Ethical Responses in the Aftermath of a Toxic Leader: An Australian Defence Context

Abstract

Toxic leadership, and the management of toxic leadership, remains a significant challenge for militaries and public service agencies around the world. The focus of management activity is typically on identifying and removing the toxic leader. By comparison, there is little discussion of how best to manage a workforce that has survived toxic leadership. Part of the reason for this is an assumption that removal of the toxic leader is an end in itself. However, an ethical analysis of this and other responses in the aftermath of toxic leadership indicates that organisations have a duty to provide ongoing support to those affected. The analysis identifies practical conclusions about policy around effectively preventing, identifying and responding to toxic leadership.

Introduction

Toxic leadership represents an ongoing management challenge for militaries around the world.¹ The aftermath of a recently departed toxic leader, whether they leave of their own accord or a result of management action, is a difficult time for military subordinates and civilian workers recovering from any psychological, emotional and physical injuries they have sustained. Unfortunately, removal of the toxic leader is usually where the organisational response led by the management team ends; there is rarely follow-up with the people injured by toxic leadership.² This raises the question of whether both leaders and the organisation have a duty of care to take action to support members affected by toxic leadership.

The ethical implications of responses in the aftermath of a toxic leader are analysed using teleological, deontological and virtues ethics (using the Australian Department of Defence (Defence) as context) drawn from DeGeorge.³ The analysis demonstrates that the ethical response in the aftermath of toxic leadership is to engage in actively supporting those people injured by the toxic leader. Actions that fail to provide support for the injured should only occur in exceptional circumstances based on strong justification that prevents prioritising other interests (for example, organisational) for ambit reasons (for example, administrative convenience).

Toxic Leadership

Toxic leadership emerged as a counterargument to thinking on leadership as a definitionally effective, positive and constructive (for example, transformational and charismatic leadership). The concept initially captured ‘bad’ leadership broadly,⁴ becoming a more refined idea as interest in toxic leadership grew.⁵ Toxic leadership, as distinct from other types of harmful leadership (abusive/tyrannical, destructive or bullying)⁶ is characterised by a lack of concern for followers, has a negative impact on the organisation and is motivated by what followers see as self-interest.⁷ Webster and colleagues observe that followers perceive toxic leaders as manipulative, intimidating, abusive or emotionally volatile, narcissistic, micro-managerial and passive aggressive.⁸

One of the key reasons toxic leadership emerged as a dominant concept in leadership research came from military interest. The life-or-death nature of military work makes effective, positive and constructive leadership doctrinal.⁹ This makes toxic leadership anathema to military culture and the antithesis of military leadership. The effects of toxic leadership are observable at both the individual and the organisational levels.¹⁰ The effects of toxic leadership for individuals include psychological (distress, anxiety and loss of confidence), emotional (mistrust, anger and fear) and physical (decline in health) impacts on wellbeing¹¹ as well as long-term negative impacts on careers.¹² The effects of toxic leadership for organisations range across declining staff motivation, lower productivity, a destructive organisational climate, increased turnover, reputation harms, a reduction in discipline and a loss of professional standing.¹³

Ethical Ends Justify the Means

Using a teleological approach to ethics, the rightness of taking action in the aftermath of a toxic leader is a function of the consequences of those actions¹⁴—or ‘the ends justify the means’. This is a ‘consequentialist approach’ that says an action itself has no moral value but the rightness or wrongness of an action can only be understood in its context. This means that any action taken in the aftermath of a toxic leader needs to occur after closely examining the benefits and harms of that action through careful, objective and impartial evaluation of its consequences.¹⁵ The examination of benefits and harms needs to account for any decision rules or principles that might be used to guide what makes an action right or wrong, such as maximising benefits and minimising harms for the greatest number (utilitarianism) or maximising wellbeing or prosperity (eudaimonism).

Toxic leadership, and the management of toxic leadership, remains a significant challenge for militaries and public service agencies around the world. Image courtesy Department of Defence

A utilitarian response to the aftermath of a toxic leader maximises the welfare of the organisation (the greater number). This is because the harms experienced by the small number of military subordinates and civilian workers affected by toxic leadership are less important relative to the large number of people possibly affected by organisational harms (for example, citizens who benefit from that public service). The utilitarian approach suggests containing and responding to the harms within a work unit with as few resources as possible (preferably none) to maximise the resources available to the organisation. The way to achieve this would vary by the size of the work unit affected by toxic leader.

