conflicts for your own enjoyment or just to facilitate some sort of

self-agenda, that's completely different and I don’t agree with the toxicity.

I had a situation in Desert Storm where my team command was a Sergeant E5 and he

was perhaps the most toxic leader I've ever experienced. He was verbally abusive to all

the men. He would actually *bully his peers and his superiors. He treated us all like

animals—he truly did. He was pretty brutal and he would switch from one to another. He

would switch from treating you like a piece of dirt one minute and then 30 minutes later

he would be like it never happened and he’d be buddy-buddy to you. So that kind of

behavior caused most everybody that was around him to not trust him, to not be loyal,

and to fear him. Everybody had a high level of disdain for him and his leadership style.

The commander was kind of a soft-spoken. He was kind of like the fat guy who probably

got picked on when he was younger. And his XO…basically his deputy, was probably

6’5”, 250, and [had] very strong personality. Rarely would someone try to question

[him]. So what happened is the commander would put his intent to the XO because he

knew the XO was kind of the slave driver, and he would whip you until you got it right. So

he didn’t care what means that the XO used to motivate all the personnel. The

commander would leave for the weekend and he didn’t care that they locked down the

organization. He knew the XO would go as extreme as he needed to go to make sure that

he got what he needed.

. . . Someone had scratched his name in a Porta Potty and written something bad about

him . . . When I did not show the same level of concern for this event, he threatened to

slap the eyes out of the back of my head. And he had a stick on the desk that he hit into

the desk to accentuate the point a little bit.

29

Because toxic guys…generally don’t care about people’s feelings and they want to get

promoted. So they need to accomplish the mission . . . so they're going to say “screw you

guys, you keep working because my mission’s not done yet”.

Toxic leaders often generate great rage and resentment, and often feelings of despair, among

their soldiers.

If I had to relive another job, I would choose to relive a deployed job before I would

choose to go and relive a non-deployed job under that particular toxic. I would prefer to

go to war and have to risk my life than . . . work for [that] jerk . . .

I had to get my Guard people to pull me out of that organization and put me somewhere

else because it had gotten to the point where I was ready to walk in there and no longer

be part of regular civilization, you know? [meaning a desire to kill the toxic leader]. It

was that bad, and I’m not a mean person. I would probably have done jail time. Nobody

that you have to work with should make you that angry . . .

Toxic leaders tend to have “in” and “out” groups of subordinates. With the exception of their

“in- group” of loyalists, toxic leaders seem to have no interest in getting to know their soldiers as

people, nor do they exhibit any desire to mentor them or help them to develop their skills.

I think a strong characteristic of toxic leaders is they are “favorites” players. The

positive thing about that is, if you recognize that and can put yourself in the favorites box,

you can do well . . . I can make sure that I’m on your good side so I will have more

leeway to operate . . . so overall my work will be better . . . I’m going to give you

[meaning the toxic leader] what you want, you see, not out of respect—but out of self-

preservation.

. . . He had his cronies—his favorites—and he gave those guys the good work. So if you

were outside the circle, you weren’t doing anything [interesting].

To their credit, though, they are relentlessly focused on mission accomplishment; however, their

motivation is widely suspect. Their focus on achieving the mission is less about the good of the

organization and more about receiving recognition in order to secure their next promotion. The

outcome is that they get results—at least in the short-term—but often cause severe damage to

both the organization and to their soldiers in the long run.

This unique ability to achieve extraordinary results while subordinates suffer is what Ma, Karri,

and Chittipeddi (2004) call “the paradox of managerial tyranny”. The problem is then

exacerbated when promotion decisions are based almost exclusively on whether the leader

obtains results. As a result, through both promotions and recognition, the toxic leader is

reinforced for his toxic behavior, leading him to believe that his way of achieving results is

uniformly viewed as acceptable. With every promotion, his span of control and influence

increases allowing him to negatively impact even more soldiers (Steele, 2011).

All of the officers that I would view as toxic have made it to the highest levels. I just

looked the other day and my last boss just made O-6 . . . [And I’m thinking} “how did he

30

make it to where he is? Because he has people who groomed him or [who have] his back

and take care of him and make sure he’s promoted?” Because the thing about toxic

leaders is this—they get the mission accomplished.

ADP 6-22 states that leader attributes and competencies include “having Army Values (such as

respect), empathy (emotional intelligence), interpersonal tact, and the ability to create a positive

environment”. It further states that leaders are responsible for:

. . . getting results and developing the organization. This accomplishes missions of high

quality while sustaining and improving the organization within available resources.

Leaders must balance successful mission accomplishment with how they treat and care

for organizational members [Emphasis added]. Taking care of people involves creating

and sustaining a positive climate through open communications, trust, cohesion, and

teamwork.

Toxic leaders clearly violate the standards outlined by ADP 6-22 (2012) by failing to meet and

adhere to its clear expectations.

Comparison of Toxic Leaders to Workplace Bullies in the Corporate Sector

These findings are generally consistent with reports from the corporate sector on workplace

bullies where they are identified by the following characteristics: (1) frequent misuse of power

and authority; (2) focus on personal self-interest, as opposed to the good of the organization; (3)

prone to emotional outbursts; and (4) often inconsistent and unfair in their treatment of

employees (Daniel, 2009a).

Workplace bullies engage in overwhelmingly negative behaviors at work, including a need for

control, exploitation, intimidation, threats, humiliation and embarrassment, a failure to

communicate, manipulation, engaging in a pattern of obstructive behavior over time, ostracizing

and ignoring employees, and gossiping or spreading rumors about their targets. Participants said

the corporate bully operates with “malice”, suggesting that it is an intentional form of abusive

behavior (Daniel, 2009a).

Participants in this current study were able to make similarly clear distinctions when comparing

toxic leaders to tough bosses in a military context, a finding which extends the earlier results of

Daniel (2009a). However, whether the toxic behaviors are always intentional is not as clear. In

some situations, the toxicity seems to be created more as a result of the leader’s excessive self-

interest, while in other cases, the leader is toxic due to his gross incompetence or due to his

outright neglect of the people under his command. It seems that the actions of the bully in in the

corporate sector tend to be more personal and intentional in nature, impacting specific

individuals. Conversely, toxic leaders in a military context tend to single out individuals less

frequently; instead, their actions tend to impact the overall command climate and affect more

people as a result.

How Officers Describe Tough Bosses

As further explained in Table 5, participants described tough bosses as:

31

Concerned about their soldiers (e.g. treat them with respect, compassionate, supportive

and approachable);

Focused on the development of their subordinates (e.g. mentor, coach, counsel, offer

honest and constructive feedback, and allowing freedom to maneuver);

Having high emotional intelligence (e.g. empathetic, calm under pressure, actively listens

to and seeks input from others, highly self-aware, establishes climate of mutual trust and

respect); and

Achieving results with a long-term emphasis (e.g. high standards for self and others,

tough but fair in approach, holds people accountable, high regard for organizational

impact, and leads from the front), leading to a positive command climate.

Their descriptions of tough bosses were uniformly consistent, emphasizing their high standards

and no-nonsense (but fair) approach:

I think a tough boss has the intention that is in the best interests of the unit. This is what I

would expect from any good organization— a high expectation of accomplishing the

mission or being the best unit. The toxic leader, I think it's more…”this is about me and

this is about how I look good and how I get to the next step.” I think a tough boss will

expect a good outcome but he's not going to destroy his subordinates in the process. He’ll

look at them and say “okay, this guy he's been producing good things, he made a

mistake, he's still a good guy, and I'm going to provide some direction or I'm going to tell

him, take a break”, but he's going to have the self-awareness to take a look at his staff

and say, “okay, you know this guy is doing well, this guy is doing bad. How do I manage

that, how do I get everybody to succeed?” Whereas I think the toxic leader is mostly

concerned about, “okay, I want to succeed definitely, but I don’t care if I step on you in

the process”. And they both probably have high expectations, but it's how they interact

with those around them to achieve the results, I think, is the big difference.

I think the tough leader knows how to turn the hard situation into mentorship or kind of

closes the loop and shows you the positive points. Or, even if they're pointing out the

negative aspects of it, they're showing it to you in a way to improve you, as opposed to

just be screaming and yelling ‘I want to know who to blame’, ‘this is your fault’, ‘you’re

a failure’.

You don’t necessarily know the intent but the difference is empathy. Most of the time,

even with those tough guys, I would go “aw, crap” [meaning that it wasn’t easy], but I’d

work for them again because I get something out of it.

I mean it was rough I didn’t understand how that unit worked, I didn’t think I'd be

answering questions directly to a couple general officers and full Colonels, yet the guy I

worked for had very high standards. When you made mistakes, he was stern but he

explained what was wrong and it was over and done and you moved on. People loved

him, even wives… the fact he remembered people’s names, he got out and about, got

outside the office… He's a guy that when I say good leader—that's him.

My first Battalion Commander was actually a pretty tough leader, but I felt he was tough

but fair so I didn’t really ever think he was a toxic leader or a bully. He just had high

expectations that were standardized and he expected people to meet them.

32

As previously noted, ADP 6-22 (2012) states that leader attributes and competencies include

“having Army Values (such as respect), empathy (emotional intelligence), interpersonal tact, and

the ability to create a positive environment”. It further states that leaders are responsible for:

. . . getting results and developing the organization. This accomplishes missions of high

quality while sustaining and improving the organization within available resources.

Leaders must balance successful mission accomplishment with how they treat and care

for organizational members [Emphasis added]. Taking care of people involves creating

and sustaining a positive climate through open communications, trust, cohesion, and

teamwork.

Tough leaders take ADP 6-22 (2012) to heart and meet—or exceed—its expectations.

Comparisons to a Tough Boss in the Corporate Sector

Participants in the corporate sector describe tough bosses very similarly to the way they were

described by participants in this study. Tough bosses are perceived to be: (1) objective, fair and

professional; (2) self-controlled and unemotional; (3) performance-focused—insistent upon

meeting high standards and holding employees accountable for meeting those expectations; and

(4) organizationally oriented—consistently operating to achieve the best interests of their

company (Daniel, 2009a). The actions of a tough boss are perceived to be overwhelmingly

positive: they are highly interactive, use frequent two-way communication and really listen to

their employees, and mentor subordinates through frequent coaching, counseling and

performance feedback.

It should not be minimized—working for a tough boss is clearly challenging, whether in a

corporate or a military context. Though the intense focus on results by the tough leader may

create tension and stress, subordinates do not take the situations personally, nor do they

experience diminished feelings of self-worth or adverse personal or health effects. Instead, they

feel a great deal of respect and loyalty to such leaders, viewing them as being "tough but fair"

and strongly focused on the long-term best interests of both their subordinates and the

organization, findings which extend the earlier work of Daniel (2009a) in the corporate sector to

a military context.

Participants in the current study were adamant in their view that tough leaders must be retained

and that their continuing strong and demanding leadership is essential for the Army to thrive and

succeed in the 21st century.

I just really hope that we don’t get to a point where we just think that just by showing

tough love and being demanding of someone, [a leader] is going to be viewed as toxic. I

just hope we don’t ever get there.

We’ve got to be really careful so that tough leaders don’t get swept up in any initiative to

get rid of toxic leaders and then suggest that it’s not ok to be demanding. Because it

would be tragic if we [the Army] were not demanding.

We . . . can't go on this witch hunt where we decide that anybody who raises their voice

now is now a “goner”. We have to be able to distinguish between who are the

33

counterproductive leaders and [those who are strong leaders]. I think if we don’t do that,

we’re going to fail. Because we’ll get rid of a lot of really good people who deserve to be

around and who are doing a great service for our country.

And we could not agree with them more.

How Officers Describe Great Leaders

In order to develop a foundational baseline against which we could compare the descriptions of

the officers about each type of leader, we began each interview by asking the participants to

think about an exceptional leader that they have personally known and to describe what it was

about that leader that made him exceptional. The officers were unanimous (100%) in their ability

to describe at least one leader who they viewed as exceptional, and many described two or more,

consistent with the 97% rate reported earlier by Steele (2011).

Personal Excellence and the Achievement of High Standards

Of note, the study’s participants described great leaders in a nearly identical way to how they

described tough bosses, consistently observing their adherence to both personal excellence and

the achievement of high standards.

They really led from the front. They really they embodied everything they said they were

going to d. They had a standard and they not only held themselves to that standard, but

they also held their subordinates to the same standard.

The best guy I've ever worked for in my life. He's just amazing in every way. He cared

about every person in his command. He worked well and everybody worked together as a

team. It was just an amazing experience working for him… He was tough but he kept to

his standards.

He was one of those leaders that took you out of your comfort zone, made you strive for

excellence. If you tripped, he might give you a little bit of a spanking but it was not

“you're terrible and I'm going to end your career”- type, it was “hey you’ve made a

mistake and I'm going to help you improve yourself”. He took a personal effort for all the

leaders, but especially the Company Commanders which were two levels below him. He

really focused on getting them to better themselves. I think it was because he knew that

you know everything kind of floated around the Company Commander . . . So if he made

them better, the unit as a whole would excel and he wanted to be successful in our

mission.

Care and Connect in a Highly Personalized Manner

Strikingly, as detailed in Table 6 and noted previously, the study’s participants describe great

leaders in virtually the same way that they describe tough bosses— with one key difference.

While tough bosses are perceived as expressing concern for their soldiers, exceptional leaders are

distinguished by their highly personalized caring. The relationships that they establish with

people under their command goes beyond just showing concern—they care and connect with

their people in a personal way that makes soldiers feel genuinely valued and respected. As

evidenced by their frequent communication, mentoring, counseling, and efforts to develop the

individual for future assignments, they exhibited a holistic personal concern about the people in

their command—not just as soldiers there to do a job, but also as human beings. The significant

34

amount of time invested by an exceptional leader in forming personal relationships with their

people which resulted in a high level of mutual trust, inspiration, deep respect, open

communication, and unwavering loyalty from those under their command.

The portrait of exceptional leaders painted by the officers in this study is nothing short of

extraordinary. The participants were expansive so their commentary is quite extensive. We have

included a more complete account of their comments in Appendix III; however, their

descriptions were unwaveringly consistent as noted by these examples:

I think the level of which they [great leaders] care and the way that they show it is what

probably differentiates them most from everyone else. It builds loyalty right off the bat.

He was genuine. You could tell that he actually cared about people and he didn’t just

pretend. He would ask personal questions and give you eye contact and listen to the

answers and care about the answer. He had a reputation as being extremely competent,

but he also had a reputation for really caring about people—and leaders can’t fake that.

You know they have empathy for the soldiers; they genuinely care. They're able to

produce their vision and you can visualize it when they talk about where they want the

organization to go.

You knew they cared about you. You knew that how you did was important to them. You

knew that they knew what they were doing and they took responsibility for what they were

supposed to do… It was more about you than it was about them.

So generally the characteristics that I value in leaders are a sense of mutual trust. I do

appreciate demanding leaders that expect a lot out of me and that work with me to make

sure they capitalize on what I have to offer. I am a big fan of the idea of emotionally

intelligent leaders… they understand people and they understand people’s strengths and

weaknesses, and they can play to those strengths.

The majority of them had concern for me as a person and as a soldier. You know they

were concerned about how I was doing the job, how I was doing in the job and they also

concerned about my just general wellbeing—not just within the office or within the unit.

They just seemed to take the time to have that personal relationship.

I think they had there was a caring that they gave to us. Maybe [it] was that they cared

what was going on in our lives outside of the military aspect of our lives at that point.

They were always in touch with us outside of work—making sure that we were doing

okay with our families or our friends or what was going on. That really kind of touched

us, I think.

The bottom line: a highly effective leader—whether they are labeled by subordinates as a great

leader or a tough boss—is concerned about both their people and the long-term best interests of

their organization.

35

Key Differences in Power Orientation

At its core, leadership is about power and influence. Leaders use their power to get things done.

While there are numerous types of power and many relevant theories, our interest focuses on the

theory espoused by McClelland (1975) who suggests that there are two primary forms of power:

personalized power—that is, power used for advancing personal gain and influence, and

socialized power—when the leader’s power is used for the benefit of others.

This study supports the theory that toxic leaders have a personalized power orientation given

their general need for control and their excessive self-interest (Padilla, et al., 2007). They are

willing to work long hours to gain support and to achieve their goals—frequently at the expense

of the organization and their subordinates (Padilla, et al., 2007; Schilling, 2009; Williams, 2005).

Conversely, it appears that both exceptional leaders and tough bosses have a socialized power

orientation given their willingness to transcend their own self-interest and sacrifice in order to

achieve the mission and collective good of both their people and the Army as a whole (e.g.

Luthans & Avolio, 2003; Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999; Burns, 1978; and many others).

We will examine the issue of systemic characteristics of the military environment that may tend

to promote and/or inadvertently encourage the use of toxic behaviors in the next section.

36

(2) Are there specific characteristics of the military environment that tend to promote toxic

leaders and/or abusive behaviors?

Officers in the study also identified several potential contributing factors that may inadvertently

lead to or promote the use of toxic behaviors as a leadership style:

A relentless focus on mission accomplishment;

Senior leaders who are unaware of or ambivalent to the problem;

Lack of emphasis on the development of subordinates due to competing priorities for

time (resulting in infrequent mentoring and an absence of regular performance feedback);

Failure to address the root cause resulting in “toxic migration” of toxic leaders to other

parts of the organization;

An organizational culture which values loyalty and discourages the reporting of toxic

leaders;

Imitation of successful leaders who are toxic; and

A cut-throat and highly competitive culture that lacks strong checks and balances.

Each of these factors will be discussed in more detail along with excerpts of relevant officer

statements from the interview transcripts.

Relentless Focus on Mission Accomplishment—But Not How the Results are Attained

If everyone agrees that the consequences of toxic leadership are so bad, how is it that these

leaders are able to achieve success in the Army? Why does it seem that there are often no

consequences for their toxic behavior? Simply put, they get results— at least in the short-term.

