Toxic and Destructive Leadership

Toxic and Destructive Leadership: The Dark Side of Influence offers a comprehensive and critical examination of the darker dimensions of leadership, exploring how destructive leadership emerges, develops, becomes normalised and ultimately shapes individuals, organisations and wider institutional systems. Moving beyond simplistic portrayals of toxic leaders as inherently dysfunctional individuals, the book positions toxic leadership as a complex and multidimensional phenomenon shaped by the interaction of leader characteristics, follower responses, relationships, organisational cultures, structures, power dynamics and contextual conditions. Across its chapters, the volume brings together perspectives on authentic leadership as a potential antidote, dark personality and psychopathy, the temporal dynamics of destructive authority, toxic supervision, relational co-production, corporate culture, prevention, intervention and the financial, human and reputational costs of toxic leadership. It also considers how destructive leadership manifests across diverse settings, including higher education, healthcare, business and different cultural contexts. Drawing on conceptual scholarship, empirical qualitative inquiry, literature reviews and integrative approaches, the book advances a more systemic understanding of toxicity. Ultimately, it shifts attention from simply identifying “toxic leaders” towards understanding and transforming the toxic leadership systems that enable destructive behaviours to emerge, persist and become embedded.