Responding to toxic leadership of a small team (for example, a section) means maximising benefit to the organisation by disestablishing (and potentially re-establishing with new personnel) that small team through internal transfer and/or termination. This dilutes the effects of the harms and allows organisational productivity or reputation to recover quickly. For example, this allows the organisation to use scarce resources to enhance products or productivity (for example, purchasing capital equipment) rather than to address the psychological, emotional and physical injuries experienced by military subordinates and civilian workers. Doing so transfers the risk of the harms consequent to toxic leadership from the organisation to the individuals, maximising benefits and minimising harms for the greatest number.

Where toxic leadership is within a larger work unit (for example, a directorate, branch or division), there is less opportunity to transfer risk from the organisation to individuals. The critical decision is who should be the next leader for the work unit—choosing a new leader judiciously to give the work unit the capacity to recover. That is, the organisation invests the risk in the next leader. However, the next leader’s success is dependent upon the resources available to support healing the injuries arising from their toxic predecessor (for example, team-building activities).

If the focus is on maximising wellbeing or prosperity, the focus becomes restoring military subordinates, civilian workers and the organisation from the harms that arose from the toxic leader. For subordinates and workers, efforts go towards identifying those who can recover and those who would be better off leaving the organisation. Unlike the organisationally focused utilitarian approach, which simply transfers and/or terminates subordinates and workers, the eudaimonistic approach would see subordinates and workers who have experienced harms to their careers offered support to establish new careers, with retraining or placement to enhance subsequent prospects for promotion. For organisations, focusing on subordinate and worker wellbeing or prosperity means offering remedies for the harms experienced in an effort to avoid negative impacts on motivation, reputation and turnover.

The teleological account shows that it is ethically acceptable to do nothing in the aftermath of a toxic leader; removal of the toxic leader is sufficient. The limit of activity, whether utilitarian or eudaimonistic, is minimising the level of resources invested in returning the work unit to ‘normal’ functioning (without the harms imposed by a toxic leader). To be clear, this is investment to the degree necessary to restore normal functioning (which could be significant) rather than systematically underinvesting (which would fail to restore normal functioning).

Ethical Means Create Ethical Ends

In contrast to teleological approaches, deontological approaches assess the moral quality of action independently of the consequences.¹⁶ Kantian deontology offers three tests to determine the rightness of responses to the aftermath of toxic leadership: that the response is consistently universal (equal treatment for all affected people), that the response treats people with dignity and respect, and that the response preserves the autonomy (self- determination) of those involved. Where the utilitarian approach can be justify inaction, Kantian deontology compels some kind of (context-dependent) action in response to toxic leadership. That is, meeting the first criterion of consistency and universality means doing something rather than nothing.

Thinking about ‘doing something’ becomes a useful thought experiment in how organisations handle toxic leadership. The first outcome of thinking through the issues is that toxic leadership is inevitable (which seems surprising at first blush). This suggests that organisations (especially bureaucracies) should anticipate toxic leadership by establishing policies and procedures aimed at preventing harms arising from toxic leadership, as well as policies and procedures aimed at responding in the aftermath of toxic leadership.¹⁷ Prevention activity might include investing in leadership development to avert toxicity or scanning for the indicators of toxic leadership in the workforce (including opportunities for subordinates and workers to identify toxic leadership). Policies and procedures in the aftermath focus on addressing the psychological, emotional, physical and career implications of toxic leadership such as those outlined in the discussion on the teleological approach. Establishing such policies and procedures goes towards satisfying the first criterion in terms of treating everyone the same way across situations.

The life-or-death nature of military work makes effective, positive and constructive leadership doctrinal. Image courtesy Department of Defence

The second criterion says that the policies and procedures need to treat people with dignity and respect. This includes the toxic leader. Recognising that toxic leadership is the consequence of a complex and dynamic social interaction (for example, a previously effective leader becomes toxic due to changes in circumstances), this means addressing potential toxic leadership without judging the leader as an innately ‘bad’ person. For example, the policies and procedures must address claims of toxic leadership by subordinates and workers as legitimate while simultaneously working to avoid stigmatising the leader as toxic. If a leader is identified as being toxic, treating the toxic leader with dignity and respect starts with removing them from the social context without disrespecting them (regardless of how justified it may seem at the time). It also means defending the toxic leader from responses that are disproportionate to their actions. For example, allowing acts of vengeance (for example, vilification on social media) fails to respect the toxic leader as a person who has a life beyond the workplace (for example, as a spouse, parent or volunteer).