I don’t think it’s a conscious effort by the Army to promote people who are toxic. I just

think because toxic leaders traditionally have an immediate impact on the production in

the unit—for a short period of time—and that usually coincides with the rating period, it

can seem that they are really good performers. They don’t realize that there is a [high

cost] to morale and the personnel in that unit. So, because evaluations cover a one year

span, we promote all those one-year results. I think there are times that we do promote

people because they’re able to get results and that the Army doesn’t necessarily care

about the way they go about it.

. . . You’re going to accomplish the mission at all costs, so people are going to do things

that they normally wouldn’t do to get wherever they want to go.

It has been twelve years of war so we have had a completely different mind frame. Its

fight, fight, fight, fight, kill, kill, kill, retain, suppress, do whatever you need to do to be

able to win the mission. Well, that has taught or developed leaders to think that way all

the time. If we're going back to a garrison mission it can't continue to be that way. . . we

are getting a new way of thinking here at CGSC, but you still have those senior leaders

that [are not getting the same training] that for the past 10, 12 years been at war and all

they're thinking about is the mission, mission, mission, mission . . .We haven’t had the

freedom to fail in twelve years. We've had to be on point, decisive, succinct collaborating

and win the mission. And that’s just how the nature of war is . . . because if you don’t,

you lose. And that means people die.

37

Everyone who worked for him knew it [that he was a toxic leader] but the people that he

worked for had no idea. Nor were they interested in knowing. All they cared about was

that he was performing. So, it’s hard to want to stay in an organization like that that only

cares about performance and not the manner of performance.

Toxic leaders get results, but how are they getting those results, though? It’s at the

expense of another human being. I mean, sure, we go to war to kill human beings but at

the expense of another officer, another service member? I don’t think so. Getting results

is one thing, but how you get them is another. And you get into the moral battleground

with that.

“Completing the mission” and “not failing” were uniformly considered to be a sacrosanct duty.

These officers stressed the impossibility of not completing the mission due to high stakes

involved, as well as their own need to succeed and desire to bring honor to their unit—regardless

of the bad treatment they are receiving under his command.

We haven’t had the freedom to fail in twelve years. We've had to be on point, decisive,

succinct collaborating and win the mission. And that’s just how the nature of war is . . .

because if you don’t, you lose. And that means people die.

No officer shows up to work and wants to fail and they’re not willing to put their OER

and career on the line [by failing]. My feeling is “This is my organization” and it was not

possible for all of us to just sit back and let it fail. Because other organizations depended

on us . . . I couldn’t just let it fail because it was my reputation, it was the ability of these

other organizations to operate down range, that all depended on our performance. So

regardless of this person’s absenteeism or lack of involvement or whatever, we had to do

our job. We had to perform. [I don’t know] whether it was personal pride or just

survival, but I was not going to let it fail. I put in 80 hours a week . . . He [the toxic

leader] would pile on more stuff and commit to more things than we were organized to

do. That was really what led to so many man hours. I wasn’t the only one. Guys in a unit

like this . . . they’ve been out developing projects for extended periods of time because of

what he's thrown on the plate of the organization. We're not built to do this [but] we're

going to do it anyway. He's already committed to it and now we have to react. No

interaction as to “Hey staff, can we do this?” It was “I want to do this, I told these guys

this general officer that we can do it” so now we're scrambling to figure out the

resources to make it happen.

Some of this just because of the culture of the military I think you know we are type-A

personalities. We are achievement oriented. You know if you achieve your mission you’re

absolutely good to go but that's the way it has to be because we don’t deal with variables,

you know if we mess up it's not just you know we didn’t get that business deal so we’re

not going to get a Christmas bonus it's not that simple. It is people’s lives. It's

somebody’s husband, wife, brother…

We are all about achieving the mission and it's more important. While we do care about

how it's done, that is evident, but we’re more concerned about it getting done—because

getting it done saves lives and so people are willing to deal with whatever.

38

Despite the toxicity of leader and the command environment, the collective focus of the unit on

mission accomplishment ends up making the toxic leader look good. As a result, the toxic leader

gets results, as well as promotions and rewards, largely based on the great sense of duty and

loyalty of his soldiers.

The part that was most difficult was knowing that if we succeed, if we work hard...if we

work our knuckles to the bone, we will succeed and these guys [the toxic leaders] will

benefit from it. But also, the organization that comes down to interface with us, they will

benefit and they will be better for it. And that's what I want. That's what we all want

because they are our brothers in arms. But this guy benefits from it just as much. And at

what point do you say because we could easily have stepped away from it, let that fall.

In the Army, my bosses’ promotion depends on his formation’s performance. It doesn’t

depend on their quality of performance or manner of performance, so he [the senior

officer] is going to want the guy that’s performing at the higher level despite what it’s

doing to the organization.

Senior Leaders Are Unaware of or Ambivalent to the Problem

As Sutton (2007) suggests, toxic leaders tend to “kiss up” as they “kick down”. They work hard

to please their superiors while at the same time treating their subordinates badly. This partially

explains why their superiors so often fail to realize that their leadership style is a problem.

My personal opinion is that often they felt it would be harder to do the right thing and

write a bad evaluation and have to answer questions about what happened than leave it

alone, so they gave him not a stellar evaluation, but a decent one. And then they left. So

even with an open investigation for toxic leadership, he [the toxic leader] still got a

pretty good OER.

We need a feedback system from the lower levels. Because higher levels intrinsically

can’t see it, and the only way to really do that is peer and subordinate reviews [in

addition to reviews from senior officers].

Compounding the problem is the fact that the current performance evaluation system allows

officers to personally select who responds to their multi-rater assessment evaluation. The natural

tendency is to ask for feedback from those they know will give them a positive rating, thereby

diminishing the true value of the input about their performance. In addition, their senior officer

never sees the results, which means that there is no developmental or accountability feedback

loop that would trigger an intervention or provide coaching resources that could help the toxic

leader become more self-aware and/or change his problematic behavior.

I don’t think the OER system is very effective because you get to pick who does it so you

pick people like you.

There are two major downfalls with the multisource assessment: (1) your chain of

command can’t see it, and (2) you get to pick the people who assess you so obviously

people select the people who they know like their leadership style. So, you can’t fix one

without fixing the other. I’m 100% sure that if the bosses of some of these leaders were to

read their multisource assessments and see that 9 out of 12 people that work for them

39

find them to be disparaging and prevent them from doing their jobs and all kinds of other

negative things, you would hope that they would change their personal evaluation of the

individual . . . but we currently don’t do that.

Conversely, as discussed previously, the senior officer may be aware of the situation but not

consider the behaviors to be problematic or actionable because the individual is getting results

and, in turn, making the senior officer look good.

Lack of Emphasis on and Accountability for the Development of Subordinates

As noted in the 2013 CASAL report (Riley, et al., 2014, p.vi and x), “developing others” is a

recurring shortcoming yet many leaders still do not make it a priority to engage in mentoring,

coaching, counseling, or providing feedback on performance. Reasons given include “a lack of

accountability for those who do not counsel, not enough time available, lack of knowledge and

skills, and leader avoidance of situations that might lead to conflict” (Riley, et al., 2014).

Importantly, there is currently no recognition or reward for leaders who emphasize the human

dimension of leadership. Importantly, there are also no consequences for those who are so self-

interested that they fail to help develop the next generation of leaders.

Whenever I asked an 06 level for my initial counseling and he said “not now”, I would go

for the second time and say “Sir, just initial counseling to see where I’m at” and he says

“not now”. And the third time, I said “Sir, I was told by other 06’s to ask until it’s

given”. He goes “Well, you need to get out of my office. You’re not going to get it so

don’t worry about getting it from me. That’s very frustrating when you ask for guidance

[and don’t get it]. Even if you’re a Major, you should still get a counseling from your 06.

He’s your rater, so he owes you.

But it's planting the seed for the harvest . . . it’s me taking the time to develop my soldier.

Because if I develop him right now, when he becomes an E6, E7, E8, E9, he's going to be

a much more productive soldier. He's going to add so much more volume to the force.

But the guy who does that isn't the guy who is getting promoted because the Colonel

didn’t see that. So I just think in the culture that we have, it's “what have you done for me

lately?” and rarely is it “have you made my people better?”

The competing demands of the past decade (e.g. multiple wars, increases in global terrorism,

etc.) have reduced the time available for soldier development; understandably, it mentoring and

counseling have become less and less of a priority. The result is that officer promotions

sometimes occur too early and on the basis of potential (and not proven ability)—but well before

a soldier is really ready to assume the additional responsibilities (Matsuda, 2014). The increased

responsibility coupled with a lack of readiness can make a leader more susceptible to adopting a

toxic style:

It’s hard to almost not get promoted. So really we’re pushing a lot of these soldiers that

they may not be the best leaders. They shouldn’t be pushed up but they’re being pushed

up. They're being moved up the chain and being trusted to guide soldiers but they just

don’t have those [leadership] skills. They probably should have just stayed a foot soldier

and not been put in that leadership role. But it’s just the way the system is . . .”.

40

“Toxic Migration” to Other Parts of the Organization When senior leaders are aware of the problems and do get involved, they often resort to a

“restructuring” strategy and simply reassign the toxic leader (who is at that point a known

liability) to another location—a practice referred to as “toxic migration” (Aubrey, 2012). This

response is problematic because there is no action taken to either coach the individual to change

or to remove them from their leadership post. The result is that the organization enables the

behavior by failing to stop it, sending an implicit and dangerous message to the organization that

it is an acceptable way to operate.

One thing that always ticked me off with the Generals I’ve worked for is that they will be

in private conversation and say “see that guy over there. That guy never should have

been a General. I say “why not, sir?” And they would say “because he was a toxic leader

or he was incompetent”. And I’d say “well, didn’t he work for you at one time?” And

he’s say “yes, he worked for me”. And I’d ask “well, why didn’t you take him out?” And

their answer is always well “it’s not really my job to do that, the institution has to do

that”. And I’ve always called their bluff and said “bullshit. You are the institution. If you

don’t make a statement about that person’s potential, who will? And now because you

haven’t, they continue to move up the ranks and you passed the buck onto someone else.

. . . a lot of times they’ll promote them [the toxic leader] just to get them out of the unit.

They’ll promote the guy real quick and say what a great job he's doing—it’s called

“dumping the fat”. They’ll go promote him to get him out of the way so somebody else

that's a good leader can come in.

We have a “get him promoted to get him out of here” type of system. I think it’s the

easiest way to get rid of somebody—to promote them.

I think some of it may be you know the good old boy network of— you know a division

commander who has known a Brigade Commander for a long time because they've been

serving together during their entire career. They are kind of buddy, buddy. So even if an

impartial investigation comes down, that Brigade Commander may not do anything,

especially if there’s nothing that’s really out there publicly and nothing has made the

news. I don’t want to say that they kind of sweep it under the rug, but that's the

impression.

. . . in hindsight, as I look at it, I think we hurt the Army by doing those sorts of things

[not reporting the bad leadership] because as our company excelled, his OER looked

really good. So by doing that, we’re really letting those people stay in and progress

which, depending on how high they go, could have some pretty big impacts.

What these officers have described is a proverbial “pass the buck” situation where the toxic

leader is promoted and dumped on another unit—becoming someone else’s problem. The result

is that the toxic leader is not confronted about the problem or coached to change. As a result, he

may never really understand the nature of his impact on others. Paradoxically, because he is

rewarded for the very behaviors that have such a negative impact on both his people and the

organization, it is highly likely that he will repeat his past behavior given the personal success it

has generated for him.

41

Army Culture Which Values Loyalty and Discourages Reporting

Soldiers are taught early in their careers that loyalty and respect for authority are key virtues

(Padilla, et al., 2007; Reed, 2004), making subordinates unlikely to question the leader’s power

and authority or to report irregularities despite numerous available Army channels to do so. This

loyalty factor also makes soldiers highly reluctant to by-pass the chain of command to report a

toxic leader/ As a result, soldiers often “take it” and/or “wait it out” because they do not want to

appear disloyal, be labeled as a “troublemaker”, nor do they want to embarrass their unit by

identifying to others that their leader is “toxic” (Reed, 2004).

Really, your only option is to appeal to the higher level commander which is also kind of

the nuclear option . . . It’s very easy with a wink and a nudge to stall out someone’s

career. So, if you are willing to make the jump and go to the next level leader to talk

about the situation you’re concerned about involving your direct supervisor, then you’re

assuming a great deal of risk.

It's important for us to be loyal even if the guys we’re being loyal to are not loyal to us.

So it’s difficult the whole trust thing if it's not there, it makes it significantly difficult

because of our OER system. [If] he [the toxic leader] went through and “three blocked”

the captains, they’re done - especially in the draw down Army. This point is that our

evaluations are so incredibly important. One bad evaluation can kill you . . . so you try to

avoid anything that will put you at a possible deficit. What that means is that you’re

unlikely to report anyone unless you feel like you’ve got a really good parachute…

Say for example I went to General *** and said “hey, sir, I have this problem”:( 1) he

was coming in fairly new to the organization and I never had an opportunity to actually

pass him in the corridor once to really get a chance to say anything to him, (2) every time

you do get to visit him usually other gentleman, my brigade commander, was there, [and]

if I just tried to email him for something like that if I did that by myself I would feel like I

was in a very awkward position where either a) General would probably see it say “well,

I understand we don’t always like the guys we work for. Just keep plugging away”. Or he

would say “suck it up and drive on” but he’ll be keeping it in the back of his head, “well

that's that blabber guy I know about him he might not be that good because he complains

about his commander” because we’re told to be loyal.

This sense of loyalty and reluctance to report problems has a corollary in the civilian world. It

can be compared to the “blue wall of silence” observed by police officers (Wikipedia, Online).

This is a term used to denote an unwritten rule that exists among police officers where they

tacitly agree amongst themselves not to report on a colleague's errors, misconducts, or crimes. If

officially questioned about an incident of misconduct involving another officer, the officer being

questioned will claim ignorance of another officer's wrongdoing. The code is observed,

ostensibly, to keep loyalty intact and so that an officer is not viewed as a “maverick” or a “boat

rocker”. Their chief concern is that if they do report a situation, they will find themselves in a

difficult situation in the field without adequate backup or support in reprisal.

The Army observes an “open door” policy. In addition, the Office of the Inspector General

provides soldiers with channels where they can address concerns. However, there is also a

general expectation that problems should first be discussed within one’s chain of command:

42

Yeah you always had several avenues . . . You could go to the Inspector General’s office.

If you thought it was criminal in nature you could go to military police or see IG for full

investigation of noncommissioned. So you have several routes to report things; however,

a lot of people in the military are hesitant to do that because they're afraid to be labeled

as a “troublemaker”. So at the same time where the military will say, for instance, a

Colonel commander has an open door policy, in the same sentence they’ll say “my door

is always open; I encourage you to use my open door policy” they will then say

“however, I highly encourage you to utilize your chain of command first”.

It is no surprise, then, that these expectations often have a chilling effect on reporting. Soldiers

are reluctant to risk their careers and create financial instability for themselves and their families

(e.g. reduction and/or elimination of pay, benefits, and retirement plan) by being labeled a

“troublemaker” or “whistleblower” and they clearly have good and valid reasons to worry.

Unlike the corporate sector where an employee can transfer his 401(k) plan to his new employer,

when a soldier transfers out or is fired from the Army early, his or her pension benefits are

forfeited entirely.

In the military we have what’s called DOPMA (Defense Officer Management Program).

It’s the federal law that says that if you get passed over twice, you’re done. A bad OER in

your file for retribution purposes could adversely affect that [your retirement].

The drawdown has really empowered these little middle management tyrants because

now you can end a career. It's easy to fall on your sword when you are single and you

can you know go back to school or spend a couple years backpacking through Europe . . .

but when you've got family to support, it turns good people. It makes good people much

more willing to look the other way. Even in my situation, I'll admit that I tolerated the

[bad] behavior longer because I was recently married and I was worried about taking

care of my wife.

just don’t want to get labeled [as a “troublemaker” or not a team player] by reporting a

toxic leader or going around him. That would be career suicide.

I would have to think long and hard about it [filing a complaint with the Inspector

General] because I know that might be the end of my career . . . because once you file an

IG complaint, they [the toxic leader] will know who filed it.

The other side to it is that he rates me . . . so there's the dilemma of ‘do I make waves

with my boss?” Do I actually confront this guy and say ‘I think you’re the worst leader

I've ever you know worked for’ and then potentially jeopardize my own career?

Especially in times like right now where [the situation is] like this: you get a bad report

card and it can be “you're done” [with the Army].

I can't really think of anything else I could have done. I mean it's not like I could have

tendered my resignation or something stupid like that; you don’t have that option… It's

like slitting your own throat at that point anyway. It does feel like I didn’t have any real

options other than just suck it up and drive on…

43

As a result, “not making waves” and “waiting it out” is an even higher priority given the high

personal stakes involved. They also worry that if they report the individual and nothing is done,

they will be penalized once the toxic leader becomes aware of their complaint and end up in even

worse shape.

I mean you could probably go over their head, but the chances of something being fixed

compared to the possibility of your life drastically changing if you went over the head of

your direct line boss and nothing happened . . . it just wouldn’t be worth it.

The politically correct answer is yes, there's a way, but it's such a small place. An officer

in an organization … if he doesn’t get fired and I still have to work under him I am done

in. So unless they're going to move me from the organization, which they're not; unless

they're going to fire him there's nobody there to protect me because our evaluation

system is so subjective that he doesn’t really have to justify why I'm not the greatest

soldier. He can just say he's an okay soldier, but in this environment if you’re not a great

soldier you don’t get promoted. We’re kicking 90,000 people out right now. So he doesn’t

really have to justify why he said I'm just okay, but just okay is a career killer in the

Army. So that's the loophole in this whole system is, yes could I complain, I can file that

complaint, I could, and he's going to know exactly who it is because there's only two

Majors in this organization. So based off the context of the complaint and what happened

he's going to say, oh the only people in this room is this and that and so I think it's J and

now if they don’t fire me I'm going to hold J accountable to this because he was disloyal.

