I had a coaching session with a client recently who had spent two years working for someone who made her feel small every single day.
By the time she came to me, she had stopped trusting her own judgement. She was making mistakes she never used to make. She had rashes, mouth ulcers, a stubborn eye infection her doctor couldn’t quite explain. Her body had been trying to tell her what her mind wasn’t ready to admit.
Her manager, by all accounts, was untouchable. Because she always hit her numbers.
That detail has stayed with me. Because it is not unusual. It is, in many organisations, the norm.
Toxic leadership is not just a difficult personality. It is an organisational risk that most organisations are not yet brave enough to name.
We talk endlessly about vision, strategy and performance. But we rarely have the honest conversation about leaders whose behaviour is actively damaging the people around them, the culture they operate in, and ultimately the quality of the work itself.
And here is what makes it so insidious. It rarely starts with one dramatic incident. It builds slowly, through repeated patterns that teach people what is safe to say, who can be questioned, and who must be protected at all costs.
It can look loud — shouting, humiliation, public criticism, unpredictable reactions, emotional volatility with no professional boundary in sight. Or it can look quiet and almost invisible — decisions made without transparency, expertise ignored, accountability shifted, team members undermined just enough that no one can quite name what’s happening. Everyone kept just separate enough from each other to doubt themselves in private.
Both are damaging. The quiet version is often more so, because it is harder to prove and easier to dismiss.
Once psychological safety disappears, something predictable follows. People stop speaking honestly. They stop bringing bad news early. They stop challenging poor decisions. They spend more energy managing the leader’s mood than doing the work they were actually hired to do.
Talented people leave. Or, more painfully, they stay — and slowly shrink.
The best people do not want to work where professionalism is optional, accountability is selective, and power is used to silence rather than to serve. And talent markets talk. People hear about toxic cultures long before organisations are willing to admit that the problem isn’t one “difficult relationship” — it is a leadership pattern that has become culturally tolerated.
This is why toxic leadership stops being an interpersonal issue and becomes a retention issue, a performance issue, a reputational issue, and eventually a business issue.
Because a toxic leader doesn’t only create stress. They create distortion.
Decisions become less transparent. Feedback becomes less honest. The truth stops travelling upwards. And when the truth cannot travel upwards, leadership is no longer leading reality. It is managing an illusion.
Healthy leadership is not about being endlessly nice or making everyone comfortable. It is about creating enough trust for people to think clearly, speak honestly, challenge respectfully and do their best work without fear.
It is about using authority with maturity. Respecting roles, boundaries and expertise. Understanding that power is not there to protect the leader’s ego — it is there to protect the quality of the work, the health of the culture, and the people entrusted to that leader’s care.
Organisations say they want innovation, accountability and high performance. But none of those things survive long in an environment where people are afraid.
So perhaps the most important leadership question is not only “What results is this leader delivering?”
It is also: “What is the cost of the way they are delivering them?”
And perhaps more urgently: “Who is paying that cost — and are we even looking?”
If this resonates with something you are seeing, experiencing, or have been through — I would genuinely love to hear your perspective in the comments.
And if your organisation is serious about building cultures where people can actually do their best work, feel free to reach out.