The policies and procedures for subordinates and workers need to assess the legitimacy of harms. This seeks to protect the claims of those who have experienced legitimate harms from phony or opportunistic claims. Doing so makes it clear that the harms are authentic and recognised as legitimate injuries. This can be an important part of the healing process. Legitimate psychological, emotional and physical injuries then lead to appropriate responses such as convalescent leave or group-level interventions.

Supporting the self-determination of both the toxic leader and injured subordinates and workers is the final test. For the toxic leader, this might be the opportunity to remove themselves from the workplace, especially if the leader is unaware of their toxicity. For the subordinates and workers, the opportunity to choose how to respond to their injuries rather than having administratively convenient single-method responses imposed may be a good idea. For some, the exit of the toxic leader and return to normal workplace behaviours over time may be enough to heal their injury. For others, it may be choosing interventions that best promote healing, such as individual counselling, art therapy or a punching bag. Like any workplace supporting recovery from injuries, interventions should stop when subordinates or workers have recovered from the injuries arising from toxic leadership.

Satisfying the Kantian approach to deontology would be potentially resource intensive for the organisation; however, resource intensity is irrelevant from a deontological perspective. Combining the above with the practicalities of organisational resource constraints indicates responses in the aftermath of toxic leadership require taking action to the limit that resources permit. That is, the deontologically ethical approach is to optimise the response within resource constraints rather than the teleological maximising of benefit by minimising the resources invested in responding the aftermath of toxic leadership.

Australian Public Service, Defence and Army Values

The Aristotelian approach to virtues described by DeGeorge is adopted.¹⁸ The foundation of this approach is that experience (wisdom) means a fundamental (doctrinal) judgement about the rightness of responses in the aftermath of toxic leadership needs to be made. That judgement must be consistent with the obligations that exist between members of a society. Virtues in Defence are reflected in values statements and codes of conduct used as the basis for assessing the ethicality of behaviour.

A core challenge to assessing the ethicality of responses is the number of values statements that may apply. For example, using the Australian Army as context, when civilian staff are affected by toxic military leadership, it is unclear whether the stated values of the Australian Army (courage, initiative, respect and teamwork),¹⁹ Defence (professionalism, loyalty, integrity, courage, innovation and teamwork)²⁰ or the Australian Public Service (APS) (impartial, committed to service, accountable, respectful and ethical) should be used to determine the rightness of responses. In this case, Army values belong to a profession, Defence values are a policy and the APS values are legislated under the Public Service Act 1999.

Further, it is unclear whether the values are hierarchical. This becomes relevant if supporting subordinates and/or workers in the aftermath of toxic leadership is ethical under one set of values but unethical under another. For example, a course of action considered ethical under the values of the profession may be unethical under legislated values. The policy of Defence values explicitly states that each set of values works alongside the others. In doing so, it is unclear whether an assessment against all 15 values is necessary to establish a behaviour as being ethically right or wrong. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the implications of values hierarchies for the limits of public organisation sovereignty. Suffice it to say that addressing toxic leadership in Army should be in a manner consistent with the values of Army rather than those overlaid by the Defence or APS values statements.

The Australian Army values appear to have a narrative tension between subordinating individual interests to organisational interests and the explicit obligation Army members have to support each other. The value ‘courage’ asks individuals to subordinate themselves to institutional interests (for example, the Australian nation and the Army). To some degree, this is the ‘service before self’ ethos necessary to perform the profession of arms in times of war. The subordination is also reflected in the ‘respect’ (responsibility to uphold institutional legacies) and ‘teamwork’ values (the importance of community, allies and partners). This means the rightness of a response in the aftermath of toxic leadership is organisational rather than individual interest. As argued in the utilitarian discussion, the ethical outcome when organisational interests dominate is minimising investment as far as is practical.