He told on me so I can't trust him.

Though there are clearly avenues available for soldiers to report a toxic leader, these processes

are not really considered by soldiers to be truly viable options.

You don’t know when you throw that grenade [meaning filing a complaint about a toxic

leader]if it’s going to make it over the wall or if it’s going to bounce off and come back to

you. It’s a risk, because if it bounces back, you have no other options. To be throwing

grenades over walls, you have to think [hard] about that.

It’s hard to be a whistleblower because if you do that and then nothing happens, now

you’re going back to that guy you’ve identified as toxic and his evaluation is probably

going to determine whether or not you have a career in the Army anymore. Because they

are so good at how they manage their interactions, the people above them might view you

as kind of “whining” is the impression that I get.

I'm also not very confident in that the IG process would have gotten anything done

immediately. I think the IG have a very tough job and I think too many people use the IG

for the wrong thing and because of it the IG isn't an effective tool anymore.

I was selected to a sensing session and I was told by the team “hey sir, you’ve got to

represent us. You’ve got to be honest with these guys at this sensing session”. And I was

like “hey roger, like this is going to be hard, but I'm going to do it”. So I go in there and

they ask the tough questions. They ask about esprit de corps and the morale within the

different units… I was as honest as I could be: “listen our morale has suffered because of

this, this, this and this and you know we had people actively seeking to leave that

44

assignment”. At this point he’d been there probably 4 or 5 months and people were

already actively seeking other assignments just to get out of there … but despite what I

said, nothing changed. I put myself out there I felt like you know because it was once

again you know it was a typical sensing session. There were about 20 of us in the room

and I laid everything out there for the people running the session and I'm pretty sure I got

a repercussion in it. I'm sure my OER kind of had a reflection of that . . . a lower rating

that was part of his little vendetta.

Kusy and Holloway (2009) assert that “toxic people thrive only in a toxic system” (p. 10) and

suggest that there are factors beyond individual personalities which create toxic leaders. Their

research suggests that the organizational system and culture play a large role in allowing toxic

behaviors to continue unchecked. The toxic system described by the officers in this study seemed

to confirm that premise.

[Trying to deal with a toxic leader] is kind of like trying to throw a grenade over a wall.

You might make it, but then if you don’t, you know it’s going to be bad.

029: If you get passed over twice, in order for me to get a promotion, I have to beat out

my peers. So it’s kind of this rivalry between [us]. I’m in competition with them so it’s

very ruthless.

If a toxic leader moves up the chain, there’s a good chance that he could be on the

promotion board. If he sees your packet [and you’ve filed a complaint on him but nothing

really happened as a result to him], he can easily say “no, do not promote”. Or [with]

Army separations, the same guy is on this board and sees the person who blew the

whistle. He can say “Do not retain”.

Without casting blame, it should be noted that soldiers also play a role in the dynamic. Without

their silence, toxic leaders would quickly become powerless. As Kellerman (2004, p. 232) notes:

“Without oxygen, fire dies out”. Silent subordinates are the “oxygen” that helps to allow toxic

leaders to operate without consequence:

You know the tough part is the way promotions occur in the Army . . . you have leaders

that to their supervisors [are] and wonderful [but] unfortunately, a lot of what their

supervisors didn’t see was how they treated subordinates because of those subordinates

not wanting to be a “troublemaker”. That is what causes the problem of not reporting it.

That [bad behavior] never comes to light to senior leaders, so a person ends up getting

promoted even though they really are a toxic leader.

Moreover, there is no safety in numbers. Even soldiers banding together to try to remove a leader

in unison is not considered to be a good option; in fact, it might even be considered mutinous.

So I had to be the intermediary to insulate the rest of the organization because there were

multiple conversations of mutiny that were brought to me [by soldiers] saying “We need

to do something” [meaning that we should all get together and tender our resignations

and say that we would all quit if this person wasn’t removed]. And then I had to try to

talk people down essentially saying “Like look, the Army doesn’t look kindly to mutiny”.

45

Imitation of Successful Leaders Who are Toxic

Soldiers tend to pay close attention to how senior officers operate and how they treat their

subordinates. Based on a desire to achieve similar professional success, officers (particularly

those who are relatively new in their careers) often imitate the same attitudes and behaviors that

they see being rewarded. As a result of this imitation, these soldiers are inadvertently groomed to

be the next generation of toxic leaders (Williams, 2005).

The problem is that I don’t think that toxic leaders intentionally are toxic leaders. I think

rarely is that the case, that a guy wakes up and he comes out and he says ”I'm just going

to be the biggest butthead just to be one”. I think they're raised to be toxic leaders. Their

boss was a toxic leader and they saw that the way he was successful was by going a

certain way…

a saying that your boss dictates your experience, your mood, so I rarely think that the

individual sees themselves as toxic… I think this is just what they’ve known. This is the

culture they’ve grown up in and they just are a byproduct of the people who came before

them in many cases, and I mean I'll tell you I think there are a lot more toxic leaders in

the military than there are nontoxic leaders.

Borrowing from a psychodynamic notion of “identification with the aggressor”, the subordinate

may assume the attributes of the toxic leader so that he transforms from “the person threatened

into the person who makes the threat” (A. Freud, in Kets de Vries & Miller, 1984, p. 140). This

defense mechanism protects him from the anxiety caused by the toxic leader.

I think a lot of [toxic leaders] take on a great many of the attributes of these toxic

commanders. Well, the doctrinal excuse would be that they do it for “unity of command”

. . . but for self-serving purposes or self-defense purposes perhaps. The Major’s career is

in the hands of the Lieutenant Colonel. . .so that Major will probably take on many of

those attributes of that LTC just to keep him off his back, to be sure he doesn’t get a bad

evaluation, and so forth. As a person, that Major may not be anything like that Colonel,

but he’s forced into that behavior.

Every toxic leader that I’ve ever worked for—every single one of them—has made O-6. I

just think that when people see that, they feel like “I don’t want to be a good leader,

because it takes you being a crappy leader to be successful in the Army”.

People see that the yellers and screamers are the ones getting promoted—because that’s

what most people look toward is who's getting promoted. If you look on that list and it's

like toxic, toxic, toxic ,well you know what, “forget this, I've got to feed my family”. This

is my life. I don’t get 401k, I get a pension plan. So how much is going to be in that plan

is based on how high I make it while I'm in it. So if I've got to piss you off so I can have

my big mansion on the hill well, guess what, I'm going to piss you off.

Cut-throat and Competitive Culture Lacking Strong Checks and Balances

The situation in the Army is complicated by the lack of trust by soldiers of senior officers who

hold positions of leadership two levels up due to concerns about their excessive self-interest,

integrity issues, poor communication, and low concern for subordinates (Riley, et al., 2014).

46

Conversely, there is also a lack of reliable information among senior officers about the command

climate one or two levels down the chain of command.

Clearly the Army does not intend to create an environment where toxic leaders flourish. There

are, in fact, many processes in place that would help to identify toxicity early. The problem is

that regular sensing sessions, command climate surveys, and on-site visits by senior officers are

not the norm. There is no monitoring and no consequence for not making regular use of them.

This lack of accountability actually enables toxic leaders—allowing them to remain under the

radar and continue to be promoted.

For Lieutenants, there are going to be checks [and balances] around them. You get to be

a brigade commander—or even a battalion commander—it is your little fiefdom.

So after this [a bad] command climate survey gets done, he [the toxic leader] pulls all

the leadership into the room and tells us point blank “your evaluations will be the direct

result of the next command climate survey”.

In the military it's much different than civilian culture. When I walk into the organization

[there is no need for an] explanation of who I am. You understand who I am and where I

fall and what power comes along with [my rank]… When you get to my level in a group

of 1000 people…there's another Major and there's a Lieutenant colonel and that's it. So

who do you really have to police each other? We don’t, I mean the only person you're

going to tell on is my peer who's the same as me, or my boss. And really, we kind of take

care of our own internally, so it's kind of hard when you want to do something. I mean, if

I go to my boss who's that Lieutenant Colonel, the one guy who's above me, and I say

“hey, you suck - what you just did” - I mean, that's career killing for me. There are not a

lot of avenues for me to take without it affecting my career. Maybe at my level you can't

make many mistakes or it is career ending for you, and you recognize that, you know.

You have to ask yourself, do you want to fall on that sword for somebody? It's a lot of

personal courage that it takes to be able to stand up to that toxic leader.

We’re cutting 90,000 people right now so we’re saying to people in the demographics in

which we’re cutting of people who’ve been in war probably 90 percent of their career. So

we’re now saying to people if you made a mistake in the past you know we appreciate

your services, but it’s no longer needed. So we've created this culture now where it's so

cutthroat that we have to stand out in a crowd you know so I can't be the nice guy

anymore because maybe me being that nice guy my boss doesn’t really get to see

everything that I'm doing… you have to become more concerned about the big things that

give visibility than you can about the little things.

We have an officer code of honor that we police up ourselves . . . [but] we will stab each

other in the back. If it’s my next position and I know the guy before me is doing a really

awful job and it’s going to be so easy for me to be really good, sometimes you just let

them fail . . .

It's easier to just let it go and then by the time the promotion boards come up that's a

whole different set of people, a whole different process where they're looking at the

reports, and because you just wanted to be done with it [didn’t want to fight it out with

47

them so and gave the individual a passing evaluation]that's the report they see. And so

that person is never dealt with.

People get promoted because they work in Texas, [but] the board for promotions

happens in Kentucky. They are looking at a computer screen and they have absolutely no

idea what type of individual this is . . . so yes, it's very easy [for toxic leadership]to

continue.

Bad personnel management does a lot to empower these people [toxic leaders] because

we have this incredibly centralized promotion system which almost works like a

mathematical formula combined with this incredibly subjective decentralized evaluation

system. [The combination] really empowers these toxic leaders.

We have a system where people are forced to outperform their peers constantly.

[Consequently], they will exert that pressure that is being placed on them to their

subordinates. And “to Hell” with their subordinates—because it’s all about them [the

toxic leader and his personal gain]. Our hierarchical system and kind of linear career

progression means that people are looking for opportunities to get a quick advantage so

that they can get that next promotion a year ahead of their peers. There is a concern that

people are going to become backstabbing as the Army gets more competitive. I think most

people will try to stand out on their own as opposed to helping others.

I’ve seen climates that are so palpable—it’s like a building with no ventilation. You’re

like “Jeez, I need to get out of here. This is bad. Morale is bad.” And then the moment

they’re gone [the toxic leader] everything changes 100%.

As a result, some leaders see no reason not to use aggressive and abusive tactics because there

are general no consequences for doing so; at the same time, the reward in terms of power and

promotions can be quite high (Daniel & Metcalf, 2014; Daniel & Metcalf, 2015, in press).

I actually went and talked to one of the 1 Stars about the climate in the organization. He

sent the Inspector General to live at our perimeter for a week, as was the case with many

things unless a commander comes and looks at an organization the report was muddied.

The guy stayed in command, he ended command with flying colors and he was eventually

fired after making Colonel a few years later from the next job where he continued his

antics and then that Commander got involved and ended his career. He still retired

honorably with full benefits.

That’s the Army way. You know I knew General Riley in MDA. I watched his actions and

his antics and how he treated his subordinates in meetings and public. The Army IG or

DoD IG reported such but when someone performs from a higher standpoint, to

Congress he’s a 4 Star. They view him and his performance as doing what he was told to

do under budget or at budget— accomplishing the mission. They're not going to penalize

someone because they are a killer or a toxic leader.

If you look historically over the last two years all the GOs that have been busted by

Congress, you can only demote them to their last rank of successful command. What does

48

that breed across the Army as a whole when you have an officer’s married like two

women and like has just fraudulently taken all kinds of money from the government but

then he's busted down to a 2- Star and allowed to retire? You have everybody on the

other side of the house that’s thinking “well, if he can do that then it's not going to be too

bad [the consequences]. It must be okay if I do it too”.

Either don’t see it or they're just happy to get the results that come from that person and

maybe they're too busy to really pay attention . . . and you know we've got these Army

Values of loyalty and duty, so you do the hard work and you don’t want to whine I guess.

The bottom line is that the resulting damage to the organization’s culture and climate caused by

the toxic leader may last for many years—long after the person has moved on.

We will examine next the recommendations made by the study’s participants about ways for

individuals to respond to a toxic situation, as well as systemic organizational changes that might

be useful.

49

(3) What actions—both individual and systemic—can be taken to minimize or eliminate

this type of destructive leadership?

Recommendations for Individual Responses to Situations Involving a Toxic Leader

Recommendations from the study’s participations about how individuals can most effectively

respond to a situation involving a toxic leader include:

Just “wait it out” knowing that the individual will soon be promoted:

I guess one of the benefits of the Army is every two years you’ve got a new boss. So, a lot

of people are like “okay, if I keep my head down and get through this year and a half to

two years, I’m going to have a new boss and then everything’s going to be all gravy

again. I think a lot of people accept it [toxic leadership] because of that.

The good thing about the military is that you’re going to change your job or your boss is

going to change his job. . . you hold your breath . . . and you think to yourself: I can make

it three months because you know in advance when you’re going to be leaving, so you

hold your breath . . .

You can say [to yourself], “hey, look, I can outlast this guy . . . he only has this much

longer. It will pass.”

Well, there’s just living through it and then there’s trying to be victorious within it. I

don’t consider myself to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, and I’ve worked for a great

number of toxic leaders but I’m still here. Just to live through it, to me, conveys

mediocrity. So I tried to be victorious within it and it was reflected in my evaluations . . .

I was victorious within that toxic environment because I was so scared.

Use the chain of command to report abuse:

The only avenue that I really know of is the IG or the chain of command . . . it depends on

where you are. But if the toxicity is coming from the chain of command, it’s kind of hard

to go complain to the chain of command, though.

Avoid the toxic leader:

You just avoid . . . and you try to stay out of his path and don’t even walk past his office.

If you can understand what their motivations are then you can accomplish what they're

looking to do and essentially stay off their radar.

Identify a person the toxic leader trusts and work through that individual:

Your best bet might be to go around them. What I would personally try and do would be

to look at who their network is, who are their peers, who do they trust, and maybe work

through them.

50

Make it a point to learn what not to do from the toxic leader:

I can guarantee you that whenever I make it to battalion command, I want to be tough but

I will be fair and everybody will get counseled. Everybody will know what their job is. I’ll

take the good that I learned and then take the bad, and mix it up and be a very effective

leader.

I determined then and there [when working for a toxic leader] that at the very least, I was

never going to be one of those types of leaders and that if I could stick around long

enough to have a positive impact on folks, that’s what I wanted to do.

[After working with a toxic leader] I can say “Hey, those are absolutely no’s for me “so I

will make sure I don’t do those things.

When I left [one post], in my out briefing with our senior leader, his boss, I talked to him

about it. I said I had a really hard time working for this guy, and here are some of the

reasons. And he said “yeah, you're right, I know this guy’s a toxic leader. It's no real

secret here; we all know it” . . . then he said, “Learn from it, don’t be that guy. Take the

lessons, mentor people in the future that have these same qualities that you see that work

for you and try to prevent it.” Stop it is basically his advice. So, it was addressed but I

don’t know what he did with it. Probably nothing or maybe he talked to him but will there

be change? I don’t know, this guy’s pretty set in his ways.

I believe that you learn from that situation and learn what not to do. And you take those

lessons learned and you apply them to your future roles, positions, and then that way, you

help protect individuals and learn and build that cohesive, well-organized unit.

Communicate regularly and provide feedback intended to help the toxic leader become

more self-aware of his impact on others:

. . . you try to make them aware of the impact of their actions. For instance, you have a

leader that you know that goes around and is subjecting their soldiers to undue

punishment or is punishing some soldiers more than others. You try to in some way

without rubbing their nose in it make them aware of what the result of their actions are

saying something like “Hey, you know Sergeant Major, it’s my personal opinion that

you're favoring some of these soldiers [over others]. There’s a perception among some of

the troops that you're not really looking out for their best interest and I think when we go

to combat, I think that could end up really hurting our combat readiness”. Then offer to

help them in any way you can.

Check Army regulations to see if his actions are improper or illegal and approach the

problem from that angle:

The first thing I would do is to make sure that whatever activity they’re doing is in

violation of some sort of Army regulation and make sure they are aware of that. If the

behavior continued, then I would feel compelled to go to their supervisor.

51

Provide “cover” for subordinates in order to protect them:

What I tried to do is shield my NCOs from any of it. The command Cos know that I’m

going to try to step up and be the buffer—the one who is going to take that “face shot”,

for lack of better terms.

It was amazing that I didn’t get out [of the Army], but I thought that by being there and

by working with some of the other toxic leaders in the company that I could kind of

protect them. I thought that I’d rather him beat up on me than them. I really felt loyalty to

the soldiers and the guys I was working with . . .

When I get a bad leader I just think to myself “my job now is to shield everybody

underneath me from this individual because I believe I'm strong enough both mentally

and physically to take whatever it is that they have”. And then, at the end of the day, I

only have two years with them. At most it will be two years so I have to do the best that I

can.

. . . you see the toll it’s taking on the soldiers and you say “If I am not here as a buffer,

it’s going to be that much worse for them, so you say to yourself “Can I take it? Can I

take it more? Yeah, I can take it more”. And then people say “Thank you for not leaving.

We know you could have”.

Teach subordinates what “good leadership” looks like and regularly practice it so that

toxic behaviors are not imitated:

Great leaders really take the time to show you what right looks like. They might have not

always been the most how would I say ‘fluffy, or touchy feely of people’… I literally had

a leader who explained it to me…as we are all pushing that ball uphill. It's a boulder.

Some people are the feet, some people are the hands, some people are the brains, some

people are the muscles, but everyone has to contribute, therefore we push the machine

uphill.

File a complaint with the Inspector General (but there is very little confidence in this

channel for resolving problems):

I'm also not very confident in that the IG process would have gotten anything done

immediately. I think the IG have a very tough job and I think too many people use the IG

for the wrong thing and because of it, the IG isn't an effective tool anymore.

Stay focused on one’s underlying reasons for service to the U.S. Army

. . . look past a bad boss and focus on the underlying reasons why you’re serving—to

protect the nation and the Constitution.

52

Recommendations for Systemic Organizational Changes

The study’s participants also offered systemic recommendations about potential leverage

points—changes to the Army’s current systems, policies, and processes that are most likely to

minimize or eliminate toxic leadership in the military. These include:

Increased leader emphasis on and accountability for officer development (e.g. more

mentoring and coaching, more one-on-one conversations, regular feedback on

performance, and the development of reward and recognition mechanisms for officers

who excel in subordinate development and consequences for those who do not);

Changes to the officer evaluation report (e.g. to include input from not only the

individual’s senior officer, but also a random sampling of his peers and subordinates,

plus review and consideration of recent command climate survey data);

Changes to the promotion process (e.g. consider input from multiple levels, examine the

results of command climate surveys, and solicit input from prior senior officers);

Increased emphasis on and accountability for conducting sensing sessions and the

regular use of command climate surveys (e.g. require surveys to be conducted on a

regular basis, act on the data to ensure accountability and improve trust, and increase the

frequency of sensing sessions and on-site visits to units by senior officers so that they

can personally observe the climate and talk with soldiers); and

An expansion of emotional intelligence training to officers at all levels.

Each of these recommendations is discussed further below:

Increased Emphasis on and Accountability for Officer Development

Most successful individuals in any profession have had a mentor, coach, or special supervisor

who invested a great deal of time and effort in that person’s personal development and career

progression. Army Doctrine Reference Publication 7-0, Training Units and Developing Leaders,

herein ADRP 7-0, outlines the Army’s expectations for leader development:

Every Army leader is responsible for the professional development of their subordinate

military and civilian leaders. Leaders execute this significant responsibility by assigning

their subordinates to developmental positions and through training, education, coaching,

and, in special cases, mentoring. Leader development is an investment, since good

leaders will develop not only good training but also good leaders.

Moreover, the U.S. Army Human Dimension Concept (2014) asserts that:

. . . all leaders are charged with the responsibility to develop their subordinates through

coaching, counseling, and mentoring. Developing leaders is critical to building cohesive,

resilient, effective, ethical, and efficient organizations . . .

Despite this emphasis in doctrine, the most recent 2013 CASAL report (Riley, et al., 2014)

indicates as follows:

53

Twenty percent of leaders report that formal and informal performance counseling never

occurs [emphasis added]. When performance counseling is done, only 52% agree that it

was useful for setting goals. Up to 3 in 10 respondents indicate that their immediate

superior does not provide feedback on their work, talk with them about how to improve

performance, or help prepare them for future assignments. Also, 4 in 10 leaders say they

do not currently have a mentor (p. vii).

An aggressive emphasis on formal coaching, mentoring, and educating can have a positive

impact on the developmental process and in future assignments and selection for promotion, a

finding confirmed by the 2013 CASAL report (Riley, et al., p. viii); however, the current system

provides no rewards or recognition for leaders who take the time to mentor and coach their

people. As a result, whether they receive it or not is highly dependent on the interests, skills, and

interest of their specific unit leader.

Not surprisingly, mentoring and coaching, as well as related forms of development, are highly

prized by subordinates at every level:

I actually just finished working with him as his battalion XO. He was a guy that you

could tell that he genuinely cared about your professional development as well as your

cognitive development of abilities… As a Lieutenant he was one of the guys that I would

go to for guidance. He would give me a task and then I would say, “How do you want me

to do it?” and he'd say “go figure it out”. So when I came back to him and said “sir, this

is how I think we can end up doing it”, he would say “sounds great”. I would go out and

if I made mistakes he would expect me to fix them but the way he operated was with me

as a junior soldier is that he gave me time to make mistakes [which] . . . I think greatly

contributed to my development as a leader.

I think what made him a great leader in my eyes [was that] he was very passionate about

what he was doing. At the time it seemed like we all thought he was kind of crazy, but

now, looking back, it was I think his passion for what he was doing, the mission, the

soldiers, and developing his subordinates was just one of the things that I think made him

great. Another thing was he took the time to develop his junior officers and by develop.

He would make sure we were counseled and in those counseling’s, he not only focused on

what we did right [but] he had a way of framing it so that your feelings didn’t get hurt.

He would say, “but this is what I need you, these are the areas you need to work on” and,

in particular, in my case, I found it you know it stung a little bit. But afterwards, you go

back and you think about it you say “okay yeah he's probably right”… So [what made

him great] was his passion, his counseling, and I think his ability just to build the team.

Through their actions, senior leaders must convince their subordinates that that time spent on

developing others (e.g. coaching, mentoring, counseling, and training) is good for their unit, as

well as the Army as a whole. In so doing, they help to seed a culture where each new generation

will see it as a primary responsibility to develop the next generation of soldiers behind them.

Confirming the recommendations made by the 2013 Chief of Staff of the Army Leader

Development Task Force Final Report, it will be important to re-emphasize that the development

of others is the hallmark of a great leader—and that rewards and promotions are based not just

mission accomplishment, but also upon their success in developing people.

54

I think more emphasis on officer development [meaning coaching, counseling,

mentoring] is the only way we're going to be able to do it but--it comes down to time. It

comes down to our battle rhythm . . . that our senior leaders say okay from 10:00 to

12:00 Tuesdays and Thursdays you will not try to accomplish the mission. You will not.

You will not stay past 5:00 in the afternoon so you will accomplish the mission. You will

take those 4 hours a week to develop your officers, or your senior NCOs for them to

develop their subordinates. [Whether this is possible] depends on the unit’s

organizational senior leader. If General Odierno says do it, you will do it. Here's the

thing: we [currently] say develop people, we have monthly counseling— but it's just a

piece of paper. I'm talking about having them go home, read something, come back and

then you have a knockout/drag out conversation about it without anybody getting their

feelings hurt, and then move on. Then you actually start understanding who your

personnel really are. That way you know how to actually lead them different ways

because everybody's different.

I think the great leaders that I've worked for the main attributes they probably possessed

were leaders who developed their subordinates. They took the time to identify their

strengths but also your weaknesses and helped you develop a plan how to improve upon

your weaknesses. They also gave very objective feedback…I think most of the leaders that

I see as good leaders they challenged me. They put me in things that they sometimes took

me out of my comfort level and challenged me to be better. So I think leaders who can see

potential and kind of throw you into that fire to live out that potential. You know caring

leaders that know more about you than the name on your uniform.

Finally, as with any long-term culture change, it will be critical to impose accountability for

those who do not embrace this renewed expectation to meet an existing standard to develop

soldiers:

We’re field grade officers. We have to have the moral courage to step up and if we see

something wrong, we have to do something about it. That’s our job. We have to be sure

the right people are leaving our ranks. And [we have to] hold people accountable at all

levels. When subordinates see that toxic leaders are not held accountable, they lose faith

in the system and that’s why they don’t report things.

When describing a “great leader”, officers in this study repeatedly cite the importance of the

personal interaction with senior leaders that occurs during the mentoring and coaching process as

being extremely important to their development and success; however, “develops others”

continues to be the lowest rated core competency in annual CASAL surveys of leaders across all

levels (Steele, 2011). As Tichy (2002, p. 24) observes:

. . . for winning leaders, teaching is not a now-and-then sideline activity. It is how they

lead and at the heart of everything they do.

55

Changes to the Officer Evaluation Report (OER)

Solicit Input from Peers and Subordinates for OER (plus Senior Officer)

The Army performance evaluation—the process by which individuals are identified and selected

for key positions—appears to be a promising leverage point. OERs are currently based on the

exclusive observations and opinions of superiors but exclude the perceptions of the people who

work with and for them. Reed (2014) refers to the problem as “the monkeys in the trees

syndrome”:

When the high-status monkeys look down, they see bright and smiling monkey faces

beaming back at them. When the lower-status monkeys look up, they have a much

different and less attractive view. [The point is that] what we see depends upon where we

sit.

The system currently rewards the mission accomplishment but does not solicit input about the

leader’s ability to motivate and manage his subordinates, or maintain a positive command

climate. As a result, officers who are effective at getting results are rewarded for their short-term

focus —but officers who are great at developing people are often overlooked.

As noted by Crissman (2013, p. 13), soldiers do what leaders check—and junior leaders do what

senior leaders check. As a result, increased accountability is necessary if the emphasis on

development is actually going to increase (e.g. guidance, emphasis, personal example, spot

checks, rewards and recognition, allocation of time and resources, empowering junior officers to

plan and conduct training, the active sharing of best practices, etc.).

I think that there has to be some change in the way we rate people—not just looking at

their results, but also looking at the means in which they achieved them.

If you look at you know officer promotions within the military, the main thing is your

rater [which is your immediate boss] and your senior rater [which is normally your

boss’s boss] . . . so for me to get promoted, I basically needed to impress them, do what

they said, make them happy and make them look good. If in doing that I maybe ran over

some people, kind of left a little bit of a toxic trail . . . but, once again people, did not

want to be labeled as that person [the troublemaker who ratted someone out] so nothing

was ever said. I would get promoted because in my leader’s eyes I was doing a good job.

I met the mission, I made them look good, I met my numbers. My ratings were good so my

chances of getting promoted are very good.

We've already implemented the 360 [multi-rater] assessments. I don’t think that's a bad

tool, but I don’t think that tool is used properly or taken seriously… There are several

flaws with it: (1)I get to choose who answers for my 360 so I can choose all people who

are in agreement with me so it's on me to look for that honest feedback and then (2) I'm

the only one who gets to see the feedback so I either take it with a grain of salt or just

delete it, or don’t read and respond. I mean there are no repercussions even to respond

to the thing.

That's the problem with the Army . . . if you please your boss, you're doing a great job

and we don’t have any mechanisms in place [to assess your negative impact on your

56

people]. They’ll tell you we have the 360 counseling. Well guess what? I could pick those

who do that. That doesn’t mean anything. Do you think I'm going to pick you if you're

going to say something bad about me? Of course not. I [had] a 99.9 overall rating on my

last one; of course I chose the people who were going to be a part of it. You know now

they're putting in place this commander 360 survey but if that top leader doesn’t take it

seriously and say hey, we've got a problem. What use is it going to be? I just think these

tools that we have in place have been very ineffective and don’t really solve the problem.

Importantly, there is consensus that the OER should ensure input from a broad cross-section of

the leader’s peers and subordinates (in addition to his senior officer), the officer should not be

able to hand-pick the respondents. The process should be more transparent and structured in a

way that the officer does not have undue influence on the feedback that he receives.

The only way to really solve it, of course, is a feedback system from the lower levels.

Higher levels intrinsically can't see it [the toxic behavior]. The only way to really make it

work is to include peer and subordinate reviews. I think you’ve just got to figure out

where a smart cut line is…

There is a big push on mentoring. They tried use the 360 self-assessment that we’re now

required to do as part of our evaluations. Having done it several times now, I've found

that you pick people you think will give you good feedback. I've tried to pick people I

think will bomb too, I definitely put my boss on last one because I wanted to hear what he

had to say about me. But when I went through the process I had to remind people to take

it… I found a lot of people just don’t bother to spend the time to evaluate somebody else

when it comes to the 360 because they’ve got other things on their mind. If they don’t

think the guy’s a total jerk they probably don’t waste the time…

We have not embraced the 360 degree evaluation system because I know there are many

leaders that say “if I put that into effect, my career is over”. So doing 360’s is an

immediate way to get some insight. Then they can target both the promotion board

process and the selection for command process.

We've already implemented the 360 assessments. I don’t think that's a bad tool, I don’t

think that tool is used properly or taken seriously… There are several flaws with it so one

I get to choose who answers for my 360. So I can choose all people who are in agreement

with me. So, it's on me to look for that honest feedback and then I'm the only one who

gets to see the feedback. So I either take it with a grain of salt or just delete it, or don’t

read and respond. I mean there are no repercussions even to respond to the thing.

Officers were also strongly of the opinion that the multi-source assessment report should be

reviewed by their commander.

I don’t think we should be ashamed for our leaders to see [our multisource assessment]

because I think that’s part of how we coach, counsel, and mentor each other. I don’t

think we should get to choose who answers. I also think our right-hand NCO needs to be

either the intermediate rater . . . or they need to be part of it.

57

Consider the Results of Command Climate Surveys and Sensing Sessions

A focus on how missions are accomplished may also create a strong leverage point. To this end,

the data collected from command climate surveys would provide valuable evidence as to the

leader’s impact on his subordinates and provide a more holistic picture of the individual and his

readiness for additional responsibilities (or not).

I think sometimes we keep the bad leaders around and the good leaders say “I don’t want

to be a part of this anymore” and they leave. And then what do you have? You’ve got the

JV team and you’ve got the sub-JV team. That’s not always effective for us.

When soldiers go to a sensing session, they’ve got to have faith that their input at those is

going to be considered . . . that it's not going to be looked at as just whining.

Changes to the Officer Promotion Process

Changes to the promotion process were suggested as a strong leverage point. The key message

from the officers in this study is that information should be considered from many levels—not

just from his senior officers and another level up. Their concern is that their perspective

represents only a partial view of the person’s leadership and potential for increasing assignments.

Our rating system promotes the end results instead of the ways and the means of how

they [the toxic leader] get those results.

Examine Feedback from Multiple Levels

Officers recommended that the promotional process include an examination of feedback from

multiple organizational levels, and not just the individual’s senior officer. Their chief concern if

focused on the fact that the senior officer may not be aware of the individual’s propensity to

“kiss up and kick down”.

Examine Results of Command Climate Surveys

As recommended for the OER changes, the data collected from command climate surveys would

provide valuable evidence about the leader’s impact on his subordinates and should be

considered during the promotion process.

Solicit Input from Former Senior Leaders

Participants also suggested that it might also be useful to contact former supervisors to ask for

their input about the individual’s capabilities and readiness for the particular assignment.

Regardless of how the promotional process is restructured, the overriding point is that it would

be useful to expand the information available to selection boards so that they get a more

complete and holistic picture of the individual’s strengths and weaknesses (and not just the

limited—and often inaccurate—perception of his senior officer). Such a change to these

processes would allow for more informed promotion and evaluation decisions and help to

minimize the number of toxic leaders who progress within the system because their true

character is unknown to their superiors.

58

Increased Emphasis/Accountability for Sensing Sessions and Command Climate Surveys

Regular Command Climate Surveys

If used consistently, the command climate survey could serve as an “early alert system”. As

earlier recommended by Ulmer (2012), consideration should be given to mandatory command

climate surveys at certain time intervals to ensure that officers receive feedback earlier in their

command, and that their superiors receive it as well so that counseling can occur and adjustments

can be made and/or corrective action taken earlier in the process.

More Emphasis on Sensing Sessions via Frequent On-Site Visits by Senior Officers

While there are many different ways for a commander to get feedback, one of the most easiest

and most effective is for senior leaders to get out of their offices and visit their subordinate

commanders with some degree of frequency. Actually touring the unit and talking to the soldiers

will provide the senior leader with a better sense of the command climate and the morale of the

soldiers first-hand.

I would try to tell people this— it's easy to please your boss. That's the easiest thing in

the world to do because you can please your boss, piss off your peers and totally destroy

your subordinates. You can do it and that boss, if he never comes and goes checks to the

left and right and checks below this guy, I mean he could have the most toxic

organization underneath him and that [senior] boss will never know about it. If you want

to know the climate of your organization, talk to the people to your left and right and talk

to the people below. And allow them to be honest, open and objective and then you will

really get to know what your organization is like…

In order for you to see [really see and understand] the people that work for you, you

actually have to get out and either do command climate assessments, and you have to get

out and talk to people . . .

I think higher commanders need to get out of their office and visit lower commanders in a

variety of different circumstances—not just at formal briefings, not just at a few training

events. All they see is what the bad commander is telling them. The Army needs to get

back to management by walking around, sensing what's going on. We tell commanders

that in order to better do a defense, you need to go out and actually do reconnaissance

and see it and walk in this rain to better know what's going on . . . I just think when

division and brigade commanders hear reports [about a problem], they need to stop . . .

and take a little more time to investigate.

Relief of Command if Coaching is Not Effective

Toxic leaders are generally responsive only to those in positions of power. As a result, if senior

leaders impose accountability by actually relieving toxic leaders of their commands, things will

change and those with negative command climates will no longer be successful (nor will their

negative behaviors be imitated) in the Army going forward.

We need to make an effort to show that when the Army has identified a toxic leader,

they’re going to get rid of him—not just move him to another position—but actually get

rid of him. It’s just like if you have a crime wave happening and people are just getting

slaps on the wrist. Well, you’re probably not going to stop the crime. But if some people

59

are going to jail, then other people are going to say well “maybe I need to relook at

myself” or “I might be that toxic leader and the next investigation of a command climate

might be coming down on me” . . .

This is not a new or novel recommendation. As Reed (2004) argues in an article now more than a

decade old:

One of the Army values is respect. By definition, the toxic leader demonstrates a lack of

respect to subordinates. The historically wide band of tolerance for leadership style

should therefore be narrowed to exclude toxic leaders. Relief for cause and poor

evaluations for toxic leadership can be powerful statements of the Army’s changing

expectations [Emphasis added]. Doing so would require expanding the definition of

success beyond short-term metrics to include the health of the organization and the

understanding that unit climate matters because service members and civilians are more

than just means to an end. In such a culture, those who do not foster a positive command

climate will not be successful.

Expansion of Emotional Intelligence Training to Soldiers at All Levels

Officers in this study emphasize the fact that toxic leaders inevitably lack self-awareness and

empathy. To remedy this deficit, participants suggested that emotional intelligence training

should begin with pre-commissioning training and continue throughout the leader’s career path.