There is a tempering of the subordination of individual interests by the unambiguous value Army places in its people. For example, the inclusion of ‘compassion’ and ‘mateship’ creates an obligation to provide formal and informal support to those injured by a toxic leader. The value ‘initiative’ speaks to Army members responding to the aftermath of toxic leadership as an opportunity for the organisation to improve. Members across Army become wiser to preventing toxic leadership, in terms of both identifying the behaviour before it becomes a problem and stopping toxic leaders before they commit harms. The value ‘respect’ creates a two-way obligation to preserve the integrity of individuals as the basis of Army as an institution. The value Army places in ‘teamwork’ more explicitly directs support for those affected by toxic leadership. This tempering of ‘service before self’ creates an ethical burden to support subordinates and workers in the aftermath of toxic leadership.

The Defence values clearly create a responsibility to support subordinates and workers in the aftermath of toxic leadership. They place a much stronger emphasis on preserving relationships across individual (between staff) and organisational (for example, professional standing and whole of government) contexts. In addition to the observations made on the Army values of ‘courage’ and ‘initiative’ (‘innovation’ in the Defence values), the responsibility is easy to see in the explanations of the values, including:

• loyalty—‘treat everyone at all levels with respect, care and compassion’
   
• integrity—‘do not allow mateship to … cover up bad behaviour’
   
• teamwork—‘strong, positive leadership’.

The APS values are more circumspect about the aftermath of toxic leadership. The values of ‘respectful’ and ‘ethical’ offer some guidance on where responsibility may lie. Interpretation of the APS values offered by the Australian Public Service Commission explains that being ‘respectful’ includes treating ‘work colleagues with dignity’ and that being ‘accountable’ means explaining decisions to those affected by them.²¹ These ideas have some similarity to the dignity and respect test from Kantian deontology. However, like many values statements, the explanation of the value ‘ethical’ is circular, defined through the concepts of ‘trustworthy’ and ‘acts with integrity’. Both are vague, as the construction of ‘trust’ or ‘integrity’ is likely to vary across social contexts. As a result, while the APS values suggest there is a responsibility, the case is significantly weaker than that created by the values of Army or the values of Defence.

The three values statements suggest a level of agreement that there is an ethical burden to support subordinates and workers in the aftermath of toxic leadership. The legally enforceable APS values are lukewarm about whether such action is required. The professionally defining Army values indicate there is a burden, although they integrate sufficient flexibility for when the practicalities of the profession of arms compel prioritising organisational interests. The implication of the Army values is that prioritising organisational interests should be the exception rather than, say, an administrative convenience. The policy-based Defence values are less circumspect; the only ethically defensible response in the aftermath of toxic leadership is support for injured subordinates and workers.

The Ethical Burden in the Aftermath of Toxic Leadership

The analysis indicates there is an ethical burden upon both leaders and the organisation to take action to support those affected in the aftermath of toxic leadership. Only exceptional circumstances justify that ethical burden being lifted, especially when that justification seeks to prioritise organisational over individual interests. The ethical burden indicates that organisations are obliged to have policy that supports both identifying and responding to toxic leadership.²² That is, organisations are obliged to establish administrative processes for when rather than if toxic leadership occurs. The identification of toxic leadership could become part of ongoing people intelligence activities (for example, organisational climate surveys).²³ Another response could be to offer ways for members at all levels of the organisation to learn about the key indicators of toxic leadership (and destructive leadership more generally), possibly as part of professional development or mandatory training.

The effects of toxic leadership for organisations range across declining staff motivation, productivity, destructive organisational climate, increased turnover, reputation harms, reduction in discipline and loss of professional standing. Image courtesy Department of Defence

Identification of toxic leadership should trigger a policy-based procedural response. Key to that procedural response is activating support mechanisms. For employees, support mechanisms able to address the span of possible injuries (across psychological, emotional and physical) can become part of workplace health and safety protocols. While some career harms are more easily addressed than others (for example, missed promotion opportunities), more subtle career harms, such as reputational injury, may be more difficult to either identify or fix. Beyond the injuries, the policy can look to develop protocols around re-establishing the group dynamics of the workplace. Of course, there is no requirement to tie responses to resource-intensive activity; for example, a ceremony or celebration could recognise the experience of injured subordinates and workers or formally recognise people who provided support throughout the toxic leadership (for example, by giving commendations or awards). The focus is on taking some kind of action.