I think most toxic leaders don’t wake up and say “I’m going to be toxic” . . . there’s a

lack of self-awareness in toxic leaders. It’s important [for the Army] to say “Here’s a

mirror. You’re not looking so great right now.”

They are not self-aware so they don’t really care what you think. They’re not going to ask

questions about how you feel. They see A to B and really don’t care. Or they see A to D

and don’t care about B and C. They don’t care the impact it has on you and they’re not

going to take the time out to talk to you, to get to know how you’re feeling about it. The

feelings are just not there.

I could have been a much more effective leader had I known some of these things [about

emotional intelligence and personality profile] at a younger time—like at the Lieutenant

time, rather than waiting until I was a Major, but that’s just the way the Army teaches

now, so it’s what we go with . . . but changes are happening.

According to the ADP 6-22:

An Army leader’s self-control, balance, and stability greatly influence his ability to

interact with others. Emotionally mature and competent leaders are also aware of their

own strengths and weaknesses (p. 6-3).

The recommendations made by the 2013 Chief of Staff of the Army Leader Development Task

Force Final Report suggested that the Army needs to help leaders better develop “emotional

intelligence as the quality of empathy” given that empathy was viewed as a requirement for

60

successful command by almost 90% of the respondents to their survey. Moreover, nearly 83% of

the 2011 CASAL Survey respondents (Steele, 2011) indicated that empathy (described as care

and concern for soldiers) “either greatly or largely impacts an individual’s ability to lead

effectively”, a finding which is also anecdotally supported by the results of this current study.

I think that the best solution first is to focus the leadership education of lower level

officers and NCO to talk more about how you actually interact with people. Because we

don’t teach interpersonal skills in any way, shape, or form. And we dance around

emotional intelligence, but we do talk about being self-aware.

The Army’s Leadership Development Strategy does not yet seem to fully address how this goal

will be achieved. Emotional intelligence is also mentioned in the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness

Program and in the Global Assessment Tool, but we have not been able to confirm that any

widespread training currently exists for officers at all ranks.

I don’t think we’ve really provided our lower level leaders the opportunity to learn about

emotional intelligence though an officer basic course for Lieutenants. I think we need to

do that, and maybe even into the NCO corps. We don’t do Myers-Briggs training [either]

. . . At least I didn’t when I was a Lieutenant or a captain and all that other stuff. I think

that would probably also have a good impact in building emotional intelligence too.

It has been suggested elsewhere that training and programs that are focused on the development

of a psychologically fit and self-aware Army (as opposed to exclusively focusing on the

development of a physically fit Army) may actually prove to be the most significant leverage

point in changing the U.S. Army culture (Reivich, Seligman, & McBride, 2011). As the next

generation of officers comes though the Army’s leadership education system, special emphasis

must be placed upon watching for attitudes or behaviors that are even “slightly toxic”.

Instructional leaders must ensure that the officer is made cognizant of the problematic behaviors

so that he does not continue to use them in the future, either in or outside of the military.

The New Grounded Theory and Conceptual Model

Mission accomplishment is the driving focus of the Army and getting results is what leads to an

officer’s future promotions and rewards. Consequently, the emergent theory arising from this

study focuses on the leader’s interpretation of mission accomplishment. Our emergent theory is

that what distinguishes toxic leaders from tough and exceptional leaders is how they interpret

what successful mission accomplishment really means.

When the toxic leader seeks to accomplish the mission, he interprets mission accomplishment

literally and uses a strategy that fails to take into account how the results are attained—a “results

at any cost” approach. His strategy has a short-term emphasis resulting in long-term damage to

both people and the organization, and leads to negative command climate. Paradoxically, the

toxic leader gets results (and personal rewards) largely based on the great sense of duty and

loyalty of his soldiers—the one’s on the receiving end of his toxic behaviors. The overriding

motive of a toxic leader when attempting to accomplish the mission is one of excessive self-

interest—his goal is to achieve personal recognition for getting the job done and to earn the next

promotion.

61

Both tough boss and exceptional leaders are also passionate about mission accomplishment;

however, their approach transcends self-interest. Instead, their strategy embraces a long-term

emphasis that seeks to make decisions that are in the best interest of both their people and the

organization. Just like the toxic leader, both tough and exceptional leaders get results (and

personal rewards) largely based on the great sense of duty and loyalty of their soldiers. The chief

difference is that their approach results in a positive command climate. It also ensures the

development of future leaders and the long-term viability of the Army for the future.

It is possible for each type of leader to get promoted as a result of achieving the mission, and

indeed they do—but the stark difference in their interpretation of successful mission

accomplishment results in radically different outcomes to both the people under their command

and to the Army as a whole.

This rendering of a conceptual model to help explain what we found:

Caution about Using these Results

It should be noted that rather than contributing verified knowledge, grounded theories seek to

offer “plausible explanations” of the data that they have collected (Charmaz, p. 149). As a

result, other researchers clearly may have developed a different understanding of the data given

that “the properties of the categories remain implicit until theoretical sampling and interpretive

62

rendering [of the researcher] make them explicit” (Charmaz, 2006, p. 147). Having said that, we

believe that the theory and conceptual model created as a result of this study has made a

substantial contribution to both knowledge and practice that will, hopefully, prove to be useful to

the U.S. Army and others.

Possible Study Limitations

A sample of 44 participants was included in this study. This sample size significantly exceeded

the range of 20-30 interviews for a grounded theory study recommended by Creswell (1998), the

target of 25 participants suggested by Charmaz (2006, p. 114), and the range of 30-50 advised by

Morse (1994, p. 225); however, we advise caution when generalizing our findings to the Army

at-large or to any other organization. We can only indicate that the data we have is suggestive

and representative of a relatively small—but important—group of mid-grade officers.

These findings represent preliminary information about the scope, nature, and impact of toxic

behavior on an important subset of the U.S. Army. The specificity of the population in this study

represents both strengths and limitations. By limiting the study to more successful and high-

potential military officers, we somewhat control for the influence of malcontents. Conversely,

the sample is not representative of the larger military population. Because most of our

participants were Majors or Captains, the study may portray a conservative estimate of the

frequency and impact of toxic leadership.

Moreover, female officers were underrepresented in the present sample. It also remains unclear if

women would stress alternative aspects of toxic leadership or perceive it in a different way, but it

should be noted that (Steele, 2011) revealed no significant differences about the perceived

seriousness of the toxic leadership problem.

While this study does identify the perceptions of the participants as to the systemic variables that

may influence the presence of toxic leadership in the Army, based on these findings it is not

possible to infer causality. For example, we cannot say with certainty whether it is recruiting

practices, the promotional system, the leadership development training, the current drawdown

environment, limited resources, etc. that are influencing perceptions about toxic leadership.

In addition, the information about toxic leaders may be biased given that the participants are

likely to under-report the negatives because the data obtained are only from the “survivors”—

those who made a decision to stay in the military in spite of the negative circumstances (Reed &

Bullis, 2009). Additionally, care should be taken not to generalize the results to other military

services given that all of the participants in this study were from the U.S. Army.

It should also be noted that this study did not result in a purely objective assessment of toxic

leaders, tough bosses, and exceptional leaders. Our findings represent the perceptions of the

officers interviewed for this study. However, perceptions (even inaccurate ones) are important

because they affect behavior, learning, and ultimately mission accomplishment.

Also unknown is the extent to which the perceptions about toxic leadership, tough bosses, and

exceptional leaders depended upon the particular organization studied—in this case the U.S.

Army—and its unique culture. It is likely that a high selection effect took place in this study.

Participants who see themselves as innocent victims of a toxic leader may be over-represented,

while participants who have personally used toxic behaviors are likely to be under-represented.

63

And finally, as we cautioned previously, other researchers may have interpreted the same data in

a different way. Locke (2002) stresses that a theoretical framework based on a grounded theory

approach should simply be regarded as a “theoretical place-marker” in the development of

thinking about a complex phenomenon. As a result, the usefulness of the findings should be

evaluated based on whether they reveal something substantive about the research topic and can

advance our collective knowledge about negative leadership—which we believe that the study

does.

Suggestions for Future Research

It would be useful to examine the perceptions of Army officers at varying ranks (including both

commissioned and non-commissioned officers) to compare their views to those of the mid-grade

officers who participated in this study. It would also be beneficial to examine differences in the

perceptions of officers from the Air Force, Navy, and Marines to compare and contrast their

views with the findings outlined in this report.

Future studies to examine the link between emotional intelligence and the use of toxic leader

behaviors would be of use. The suggestion to expand training on emotional intelligence bears

further study as well to determine whether or not such training makes any difference in future

levels of negative leadership.

A number of other interesting research questions for the future also include: How do toxic

leaders become senior officers? Are there early warning signals in an individual’s career that

might be predictive of a tendency toward toxicity? What role do subordinates play in the

dynamics of toxic leadership? Do certain types of subordinates encourage or discourage toxic

behaviors? To what extent do subordinates imitate the behavior of a toxic leader in their dealings

with others? Is the toxic leader aware of his behavior? Is it possible to coach a toxic leader to

change and adopt more positive leader behaviors? How does the toxic leader understand and

justify his behavior to himself and others? What factors moderate and mediate the effectiveness

and longevity of a toxic leader’s military career? Do toxic leaders provide any benefit to the

organization? Do the benefits of their actions justify their negative impact on people?

Originality/Value/Implications of the Study

This is one of the earliest empirical studies of its kind which directly explores the perceptions of

Army officers about toxic leaders, tough bosses, and exceptional leaders in a military context,

extending the earlier work of Ulmer, Shaler, Bullis, Snodgrass, Brockman, Jacobs, and Funk

(2011). A better understanding of these distinctions may help the Army identify toxic leaders

earlier so that they can coach them to change or relieve them of command before the damage is

too great. This additional clarity may also help the Army to identify and retain tough bosses—

those leaders who coach, mentor, and develop their subordinates while challenging them to

perform at ever higher levels of excellence to accomplish the mission—which is in everyone’s

best interest. The clearer distinctions are also likely to help ensure that not all negative or poor

leadership is mis-labeled with the stigma associated with being referred to as “toxic”.

The study also identified several contributing factors that may inadvertently promote or

encourage the use of toxic behaviors as a leadership style. And lastly, the study yielded a number

of recommended actions—both individual and systemic—that may be taken to individually

respond to or organizationally address the problem of toxic leaders.

64

Conclusions Toxic leaders are a risk and threat not only to the mission, but to the lives and well-being of the

soldiers under their command. As aptly noted by one of the study’s participants:

In the corporate world if you have a toxic leader, the worst thing that’s going to happen

is they are going to affect the bottom line of the company and people are going to quit. If

you have a toxic leader in the military, people can get killed.

Given that the nature of work and the military employment continues to change in response to

the drawdown currently underway, toxic behaviors are likely to increase as the competition

among officers for a more limited number of future promotions escalates. In order to avoid this,

an accelerated focus on finding, fixing, or eradicating toxic leaders from the U.S. Army is

needed. With solid evidence in hand, it is time to move from awareness and concern to vigorous

and decisive action.

The courageous men and women of the U.S. Army deserve leaders who not only care about the

mission and deliver results—but who also take the time to mentor and care about them as human

beings. However, relieving a toxic leader from his or her command is not the only answer (e.g.

Kusy & Holloway, 2009; Reed & Olsen, 2010). Importantly, it will also be necessary to

simultaneously modify the Army’s organizational systems, policies, and practices in order

achieve the most leverage for positive and lasting culture change (Reed, 2006; Wong, et al.,

2003).

There is reason to be hopeful. As one of the study’s participants put it:

The Army is changing. Toxic leaders are from the old school Army. The stuff they are

teaching us here [at CGSC] is amazing. So I don’t think his type [a toxic leader] has a

place in the Army anymore.

Along with that hope, though, it should also be noted there is some skepticism among officers

about whether the Army is really serious about tackling the problem. They understand that it will

likely result in some hard decisions that are likely to end the long careers of some very high-

ranking leaders:

I don’t think the Army thinks it [toxic leadership] is a problem. I don’t think the military

thinks it's a problem. I think they say it is, but I don’t think they really [believe] it.

. . . a lot of the toxic leaders [in the Army currently] are the ones that are pushing for

people not to be toxic. And so we find that, at least at the Major and Captain ranks, quite

funny. Or at least it’s very ironic that those that think we should be worrying about the

problem are, in fact, the problem. The pot and the kettle are having a nice conversation.

While we understand the skepticism about any large-scale culture change, there is significant

evidence of the Army’s seriousness about improving the quality of its leaders at all levels: the

Army 360/Multi-Source Assessment and Feedback (MSAF) program, the Commander’s

Assessment Tool (CDR 360) program, the Command Climate Survey, Army Training Network,

the L100 Leadership course, Virtual Improvement Center, the Global Assessment Tool, the

65

Master Resiliency Training Course (part of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program), the

Army Career Tracker, and a number of promising pilot programs underway (e.g. Riley, et al.,

2014; Oberlander, 2013; Ackerly, 2013, and many others).

Two other suggestions have been advanced that may have real promise: (1) Box (2012)

recommends the creation of an Advisory Committee of General Officers. As proposed, this

group would consist of retired General Officers, NCOs, Active Duty General Officers, and

Senior Executive Service civilians. Their purpose would be to coach, teach, and mentor all future

brigade and battalion commanders; and Ulmer (2012) recommends the establishment of a

General Officer Steering Committee to oversee the implementation of systemic modifications

and innovations necessary to address the problem of toxic leaders, while simultaneously

enhancing the quality of command climates. And there are undoubtedly other promising

possibilities.

In addition, extensive internal work has been completed on the development of systemic

approaches that will help to improve overall leader quality and, at the same time, reduce the

number of toxic people in senior positions. Just a few (of many) recent examples:

The U.S. Army Human Dimension Concept (2014) contains the results of an extensive

review of the human dimension capabilities and needs of the Army for future

operations and includes a framework for how the Army must select, develop, sustain,

and transition soldiers and civilians for the future.

The Chief of Staff of the Army Leader Development Task Force Final Report (2013)

outlines a comprehensive roadmap of recommended systemic changes based on an

extensive, multi-year review process which consisted of key input from all levels of

the Army.

The U.S. Army Leader Development Strategy (2013) lays out a strategic vision,

mission, and framework for leader development focused on training, education, and

experience, as well as a Leadership Requirements Model for leaders at all levels.

Despite all of the studies and all of the available evidence, the findings tend to simply confirm

what everyone already knows (including this one). We do not suggest that there is an easy fix or

that the problem of toxic leaders will ever be completely solved; however, we hope that

“hearing” the actual words and stories of these officers contained in the interview transcripts will

add some new insights and more urgency to get on with it—to simultaneously and vigorously

implement the systemic changes that are most likely to actually make a positive difference.

It [toxic leadership] is such a big problem that most people say it will take 100 years for

a change and my counter to that is this: but if we wait until tomorrow, it's going to take

100 years and 1 day. The longer we wait to start implementing change, the longer it's

going to take for it to take effect. So let's stop talking about all these things and let's start

doing.

66

Call to Action

To paraphrase a comment made by an officer in this study: the way senior leaders set a positive

example for soldiers is by “doing the hard right over the easy wrong”. Officers who excel at

developing their people while also achieving the mission should be widely recognized and

rewarded.

Conversely, toxic leaders should be identified early so that they can be coached to modify their

destructive tendencies. It will not take many examples of toxic leaders being relieved of

command as a direct result of their toxicity or passed over for promotion because they failed to

develop their soldiers to send an unequivocal message to everyone that the Army is serious about

fixing the problem. Toxic leaders can—and will—change if they understand that there are

career-ending consequences for those who do not.

We hope that the Army’s most senior leaders will agree that there is no need for delay or further

study of the issue—and that it is time to do the hard right and take immediate action to tackle this

problem on multiple fronts. One of the officers in this study reiterated an oft-quoted military

adage that provides a compelling vision for the future:

Mission First. Soldiers Always.

67

Table 1

Alternative Labels and/or Distinctions for the Use of Abusive Tactics at Work

“workplace harassment” (Brodsky, 1976);

“abrasive personality” (Levinson, 1978);

“expansive executive” (Kaplan, 1991);

“petty tyranny” (Ashforth, 1994);

“abusive behavior” (Keashley, Trott, & MacLean, 1994)

“counterproductive-deviant workplace behavior” (Robinson & Bennett, 1995);

“abusive disrespect” (Hornstein, 1996);

“employee emotional abuse” (Keashly, 2001);

“workplace incivility” (Andersson & Pearson, 1999);

“generalized workplace abuse” (Richman, 1999);

“victimization” (Aquino, Grover, Bradfield, & Allen, 1999);

“abusive” (Tepper, 2000);

“perceived victimization” Aquino & Bradfield, 2000);

“workplace bullying” (Namie & Namie, 2000);

“social undermining” (Duffy, Ganster, & Pagon, 2001);

“workplace aggression” (Keashly & Jagatic, 2003);

“unethical or bad leadership (Kellerman, 2004);

“toxic leadership” (Reed, 2004; Lipman-Blumen, 2005);

“abrasive leaders” (Crawshaw, 2005, 2007; Harrison, 2014);

“great intimidators” (Kramer, 2006);

“alpha risk takers” (Ludeman & Erlandson, 2006);

“destructive” (Einarsen, et al., 2007);

“tough bosses” (Daniel, 2009a, 2009b)

“seductive operational bullies (or SOBs)” (Kets de Vries, 2012);

“almost psychopath” (Schouten & Silver, 2012); and

“rationally self-interested leaders” (Barrow, Kolbert, Mirabella, & Roter, 2013).

68

Table 2

Demographic Data of Study Respondents

%

Participants

(N =44) Total # Demographic Questions

Q1 - Gender

95.5% 42 Male

4.5 2 Female

Q2 - Race

9.1 4 Black or African American

0 Asian

4.5 2 Hispanic or Latino

86.4 38 Caucasian

0 0 American Indian or Alaska Native

0 0 Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander

0 0 Two or More Races

Q3 - Age

0 0 21-25 years

43.2 19 26-35 years

52.3 23 36-49 years

2.3 1 50 years or older

2.3 1 No Response

Q4 - Marital Status

9.1 4 Single

72.7 32 Married

4.5 2 Divorced

13.6 6 No Response

Q5 - Education Level

0 0 High School

0 0 Some College

47.7 21 Bachelor's Degree

52.3 23 Graduate Degree

Q6 - Years of Experience

4.5 2 0-9 years

84.1 37 10-19 years

11.4 5 20 or more years

Q7 – Current Rank

2.3 1 Lieutenant Colonel

72.7 32 Major

6.8 3 Captain

9.1 4 Retired

9.1 4 No Response

69

%

Participants

(N =44) Total # Demographic Questions

Q8 – Current Duty Status

86.4 38 Active Duty

4.5 2 Active Reserve

9.1 4 Retired

Q9 – Combat Duty

86.4 38 Yes

13.6 6 No

Q10 –Number of Tours of Combat Duty

31.8 14 1 war

47.7 21 2 wars

6.8 3 3 wars

13.6 6 None

Table 3

Comparison of Toxic Leader vs Tough Boss

Great Leader/Tough Boss Toxic Leader

Cares about soldiers

Gets to know soldiers on a personal basis

Compassionate, supportive and approachable

Pays attention to impact of work on soldier and family

Develops soldiers

Mentors and coaches soldiers

Offers honest and constructive feedback

Communicates openly and frequently

Allows “freedom to maneuver”

Provides family and career counseling

High emotional intelligence

Empathetic

Calm under pressure

Establishes climate of mutual trust and respect

Listens to others

Highly self-aware

Mission-focused results

Leads from the front

High standards for self and others

“Tough but fair” in approach

Long-term emphasis

Positive Command Climate

Cares about self

Actions undertaken so he can look good and “move up” Excessive self-interest/lack of concern for organization Works the system to his personal advantage

Lack of concern for soldiers

Not interested in getting to know soldiers Does not engage in mentoring or coaching Transactional view of soldiers Malicious and abusive

Low emotional intelligence

Incapable of expressing much empathy Frequent emotional outbursts Develops climate of fear Fails to listen to others Lack of self-awareness

Mission-focused results

Gets results in order to get promoted/look good No regard for impact on people Abuse of power/unprofessional conduct Short-term emphasis

Negative Command Climate

71

Table 4

Dimension Behaviors and Attributes of a Toxic Leader Organizational Examples

Cares about self Actions undertaken so he can look good and “move up” Majority of time spent on self-promotion

Excessive self-interest/lack of concern for organization No time spent developing soldiers

Works the system to his personal advantage Lack of integrity/misuse of government resources

Lack of concern for soldiers Not interested in getting to know soldiers Frequently does not even know their names

Does not engage in mentoring or coaching Development of others is not a priority

Transactional view of soldiers Soldiers are de-humanized and viewed as “means to an end”

Malicious and abusive Threats/intimidation/screaming/cursing/blaming/demeaning/demoralizing

Low emotional intelligence Incapable of expressing much empathy Disregard for soldier needs or concerns

Frequent emotional outbursts Lack of self-control and volatile mood swings

Develops climate of fear Unapproachable/highly critical/engages in personal attacks

Fails to listen to others Arrogant/insecure/sees soldier input as threat to his authority

Lack of self-awareness Unaware of impact on others or simply does not care

Mission-focused results Gets results in order to get promoted/look good Superiors see only results but not negative behaviors

No regard for impact on people Failure to provide resources/makes unreasonable demands

Abuse of power/unprofessional conduct Soldiers are loyal and will not let the mission fail

Short-term emphasis Soldiers become demotivated and/or leave

Negative Command Climate

72

Table 5

Dimension Behaviors and Attributes of a “Tough Boss” Organizational Examples

Cares about soldiers Gets to know soldiers on a personal basis Knows my name and the names of my spouse and children

Compassionate, supportive and approachable Takes the time to listen about both work and family issues

Pays attention to impact of work on soldier and family Efficient use of time so that soldiers can “have a life”

Develops soldiers Mentors and coaches soldiers Takes time to show you what “right” looks like

Offers honest and constructive feedback Is candid and direct, but feedback is intended to make you better

Communicates openly and frequently Clearly explains the mission, its purpose, and where you stand

Allows “freedom to maneuver” Uses mistakes as “teaching moments”

Provides family and career counseling Willing to talk about my future and how to prepare

High emotional intelligence Empathetic Makes direct eye contact/has a sense of humor/actively listens

Calm under pressure Always in control of emotions/makes good decisions despite the situation

Establishes climate of mutual trust and respect Leads by example and values soldier input

Listens to others Engages in two-way conversations and really pays attention to us

Highly self-aware Understands self and monitors impact on others

Mission-focused results Leads from the front Never asks of others what he is not willing (and able) to do himself

High standards for self and others Demands excellence in both performance and character/integrity

“Tough but fair” in approach High standards for everyone but always links it back to the mission

Long-term emphasis Constantly balancing mission accomplishment with impact on people

Positive Command Climate

73

Table 6

Dimension Behaviors and Attributes of a Great Leader Organizational Examples

Cares about soldiers Highly personalized caring Knows my name and the names of my spouse and children

Compassionate, supportive and approachable Takes the time to listen about both work and family issues

Pays attention to impact of work on soldier and family Efficient use of time so that soldiers can “have a life”

Develops soldiers Mentors and coaches soldiers Takes time to show you what “right” looks like

Offers honest and constructive feedback Is candid and direct, but feedback is intended to make you better

Communicates openly and frequently Clearly explains the mission, its purpose, and where you stand

Allows “freedom to maneuver” Uses mistakes as “teaching moments”

Provides family and career counseling Willing to talk about my future and how to prepare

High emotional intelligence Empathetic Makes direct eye contact/has a sense of humor/actively listens

Calm under pressure Always in control of emotions and makes good decisions despite the situation

Establishes climate of mutual trust and respect Leads by example and values soldier input

Listens to others Engages in two-way conversations and really pays attention to us

Highly self-aware Understands self and monitors impact on others

Mission-focused results Leads from the front Never asks of others what he is not willing (and able) to do himself

High standards for self and others Demands excellence in both performance and character/integrity

“Tough but fair” in approach High standards for everyone but always links it back to the mission

Long-term emphasis Constantly balances mission accomplishment with impact on people

Positive Command Climate

Appendix I

Design of the Study

Overview of the Method

The design for this study involves a qualitative strategy of inquiry using constructivist, grounded

theory as the method (Charmaz, 2006: Glaser & Strauss, 2009; Glaser, 1978; Strauss, 1987;

Strauss & Corbin, 1990). The constructivist ontological foundation for theory building places

priority on the phenomena of study and sees both data and analysis as created from shared

experiences and relationships with participants and other sources of data (Charmaz, 2006).

Rationale for Method Selection

Lee, Mitchell, and Sabylnski (1999) describe four purposes for qualitative research that have

implications for the study of leadership: theory generation, theory elaboration, theory testing, and

critical theory development. Moreover, the use of a qualitative approach and, specifically, the

selection of grounded theory as a methodology, is strongly advocated for leadership research

(e.g. Van Maanen, 1983; Parry, 1998; Conger, 1998; Bryman, 2004; Conger & Toegel, 2002).

In particular, the method allows for theory that is inductively derived and emerges from, and is

grounded in, the experiences of those living the phenomenon of interest (Glaser & Strauss, 2009;

Glaser, 1978; Strauss, 1987; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). What this means is that the theory is

discovered, developed, and provisionally verified through systematic data collection and analysis

of data pertaining to that phenomenon (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Therefore, data collection,

analysis, and theory development stand in reciprocal relationship with each other.

Conger and Toegel (2002) provide further support for the selection of this approach. They stress

that qualitative methods are an important tool for the study of leadership for three key reasons:

(1) this tool can help us understand how leadership is differentially exercised at various

organizational levels; (2) given that leadership is a dynamic process, qualitative research

methods can add depth and richness that is lacking in data gleaned from questionnaires; and (3)

because leadership is considered by some researchers and theories to be a socially constructed

role, qualitative methods can aid in understanding the construct from multiple perspectives.

Moreover, grounded theory “. . . helps researchers understand complex social processes,” and is

particularly appropriate when exploring relatively new concepts in more depth (Suddaby, 2006;

Conger, 1998). In fact, key paradigm shifts in the study of leadership have come from qualitative

studies (e.g. Conger & Toegel, 2002 citing Bennis & Nanus, 1985 and Mintzberg, 1973).

Grounded theory provides a detailed, rigorous, and systematic method of analysis, which has the

advantage of reserving the need for the researcher to conceive preliminary hypotheses. As a

result, it provides greater freedom to explore the research area and allow issues to emerge

(Bryant, 2002; Glaser, 1978, 1992, 1998, 2001), making it particularly useful in providing

rigorous insight into areas that are relatively unknown by the researcher.

Charmaz (2006, p. 128) explains the importance of theorizing in a grounded theory study as

follows:

Theories flash illuminating insights and make sense of murky musings and knotty

problems. The ideas fit. Phenomena and relationships between them you only sensed

75

beforehand become visible. Still, theories can do more. A theory can alter your

viewpoint and change your consciousness. Through it, you can see the world from a

different vantage point and create new meanings of it. Theories have an internal logic

and more or less coalesce into coherent forms. (Emphasis added)

She also suggests that theorizing “entails the practical activity of engaging the world and of

constructing abstract understanding about and within it” (Charmaz, 2006, p. 128). As a result,

the fundamental contribution of grounded theory methods resides in the fact that it can infuse a

study with the tools to “bring meanings into view” (Charmaz, 2006, p. 129), which was a key

intent of our study.

Finally, as noted by Lee (1999), while qualitative research “is not well suited for issues of

prevalence, generalizability, and calibration,” it is highly useful for purposes such as theory

generation or elaboration. As a result, we decided that this approach was the most appropriate

one for this exploratory study.

Data Collection

Sample Selection

The selection process relied on non-probability, purposive sampling and targeted a specific

population believed to possess knowledge about the topic of toxic leadership (Creswell, 2013).

Specifically, to be included in the study, the participants were required to meet these criteria:

(1) Hold a rank of Sergeant First Class and above, and

(2) Be either currently active or retired within the past five years.

The rationale for restricting participation to officer who met these criteria was founded on our

belief that individuals at more senior ranks would have had more years of service, and therefore

more opportunities to have worked for multiple leaders. We believed that this experience would

provide for a more robust and well-rounded perspective of the problem. We also included only

active or recently retired officers so that the perspectives offered would be limited to the Army as

it exists in its current state.

Semi-Structured Interviews

A series of in-depth interviews with forty-six (44) officers of the U.S. Army were conducted

during the summer and fall of 2014. Thirty-two (32) of the interviews took place in person with

active duty Army Majors and captains attending the Command and General Staff College located

in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Three (3) additional interviews with this group were scheduled

following the site visit and took place by telephone. Nine (9) additional at-large interviews of

officers meeting the required sample criteria were conducted by telephone.

Fourteen (14) questions were used as prompts in an effort to help participants more directly

respond to the primary research questions (see Appendix II). Follow up questions were asked as

necessary to confirm accuracy of understanding and to elaborate on statements of particular

interest. Participants were provided an opportunity at the end of the interview to ask questions or

offer additional comments on related issues that they considered to be important. Interviews

76

continued until the researchers had identified clear signals of data saturation which included

repetition of information and the confirmation of emerging conceptual categories (Suddaby,

2006; Glaser, 1978).

Each interview lasted approximately one hour, was tape-recorded after receiving informed

consent and demographic information from each participant, and was transcribed verbatim by a

professional transcriptionist who had previously signed a confidentiality agreement. The

interviews resulted in written transcripts totaling 464 single-spaced pages, 266,537 words, and

20,405 lines of data for coding and analysis.

Analysis of the Data

The analysis, interpretations, and conclusions about the data were conducted in accordance with

the constructivist, grounded theory methodology outlined by Charmaz (2006), using constant

comparative analysis. The resulting theory is an interpretation given that it is, in part, dependent

on the researcher’s view of the data (Charmaz, 2006). Using this approach gave priority to

showing “patterns and connections rather than to linear reasoning” and did not attempt to

determine causality (Charmaz, 2006, p. 126).

The main components of the grounded theory method include:

Simultaneous involvement in data collection and analysis;

Constructing analytic codes and categories from data, not from preconceived logically

deduced hypotheses;

Using the constant comparison method, which involves making comparisons during each

stage of the analysis;

Advancing theory development during each step of data collection and analysis;

Memo-writing to elaborate categories, specify their properties, define relationships

between categories and identify gaps;

Sampling aimed toward theory construction, not for population representativeness; and

Conducting the literature review after developing an independent analysis.

The doctoral research assistants read the early transcripts from the initial data collection phase

and provided input from their initial coding of the data against which the later coding was

compared. The principal investigators read through all of the transcripts numerous times to

ensure accuracy and then independently coded the data by hand (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The

codes that emerged were reviewed by both authors and the coding process was guided by the

research questions. Any disagreements were resolved through ongoing discussions until

consensus was reached about all codes and categories.

During the process, our central goal was to look for similar patterns of description. As a result,

we systematically compared each new description of great leaders, toxic leaders and tough

bosses with former ones to decide whether it fit into an existing category or represented a new

one. We met frequently to discuss our independent coding of the interview transcripts and the

emerging categories. We also wrote theoretical and interpretative memos about the main themes

that were emerging from our review of the data.

77

During the first cycle of open coding, we held closely to the data and consciously avoided using

categories that were too abstract. This provided us freedom and openness to creatively look for

new ideas and patterns emerging from the data instead of relying on earlier concepts suggested

by other researchers (Charmaz, 2006, pp. 47-48). This phase of the analysis allowed us to

generate preliminary categories.

For the second cycle of axial coding, codes that described similar behaviors were grouped into

more general and abstract units of analysis. This had the effect of reducing the large number of

initial codes (286 discrete codes for tough bosses and 575 discrete codes for toxic leaders) into a

much smaller number of categories—specifically, this cycle resulted in the development of a

total of 18 categories for toxic leaders and 14 categories for tough bosses. This phase of the

analysis allowed us to further abstract the categories and begin to link them.

Analytic memo writing was used to record our observations as we analyzed the data and to

diagram potential relationships between concepts. Memos helped us to capture thoughts, make

comparisons and connections, and also helped to crystallize questions and potential new

directions to pursue (Charmaz, 2006, p. 72). This method of recording research notes—both

conceptually and descriptively—allowed us to link raw data with theoretical thinking and also

assisted in the overall data analysis and reporting. Memo writing forced connections among

concepts and resulted in the discovery of patterns, thereby helping to generate a more complex

theory, rather than just a simple description of the data.

A second review of the existing literature was conducted as a part of the memo sorting process.

This helped to ensure which literature was relevant and if any additional literature should be

included in the study. We answered that question in the affirmative, incorporating some new

studies into the overview of current knowledge on the topic.

In the final phase of theoretical coding and analysis, the data was synthesized and the theoretical

and interpretative memos and categories were integrated. It was at this time that we attempted to

refine the categories into their highest levels of analytical meaning (Strauss & Corbin, 1990,

1994, 1998). This resulted in 5 primary categories for each type of leader. Through this iterative

process, there was a cyclic interplay between data collection, analysis, and theory building

(Parry, 1998). Further abstraction and interpretive rendering resulted in the emergence of the

theory and conceptual model which are discussed at length elsewhere in this report.

Evaluation of the Study’s Results

Qualitative research does not yield quantitative data so it does not follow the same rules for

testing reliability and validity. This does not mean, though, that qualitative research need not be

rigorous in its approach to the evaluation of a study’s results. Strauss and Corbin (1998) provide

eight criteria to assess the empirical grounding of a study:

1. Are concepts generated?

2. Are the concepts systematically related?

3. Are there many conceptual linkages, and are the categories well developed? Do

the categories have conceptual density?

4. Is variation built into the system?

78

5. Are the conditions under which variations can be found built into the study and

explained?

6. Has the process been taken into account?

7. Do the theoretical statements seem significant, and to what extent?

8. Does the theory stand the test of time and become part of the discussions and

ideas exchanged among relevant social and professional groups?

At the conclusion of the study, the research findings were evaluated to ensure the empirical

grounding of the study according to these criteria. With the exception of whether or not the

theory will stand the test of time and become part of future academic conversations (which only

time will tell), we have concluded that these criteria were met. In addition, a completed grounded

theory must meet the following criteria: a close fit with the data, usefulness, and conceptual

density, durability over time, modifiability, and explanatory power (e.g. Glaser, 1967, 1992;

Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The study’s findings were also reviewed to ensure that they were

consistent with this reasoning.

This study resulted in the development of a theory which allows us “to cut through ordinary

explanations and understandings and to attend to certain realities and not to others” (Charmaz,

2006, p. 149), so we also tested the validity of the theory. To do this, it was necessary to

determine “how well that abstraction fits with the raw data” (Strauss & Corbin, 1998, p. 159).

This was done by comparing the conceptual model back to the raw open coding data. Upon

completion of this review, it appeared that the model incorporated and fit well with the raw data.

Caution about Using these Results

It should be noted that rather than contributing verified knowledge, grounded theories seek to

offer “plausible explanations” of the data that they have collected (Charmaz, 2006, p. 149). As

a result, other researchers clearly may have developed a different understanding of the data given

that “the properties of the categories remain implicit until theoretical sampling and interpretive

rendering [of the researcher] make them explicit” (Charmaz, 2006, p. 147). Having said that, we

believe that the theory and conceptual model created as a result of this study has made a

substantial contribution to both knowledge and practice that will, hopefully, prove to be useful to

the U.S. Army and others.