A key outcome of developing policy is that it limits the risk of inappropriately putting organisational interests ahead of individual interests. For example, policy necessarily decreases the risk that reactive management and administrative convenience becomes the basis for failing to do something in the aftermath of a toxic leader.

While there is a focus on supporting those affected by a toxic leader, it is equally clear that there are times when organisational interests take priority. The exceptional circumstances that may justify taking no action include conditions of existential threat and periods of high turnover that preclude meaningful action. It is crucial that the circumstances remain authentically exceptional rather than being substituted with exceptional intellectual gymnastics to justify prioritising organisational interests.

Conclusions

Contrary to the dominant view that leadership is inherently effective, positive and constructive, organisations have to expect and plan for the inevitable failures of and destructive forms of leadership. For military organisations such as Defence, this means establishing policy aimed at identifying and responding to toxic leadership. An integral part of achieving best practice in this space is the continuing willingness of Defence organisations to ask questions about and respond to toxic leadership.²⁴

Endnotes

1. G Reed, 2015, Tarnished: Toxic Leadership in the U.S. Military, New England: Potomac Books
2. R Sutton, 2007, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn’t, New York: Warner Business Books; M Whicker, 1996, Toxic Leaders: When Organisations Go Bad, Connecticut: Quorum VI
3. R De George, 2009, Business Ethics, New Jersey: Pearson–Prentice Hall, 7th ed
4. J Gallus et al, 2013, ‘Intolerable Cruelty: A Multilevel Examination of the Impact of Toxic Leadership on US Military Units and Service Members’, Military Psychology Vol 25, pp 588- 601; G Reed and R Bullis, 2009, ‘The Impact of Destructive Leadership on Senior Military Officers and Civilian Employees’, Armed Forces and Society Vol 36, pp 5-18
5. A Schmidt, 2008, Development and Validation of the Toxic Leadership Scale, College Park: University of Maryland
6. S Craig and R Kaiser, 2012, ‘Destructive Leadership’, in M Rumsey (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Leadership, Oxford: Oxford University Press, chap 25; K Pelletier, 2010, ‘Leader Toxicity: An Empirical Investigation of Toxic Behavior and Rhetoric’, Leadership Vol 6, pp 373–89
7. G Reed, 2003, ‘Toxic Leadership’, Military Review Vol 84, pp 67-71
8. V Webster, P Brough and K Daly, 2016, ‘Fight, Flight or Freeze: Common Responses for Follower Coping with Toxic Leadership’, Stress and Health Vol 32, pp 346-54
9. J Steele, 2011, ‘Antecedents and Consequences of Toxic Leadership in the US Army: A Two Year Review and Recommended Solutions’, in Technical Report 2011–3, Fort Leavenworth: Center for Army Leadership
10. Reed, 2003
11. Webster, Brough and Daly, 2016
12. C Longnecker and L Fink, 2016, ‘Managing Your Boss in the 21st Century’, Industrial Management Vol 58, pp 10-15
13. B Schyns and J Schilling, 2013, ‘How Bad are the Effects of Bad Leaders? A Meta-analysis of Destructive Leadership and its Outcomes’, The Leadership Quarterly Vol 24 pp 38- 58; M Tavanti, 2011, ‘Managing Toxic Leaders: Dysfunctional Patterns in Organizational Leadership and How to Deal with Them’, Human Resource Management Vol 6, pp 127-36
14. DeGeorge, 2009
15. J Mazanov, Managing Drugs in Sport, Abingdon: Routledge
16. DeGeorge, 2009
17. Reed, 2015
18. DeGeorge, 2009
19. Australian Army, ‘Our Values’, 2016, at: https://www.army.gov.au/our-people/our-values
20. Department of Defence, 2017, ‘The Defence Values’, at: http://www.defence.gov.au/ publications/defence_values.pdf
21. Australian Public Service Commission, 2016, ‘APS Values’, at: http://www.apsc.gov.au/ working-in-the-aps/your-rights-and-responsibilities-as-an-aps-employee/aps-values
22. Reed, 2015; Steele, 2011; Tavanti, 2011
23. Tavanti, 2011
24. Gallus et al., 2013; Reed, 2015.