79

Appendix II

Interview Questions

1. I would like you to think about a great leader you have personally known. Without naming

them directly, can you please describe your experiences while working with them?

(Follow up questions as appropriate: What was it about them that made them

exceptional? What was different about them than other leaders for whom you have

worked?)

2. Can you please describe your experiences in which a leader actively crossed the line of

acceptable behavior—both your own personal experience (direct) and situations you have

personally observed or heard about (indirect)?

(Follow up questions as appropriate: Would you tell me about some of these situations?

When did the situation occur? What happened? What was the rank of the individual

involved? What were the contexts of the events (e.g. in a combat zone, on a military base,

etc.)? How did the events unfold? How were the situations resolved?)

3. In a June 2012 article in ARMY, LTG Walter F. Ulmer, Jr (ret) defined a toxic leader as an

individual “. . . . whose behavior appears driven by self-centered careerism at the expense of

their subordinates and unit, and whose style is characterized by abusive and dictatorial behavior

that promotes and unhealthy organizational climate (p. 48)".

Based on this definition, have you ever worked for a toxic leader?

___ Yes

___ No

If “yes”, then these additional questions should be asked:

Do you think the toxic leader specifically targeted you? If so, why?

What were the organizational avenues available for resolving the conflict, if any? Did

you utilize any of them? Why or why not? What was the result?

With the benefit of hindsight, what could you have done differently to minimize or

prevent the abusive treatment?

4. Can you please describe your experiences in which a leader failed to intervene in a situation

of hazing or bullying where s/he was aware that another person had actively crossed the line of

acceptable behavior—both your own personal experience (direct) and situations you have

personally observed or heard about (indirect)?

(Follow up questions as appropriate: Would you tell me about some of these situations?

When did the situation occur? What happened? What were the contexts of the events (e.g.

in a combat zone, on a military base, etc.)? How did the events unfold? How were the

situations resolved?)

80

5. Did you ever seriously consider leaving the military because of the way you personally were

treated by your supervisor or another senior leader?

(Follow up questions as appropriate: Why? What happened? What were the contexts of

the events (e.g. in a combat zone, on a military base, etc.)? How did the events unfold?

How were the situations resolved?)

6. Did you ever witness an individual being promoted to a position of increased responsibility

who was widely known to subordinates to be a toxic leader?

(Follow up questions as appropriate: Why do you think this decision was made? What

were the person’s strengths and limitations?)

7. How do you differentiate toxic leadership from other types of interpersonal conflict (e.g. how

is toxic leadership different from hazing and/or bullying)?

8. What do you see as the differences between a “tough boss” (e.g. an individual with high

expectations who is simply managing for results) and a toxic leader?

9. In your opinion, what are the best strategies for dealing with a toxic leader? If s/he is your

direct supervisor or the superior of your boss, does your answer change? If so, how?

10. Is there anything about the military workplace environment (e.g. organizational culture,

leadership style, policies, rules, norms, etc.) that tends to promote toxic behaviors?

11. Do you think that the military tolerates and/or promotes individuals who engage in this type

of behavior?

12. If you think the military has a problem with toxic leadership, what actions can or should be

taken to systemically address this problem, if anything?

13. In your judgment, are toxic leadership behaviors ever useful or appropriate (e.g. in a combat

situation, etc.)?

14. Based on our discussion today, are there any topics or issues that you would like to revisit or

discuss further? Or are there additional comments or perspectives you would like to share?

81

Appendix III

Additional Participant Commentary about Exceptional Leaders

Great leaders really took the time to show you what right looks like. They might have not

always been you know the most how would I say fluffy, or touchy feely of people… I

literally had a leader who explained it to me…as all pushing that ball uphill, it's a

boulder. Some people are the feet, some people are the hands, some people are the

brains, some people are the muscles but everyone has to contribute, therefore we push

the machine uphill.

What's most common I think is that ability to establish trust between themselves and their

subordinates. I used to call it compassion in leadership before I was really I think taught

some of the more formal terms for it… who were approachable, who demonstrate that

they really cared about the welfare of the individual so that's where when people say is it

mission first or men first you get the response it's mission first, men [soldiers] always.

I've really had two exceptional leaders that I thought were just outstanding… One of the

things that I really learned here at school is about mission command and really being

able to trust leaders… I was in a position of responsibility within those two organizations

with these two leaders and even though I was young in that certain position they were

able to trust me and then help guide me through what I needed to do to make the

organization successful. So really the biggest thing is that trust factor, allowing your

subordinates to take an idea, run with it and kind of that decentralized execution portion

of mission command… I guess what we call EI or EQ to be able to see that in

subordinates and say “okay, this is what he needs now and this is what he needs, this

type of mentorship is what he needs at this point in time in his career or at this point in

time in this problem that we're solving or at this other problem that we're dealing with

this is the type of mentorship that he needs”.

One of the best leaders I've ever had he was very empowering, he was very kind, he was

genuine, he would tell you his expectations and he would tell you immediately if you were

meeting them or not meeting them but he never did it in a judgmental way… You could

tell that he actually cared about people and he didn’t just pretend. He actually said less

about how much he cared about you than any of the other leaders I ever had, but you

knew that he did care about you.

He cared for all of us, for the soldiers, for the officers, he took time out of his day to go

around and check and see how we were doing and would take time in tasks he would give

us instead of just saying do this and get it done when you would bring it back he would

coach you through it, he would talk to you about some of the things and ask you what

problems you had along the way. He was what I would think as also a good inspirational

leader so he knew how to really reach out, reach the core of leadership… And those were

really the things that stood out most to me is that he cared and that he was able to inspire

and motivate us to do things.

He was really in to make sure that you know as Lieutenants we actually knew our job I

mean not only just you know not just you're technical aspect of your job whatever but

82

what you need to do to actually be good soldiers and stuff and not only that part too but

also your family life.

Trust is big; basically trusting me to do my job and then at the same time knowing that

I'm going to trust them to do their job. Not just allow me to go do my job but making sure

I had the tools and resources, the training to do my job. Communication is very

important as well, basically be clear, concise with what they wanted me to do and then

making sure that I understood I knew their intent and then not only that just personal

skills, you know yeah most of it was interaction about the job but still getting to know me

for who I was, whether it's talking about sports or whatever it is so that way I'm not just a

number… This individual you know he wouldn’t ever curse at you, if he was mad he

wouldn’t belittle you or degrade you but he would be like well we need to work more on

this or we need to get a little bit better with this. So all of those things were very

important.

A leader I thought was really good, really focused on what the unit needed as a whole, I

guess you would say created a vision. Spent a lot of time getting that to be a joint vision

and spent a lot time communicating with his leaders in a leadership within the unit to

help drive that common goal…. He was personable, he was intelligent. I also enjoyed the

fact that it seemed like whenever there was a problem situation something went wrong he

didn’t seem to lash out. [Instead], he seemed to step back and say, “let's think about it,

let's discuss it, okay now let's talk about it, let's figure out what happened”. Not that

someone wouldn’t necessarily get in trouble, but he tried to approach it from a more

thought out perspective instead of just an initial reaction to something.

The core is a sense of empathy but not just an “oh come in my office cry on my shoulder”

but just an ability to actually communicate with other individuals and be able to see

things from their perspective and understand where all the parties are coming from.

It's not so much the specific things that he did but rather I think the thing that really

caught me and caught a lot of the officers in the organization was the climate that just

not really it wasn’t the physical presence of where we were at you know that wasn’t a

very nice area but rather the net environment of the job that we went to everyday was

very inviting. It was not the hit the nail, it wasn’t a feeling of despair when you went to

work. People actually wanted to go to work and do a good job because we knew that we

were part of a team and what we did mattered… He fostered that in a way, the way that

he led but mostly the way that he empowered his subordinates to do their job. I think that

was really a better - not as physical place because we worked ourselves to death but we

did it knowing that it was for something better than ourselves… He had individual

conversations with us. He would field our problems. He wouldn’t wait for the brigade or

battalion commander to come around and let him know he would just go direct to that

person and follow up with a discussion so the squadron commander, battalion

commander, the XO for that unit…letting us do our jobs and being very flexible when it

came to that sort of thing. That is kind of actually the whole idea behind why he was a

good leader and how it did provide a good leadership… His command philosophy, his

objectives for the deployment to train them, were all very clearly articulated so

communication is probably a big part of the success achieved and a substantial

83

instrument. That’s just about it, trust, communication, he’s got a nice commander

philosophy up front and then he would just give us the baton and let us operate.

I think probably what I appreciated about them the most was their ability to stay calm

under pressuring circumstances. They were able to see the big picture and I would say

the long picture. So I guess they’d encountered enough situations in their careers that

worked out that they could see and keep things in perspective… I think mostly just calm

under fire and very intelligent and have the ability to kind of bring out the best in me…

Their desire to mentor as well - they actually took the time to ask me how I was doing,

how my family was doing, and then just gave me things to think about for the future. It

wasn’t always just current mission focus but it was what are you thinking about doing

next? They would kind of link me up with people that could possibly assist me in my goals

He was one of those leaders that took you out of your comfort zone, made you strive for

excellence and you know if you tripped he might you know kind of give you a little bit of a

spanking it was not you're terrible I'm going to end your career type it was hey you’ve

made a mistake I'm going to help you improve yourself and he took a personal effort for

all the leaders but especially the company commanders which were two levels below him.

He really focused on getting company commanders to better themselves and I think it was

because he knew that you know everything kind of floated around company commander

so if he made company commanders better the unit as a whole would excel and you know

he wanted to be successful in our mission.

A great leader first of all sets a command climate that’s open that allows interchange of

ideas. You understand that eventually the buck stops with that person but that’s often

about the pros and cons of decisions being made as time permits. Then they're also very

honest and they're forthcoming and they're open. They don’t hide things from you. They

don’t keep things close to the chest. You're not trying to always figure out where you

stand. They make it clear where you stand. They create fair if sometimes demanding

requirements of you but they link it back to the mission or the vision they create. The best

leaders are those that have a vision, they can give vision to adequately describe it to you,

get you to buy into it and then you want to help complete that vision because you own a

piece of it. And finally those leaders that set an example for you and where the care

results at a fitness level, their character and other things that are kind of tangible and

intangible about the way you see a person.

He was one of those that you know they led from the front; in other words for example we

had a leak in the barracks where we stayed, he came in, he called people, they couldn’t

get there for a while so he was right there with us rolling up his sleeves in his uniform

and grabbed a mop and a mop bucket and Started helping fix up. So he was one of those

that you know even though he was in a leadership position he would not ask anything of

you that he would not ask of himself, also very intelligent, very compassionate, but also

very tough… There was really no hidden agenda and he always fought for the soldiers, in

other words, he was not afraid to go up against other senior leaders if he thought it was

best for the soldiers that he did.

The guy was kind. He listened to what we had to say, always made up his mind after

hearing both sides of the story and everybody was happy working for him.

84

Every one of them demonstrated well what we used to know in the old school as being a

new mentality of leadership. They lived the example we’re supposed to so you know they

weren’t, they didn’t tell you something to do that they haven't done before or that was

unrealistic but they were all very I wouldn’t say rigid, they were very structured, loved

what they did, and they were fair.

It was an environment where you wanted to come to work. You didn’t mind getting up in

the morning and putting on your boots and coming in and executing your function and

not only did you know did you not have a problem about coming in you wanted to. [What

made them exceptional was that they gave you] J-1: Freedom of maneuver. Management,

but not micromanagement. Counseling but not belittling . . . positive feedback. You know

positive, constructive criticism instead of destructive criticism…

85

References

Ackerly, B. (2013, September 26). Army implements new self-awareness program for

commanders. Retrieved from

http://www.Army.mil/article/134580/Army_implements_new_self_awareness_program_f

or_commanders/

American Institute of Stress (2014). Workplace stress. Retrieved from

http://www.stress.org/workplace-stress/

Andersson, L.M., & Pearson, C.M. (1999). Tit for tat? The spiralling effect of incivility in the

workplace. Academy of Management Review, 24, 452-471.

Aquino, K. (2000). Structural and individual determinants of workplace victimization: The

effects of hierarchical status and conflict management style. Journal of Management, 26

(2), 171 – 193.

Aquino, K., & Bryon, K. (2002). Dominating interpersonal behavior and perceived victimization

in groups: Evidence for a curvilinear relationship. Journal of Management, 28(1), 69-87.

Aquino, K., & Bradfield, M. (2000). Perceived victimization in the workplace: The role of

situational factors and victim characteristics. Organization Science, 11, 525-537.

Aquino, K., Grover, S., Bradfield, M. & Allen, D. (1999). The effects of negative affectivity,

hierarchical status, and self-determination on workplace victimization. Academy of

Management Journal, 42, 260-272.

Army Doctrine Publication 6-22 (2012, August). Army leadership. Retrieved from

http://Armypubs.Army.mil/doctrine/DR_pubs/dr_a/pdf/ADRP6_22_new.pdf

Army Doctrine Reference Publication 7-0 (2012, August). Training units and development

leaders. Retrieved from

http://Armypubs.Army.mil/doctrine/DR_pubs/dr_a/pdf/adrp7_0.pdf

Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Service Members (2014). Retrieved from

http://www.ArmyStarrs.org/.

Ashforth, B.E. (1994). Petty tyranny in organizations. Human Relations, 47, 755-778.

Aubrey, D.W. (2012). The effect of toxic leadership. U.S. Army War College. Retrieved from

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/Army-usawc/aubrey_toxic_leadership.pdf

Barrow, L.M.S., Kolberg, S., Mirabella, J. & A. Roter (2013). Are rational self-interested

leadership behaviors contributing to the workplace bullying phenomenon in Canada and

the United States. American Journal of Industrial and Business Management, 3(6A).

86

Bass, B.M. & Steidlmeier, P. (1999). Ethics, character and authentic transformational leadership

behavior. Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 181-217.

Bennis, W. & Nanus, B. (1985). Leaders: The strategies for taking charge. New York: Harper &

Row.

Box, J. (2012). Toxic leadership in the military profession. Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army

War College.

Brodsky, C.M. (1976). The harassed worker. Toronto, ON: Lexington Books.

Bryant, A. (2002). Re-grounding grounded theory. Journal of Information Technology: Theory

and Application, 4(1), 25-42.

Bryman, A. (2004). Qualitative research on leadership: A critical but appreciative review. The

Leadership Quarterly, 15, 729−769.

Burns, J.M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.

Chamorro-Premuzik (2014, April 2). When the boss needs people skills. Chief Learning Officer.

Retrieved from http://www.clomedia.com/articles/when-the-boss-needs-people-skills

Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative

analysis. London: Sage.

Chief of Staff of the Army Leader Development Task Force Final Report (2013). Retrieved from

file:///C:/Users/Teresa%20A%20Daniel/Desktop/CSA%20LDTF%20Final%20Report%2

0062113%20(2).pdf.

Conger, J., & Toegel, G. (2002). Action learning and multi-rater feedback as leadership

development interventions: Popular but poorly deployed. Journal of Change

Management, 3(4), 332-348.

Conger, J.A. (1998). Qualitative research as the cornerstone methodology for understanding

leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 9, 107-121.

Corbin, J., & Strauss, A.L. (1990). Grounded theory research: Procedures, canons, and

evaluative criteria. Qualitative Sociology, 13(1), 3–21.

Crawshaw, L. (2005). Coaching abrasive executives: Exploring the use of empathy in

constructing less destructive interpersonal management strategies. Doctoral Dissertation,

Fielding Graduate University. Retrieved from http://www.bosswhispering.com/Coaching-

Abrasive-Executives.pdf.

Creswell, J. (2013). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

87

Creswell, J. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Crissman, D.C. (2013, May-June). Improving the leader development experience in Army units.

Military Review. Retrieved from

http://usacac.Army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_201306

30_art005.pdf.

Daniel, T.A. & Metcalf, G.S. (2015, in press). Stop bullying at work: Strategies and tools for

HR, legal & risk management professionals, 2nd

edition. Alexandria, VA: SHRM Books.

Daniel, T.A. & Metcalf, G.S. (2014). Taming the beast: How American corporations unwittingly

conspire to make workplace bullying a rational choice, 9th International Conference on

Workplace Bullying and Harassment, Universita Degli Studi Di Milano, Milan, Italy,

June 17 – 20, 2014. Retrieved from http://users2.unimi.it/bullying2014/

Daniel, T.A. (2013, July). Executive Success and the Increased Potential for Ethical Failure,

SHRM Quarterly Legal Report. Retrieved from

http://www.shrm.org/LegalIssues/EmploymentLawAreas/Documents/Legal%20Report07

13.pdf?homepage=marquee

Daniel, T. A. (2009a). Tough boss or workplace bully? A grounded theory study of insights from

human resource professionals. Doctoral Dissertation, Fielding Graduate University.

Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/305169091?accountid=25340.

(305169091).

Daniel, T.A. (2009b). Stop bullying at work: Strategies and tools for HR & legal professionals.

Alexandria, VA: SHRM Books.

Deepli, H. (2012, February 19). Asian-Americans in military face routine racial slurs, bullying.

Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved from http://www.adn.com/2012/02/19/2326619/asian-

american-soldiers-face-all.html

DeVol, R. & Bedroussian, A. (2007). An unhealthy America: The economic burden of chronic

disease. Santa Monica, CA: The Milken Institute.

Doriane, B. & Manon, D. (2013). Toxic leadership: An understanding on how a business

environment is “contaminated” by leaders. Master’s Thesis. Retrieved from

http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:626936/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Doty, J. & Fenlason, J. (2013, January-February). Narcissism and toxic leaders. Military Review,

55-60.

Douglas, D. (2003). Inductive theory generation: A grounded approach to business inquiry.

Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods, 2(1), 47-54.

88

Duffy, M.K., Ganster, D.C. & Pagon, M. (2001). Social undermining in the workplace. Academy

of Management Journal, 45(2), 331-351.

Einarsen, S., Schanke, M., Aasland, M., & Skogstad, A. (2007). Destructive leadership: A

definition and conceptual model. Leadership Quarterly, 3, 207-216.

Einarsen, S. (2000). Bullying and harassment at work: A review of the Scandinavian approach.

Aggression and Violent Behavior, 5, 379–401.

Elle, S.A. (2012). Breaking the toxic leadership paradigm in the U.S. Army. Carlisle Barracks,

PA: U.S. Army War College.

Glaser, B.G. (1978). Theoretical sensitivity: Advances in the methodology of grounded theory.

Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press.

Glaser, B.G. (1992). Basics of grounded theory analysis. Mill Valley, CA: The Sociology Press.

Glaser, B.G., with the assistance of W. Douglas Kaplan (Ed.) (1998). Gerund grounded theory:

The basic social processes dissertation. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press.

Glaser, B.G. (2001). The grounded theory perspective: Conceptualization with description. Mill

Valley, CA: Sociology Press.

Glaser, B.G. (2007). Doing formal grounded theory: A proposal. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology

Press.

Glaser, B.G., & Holton, J.A. (2007). The grounded theory seminar reader. Mill Valley, CA:

Sociology Press.

Glaser, B.G., & Strauss, A.L. (1965). Awareness of dying. Chicago: Aldine.

Glaser, B.G., & Strauss, A.L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory. Chicago: Aldine.

Glass, D.C. (1977). Behavior patterns, stress, and coronary disease. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Glomb, T.M. (2002). Workplace aggression: Informing conceptual models with data from

specific encounters. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 7(1), 20–36.

Grubb, P.L., Roberts, R.K., Grosch, J.W., & Brightwell, W.D. (2004). Workplace bullying:

What organizations are saying. Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal, 8(2).

Retrieved from

http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilw/erepj/abstracts/v8n2/GrubbRobertsGroschBrightwellabstract

.html.

Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1989). Fourth generation evaluation. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

89

Guba, E.G., & Lincoln, Y.S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In Denzin,

N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds.). Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 105-118). Thousand

Oaks, CA: Sage.

Harrison, L. (2014). “Perfect storm”—Exploring the phenomenon of abrasive leadership.

Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Saybrook University.

Haslam, S.A., Reicher, S.D., & Platow, M.J. (2010). The new psychology of leadership: Identity,

influence, and power. New York: Psychology Press.

Hornstein, H.A. (1996). Brutal bosses and their prey: How to identify and overcome abuse in the

workplace. New York: Riverhead Books.

IMDb (Online). Full metal jacket. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093058/

Jaffe, G. (2011, June 25). Army worries about ‘toxic leaders’ in ranks. Washington Post.

Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/Army-

worries-about-toxic-leaders-in-rank.

Kaplan, R. (1991). Beyond ambition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Keashly, L., & Jagatic, K. (2003). By any other name: American perspectives on workplace

bullying. In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf & C. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and emotional

abuse in the workplace: International perspectives in research and practice. London:

Taylor & Francis.

Keashly, L. (2001). Interpersonal and systemic aspects of emotional abuse at work: The target’s

perspective. Violence and Victims, 16 (3), 233-268.

Kellerman, B. (2004). Bad leadership: What it is, how it happens, why it matters. Boston:

Harvard Business School Press.

Kets de Vries, M.F.R. (2014, April). Coaching the toxic leader. Harvard Business Review.

Retrieved from http://hbr.org/2014/04/coaching-the-toxic-leader/ar/1.

Kets de Vries, M.F.R. & Miller, D. (1984). Narcissism and leadership: An object relations

perspective. Human Relations, 38, 583-601.

Kipnis, D., Castell, P.J., Gergen, P.J. & Mauch, D. Metamorphic effects of power. Journal of

Applied Psychology, 61, 127-135.

Kohut, M. (2008). Complete guide to understanding, controlling & stopping bullies & bullying

at work: A complete guide for managers, supervisors, and co-workers (pp. 135-150).

Ocala, FL: Atlantic Publishing Company.

Kramer, R.M. (2006). The great intimidators. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from http://hbr.org/2006/02/the-great-intimidators/ar/1.

90

Krasikova, D.V., Green, S.G. & LeBreton, J.M. (2013). Destructive leadership: A theoretical

review, integration, and future research agenda. Journal of Management, 39(5), 1308-

1338.

Kusy, M. & Holloway, E. (2009). Toxic workplace! Managing toxic personalities and their

systems of power. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Lee, T. W. (1999). Using qualitative methods in organizational research. Thousand Oaks, CA:

Sage.

Lee, T. W., Mitchell, T. R., & Sablynski, C. J. (1999). Qualitative research in organizational and

vocational psychology: 1979–1999. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 55,161-187.

Levinson, H. (1978, May-June). The abrasive personality. Harvard Business Review, 86-94.

Lewis, D. & Rayner, C. (2003). Bullying and human resource management: A wolf in sheep’s

clothing? In S. Einarsen, H. Hoel, D. Zapf & C. Cooper (Eds.), Bullying and emotional

abuse in the workplace: International perspectives in research and practice. London:

Taylor & Francis.

Lincoln, Y.S., & Guba, E.G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Lipman-Blumen, J. The allure of toxic leaders: Why we follow destructive bosses and corrupt

politicians—and how we can survive them. New York: Oxford University Press.

Locke, K. (2002). The grounded theory approach to qualitative research, in F. Drasgow & N.

Schmitt (Eds.), Measuring and analyzing behavior in organizations: Advances in

measure and data analysis (pp. 17-43). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Ludeman, K., & Erlandson, E. (2006). Alpha male syndrome. Boston, MA: Harvard Business

School Press.

Luthans, F., & Avolio, B. J. (2003). Authentic leadership: A positive developmental approach. In

Cameron, K.S., Dutton, J.E. & R.E. Quinn (Eds.), Positive organizational scholarship

(pp. 241-261). San Francisco7 Barrett-Koehler.

Ma, H., Karri, R., & Chittipeddi, K. (2004, July-August). The paradox of managerial tyranny.

Business Horizons, 47(4), 33-40.

Magee, J.C., & Langner, C.A. (2008). How personalized and socialized power motivation

facilitate antisocial and prosocial decision-making. Journal of Research in Personality,

42(6), 1547-1559.

Matsuda, D. (2014, May 24). A Study of Army Suicides in Iraq in 2010 in 2014 Context.

Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140524145604-76082895-a-study-of-

army-suicides-in-iraq-a-2010-study-in-2014-context.

91

McClelland, D.C. (1975). Power: The inner experience. NY: Irvington.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary (Online). Definition of the word “toxic”. Retrieved from

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/toxic.

Miles, D. & Marshall, T.C. (2011). Dempsey: Bullying ‘intolerable’ in military. U.S. Department

of Defense Website. Retrieved from

http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=86590.

Mintzberg, H. (1973). The nature of managerial work. New York: Harper & Row.

Morse, J.M. (1994). Designing funded qualitative research. In Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S.

(Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd

ed., pp. 220-235). Thousand Oaks, CA:

Sage.

Namie, G., & Namie, R. (2000). Workplace bullying: The silent epidemic. Employee Rights

Quarterly, 1(2), 1–12.

Oberlander, D.M. (2013). Negative leadership. U.S. Army War College. Retrieved from

file:///C:/Users/Teresa%20A%20Daniel/Desktop/ADA589886.pdf

Ostvik, K. & Rudmin, F. (2001). Bullying and hazing among Norwegian Army soldiers: Two

studies of prevalence, context, and cognition. Military Psychology, 13(1), 17-39.

Padilla, A. Hogan, R. & Kaiser, R.B. (2007). The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible

followers, and conducive environments, Leadership Quarterly, 18(3), 176-194.

Parry, K.W. (1998). Grounded theory and social process: A new direction for leadership

research. Leadership Quarterly, 9(1), 85-105.

Pelletier, K. L. (2010). Leader toxicity: An empirical investigation of toxic behavior and rhetoric.

Leadership, 6(4) 373-389.

Reed, G.E. (2014). Toxic leadership, unit climate, and organizational effectiveness. Air & Space

Power Journal, 36(3). Retrieved from

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/apjinternational/apj-s/2014/2014-

3/2014_3_03_reed_s_eng.pdf

Reed, G.E. & Olsen, R.A. (2010). Toxic leadership: Part deux. Military Review, 58-64. Retrieved

from

http://usacac.Army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_201012

31_art011.pdf

Reed, G.E. (2006, May-June). Leadership and systems thinking. Defense AT & L. Retrieved from

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/dau/ree_mj06.pdf

Reed, G.E. (2004). Toxic leaders. Military Review, 67-71. Retrieved from

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/milreview/reed.pdf

92

Reed, S.F. (1993). The toxic executive. New York: Harper Collins.

Reed, G.E. & Bullis, R.C. (2009). The impact of destructive leadership on senior military

officers and civilian employees. Armed Forces & Society, 36, 5-15.

Reivich, K.J., Seligman, M.E.P., & McBride, S. (2011). Master resilience training in the U.S.

Army. American Psychologist, 66(1), 25-34.

Richman, J.A. (1999). Sexual harassment and generalized workplace abuse among university

employees: Prevalence and mental health correlates, American Journal of Public Health

89, 358-363.

Riley, R., Hatfield, J., Freeman, T., Fallesen, J.J., & K.M. Gunther (2014). Technical Report

2014-01, 2013 Center for Army Leadership Annual Survey of Army Leadership (CASAL):

Main findings technical report 2014-01. Retrieved from

http://usacac.Army.mil/cac2/CAL/repository/2012CASALMainFindingsTechnicalReport

2013-1.pdf.

Robinson, S.L., & Bennett, R.J. (1995). A typology of deviant workplace behaviors: A multi-

dimensional scaling study. Academy of Management Journal, 38, 555–572.

Saunders, M. Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2009). Research methods for business students (5th

Ed.). Harlow, England: Prentice Hall.

Schilling, J. (2009). From ineffectiveness to destruction: A qualitative study on the meaning of

negative leadership. Leadership, 5(1), 102-128.

Schouten, R. & Silver, J. (2012). Almost a psychopath: Do I (or does someone I know) have a

problem with manipulation and lack of empathy? Boston: Harvard University Press.

Sieczkowski, C (2011, December 22). Denny Chen suicide: 8 soldiers charged with racial

bullying. International Business Times. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.com/danny-

chen-suicide-8-Army-soldiers-charged-racial-bullying-video-386630

Smith, J. & Dunworth, F. (2003) Qualitative methodology. In J. Valsiner and K. Connolly (Eds.,

Handbook of developmental psychology (pp. 603-622). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Steele, J.P. (2011). Technical Report 2011-3: Antecedents and consequences of toxic leadership

in the U.S. Army: A two year review and recommended solutions. Ft. Leavenworth, KS:

Center for Army Leadership. Retrieved from

http://usacac.Army.mil/CAC2/Repository/CASAL_TechReport2011-

3_ToxicLeadership.pdf.

Strauss, A.I.& Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for

developing grounded theory (2nd

Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

93

Strauss, A.I. & Corbin, J. (1994). Grounded theory methodology: An overview. In Denzin, N.K.

& Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 273-285). Thousand Oaks,

CA: Sage.

Strauss, A.I. & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures

and tasks. London: Sage.

Strauss, A.I. (1987). Qualitative analysis for social scientists. New York: Cambridge University

Press.

Strauss, A.I. & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and

techniques (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Suddaby, R. 2006. What grounded theory is not. Academy of Management Journal, 49, 633- 642.

Sutton, R.I. (2007). The no asshole rule: Building a civilized workplace and surviving one that

isn’t. New York: Warner Business Books.

Tan, M. (2011, October). Rooting out toxic leaders. Army Times, 24-25.

Tate, J. (2013, August 21). Judge sentences Bradley Manning to 35 years. The Washington Post.

Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/judge-to-

sentence-bradley-manning-today/2013/08/20/85bee184-09d0-11e3-b87c-

476db8ac34cd_story.html.

Tepper, B. (2000). Consequences of abusive supervision. Academy of Management Journal, 43,

178-190.

The Invisible War (2012). Retrieved from http://www.invisiblewarmovie.com/

Tichy, N.M. (2002, with Cohen, E.) The leadership engine. New York: HarperCollins.

Ulmer, W.F. J. (2012, June). Toxic leadership. Army, 47-52.

Ulmer, W.F.J., Shaler, M.D., Bullis, R.C., Snodgrass, W.M., Brockman, D., Jacobs, T.O., &

Funk, P.E. (2011). Leadership lessons at division command level – 2010: A review of

division commander leader behaviors and organizational climates in selected Army

divisions after nine years of war. Carlisle Barracks, PA: United States War College.

Ulmer, W.F. J. (1998). Military leadership in the 21st century: A “bridge too far”? Parameters.

Retrieved from

http://strategicstudiesinstitute.Army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/98spring/ulmer.htm.

U.S. Army Human Dimension Concept (2014). Retrieved from

http://www.tradoc.Army.mil/tpubs/pams/TP525-3-7.pdf

U.S. Army Leader Development Strategy (2013). Retrieved from

http://usacac.Army.mil/cac2/cal/repository/ALDS5June%202013Record.pdf

94

Van Maanen, J. (1983). Epilogue: Qualitative methods reclaimed. In J. Van Maanen (Ed.),

Qualitative methodology (pp. 247−268). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Whicker, M.L. (1996). Toxic leaders: When organizations go bad. Westport, CT: Quorum

Books.

Wikipedia (Online). Blue wall of silence. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_wall_of_silence.

Wikipedia (Online). Line-crossing ceremony. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-

crossing_ceremony

Williams, D.F. (2005). Toxic leadership in the U.S. Army. U.S. Army War College Thesis.

Retrieved from http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA431785.

Wong, L. Bliese, P., & McGurk, D. (2003). Military leadership: A context specific review. The

Leadership Quarterly, 24, 657-692.

Zimbardo, P. (2008). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York:

Random House Trade Paperbacks.

Zwerdling, D. (2014, January 6). Army takes on its own toxic leaders. NPR News. Retrieved

from http://www.npr.org/2014/01/06/259422776/Army-takes-on-its-own-toxic-leaders.

95

Acknowledgements

We wish to acknowledge Helen MacLennan, PhD for her active and enthusiastic involvement

in this study. Helen began the project as a doctoral student and finished as Dr. Helen

MacLennan—an accomplished graduate of the university’s PhD in Management program. She

conducted numerous interviews on site with us at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, and also conducted a

number of additional interviews by telephone. Her contribution to the data collection phase of

the project was significant and is very much appreciated.

In addition, we wish to acknowledge Jonathan Norton, Dennis Leber, and Calvin Benjamin

for their contributions as research assistants for the study. We are grateful for their input and

ideas during the early stages of the project’s conceptualization and design, as well as for their

assistance with the early interviews. We are also appreciative of the insightful and constructive

comments on this final report provided by doctoral student, Andre Duclos.

We also want to express our sincere appreciation to Sullivan University for the generous faculty

research grant which provided funding for the project. In addition, we also thank Brigadier

General James Shane (retired), who currently serves as the Director of Military & Veteran

Affairs at the university, for his significant efforts to facilitate our access to participants at Ft.

Leavenworth and also for his enthusiastic support of the project.

We are most appreciative of the U.S. Army and its Senior Leaders for their willingness to

publicly tackle the complex issue of toxic leadership by permitting officers at the Command and

General Staff College (CGSC) to participate in this study. We also very much appreciate the kind

assistance provided to us by various staff members at CGSC during our visit there as well.

Finally and most importantly, we wish to express our gratitude to the U.S. Army Officers (who

shall remain anonymous) that generously made time to be interviewed for this study. Both

individually and as a group, they were articulate, thoughtful, smart, and impressive by any

measure. Without them, this study would not have been possible.

Declaration of No Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,

and/or publication of this article.

Disclaimer

The principal investigators bear the sole responsibility for the study and contents of this final

report. The findings reported herein do not necessarily reflect the views of members of the

research team, Sullivan University, the U.S. Army, the study’s participants, or the employees,

officers, or directors of the Sullivan University System.

96

About the Principal Investigators

Teresa A. Daniel, JD, PhD currently serves as Dean & Professor-Human Resource Leadership

Programs at Sullivan University (www.sullivan.edu) based in Louisville, KY. She is also the

Chair for the HRL concentration in the university’s PhD in Management program. An active

scholar-practitioner, her growing body of research on the problem of workplace bullying has

been actively supported by the national Society for Human Resource Management through

numerous articles and interviews, as well as by the publication of her first book on the topic

titled Stop Bullying at Work: Strategies and Tools for HR & Legal Professionals (2009). An

expanded second edition of the book (co-authored with Dr. Metcalf and incorporating a systemic

view of the problem) is expected to be released by SHRM Books during the spring of 2015.

She was named as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in 2004 and was honored in 2002 as a

Distinguished Alumnus at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. She is the author of two other

HR-related books, The Management of People in Mergers & Acquisitions and Cash Balance

Pension Plans: A Practical Primer, as well as numerous academic and practitioner-oriented

articles about various issues at the intersection of HR, leadership, employment law, and ethics.

She can be reached via e-mail at: TeresaAnnDaniel@gmail.com.

Gary S. Metcalf, PhD is the President of InterConnections, LLC, a management consulting firm

which focuses on building organizational capacity through leadership, teamwork, and

communications (www.interconnectionsllc.com). Gary is also a doctoral faculty member in the

School of Organizational Leadership and Transformation at Saybrook University based in

Oakland, CA.

He currently serves as President for the International Federation for Systems Research, and is

Past-President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. His most recent book is

Social Systems and Design (Springer, 2014) and he has authored numerous articles focused on

social and organizational systems. He is the co-author of The Management of People in Mergers

& Acquisitions (Quorum Books, 2001). He can be reached via email at:

gary.s.metcalf@gmail.com.

For Further Contact

If you are interested in further discussing the observations and conclusions contained in this

report, please contact either of the principal investigators via email as noted above.